Ships

The first thing that will likely go through your head when you see the Explorers and Pirates board assembled is “WHAT on earth is this Catan that I’m looking at?” Indeed, E&P has a handful of new mechanics that deeply change the nature of the game, and it’s immediately apparent from the moment you get your first look at the game. E&P’s added mechanics are as follows:

The ships are what make E&P unique; everything revolves around them. These are not the little boats in Seafarers, they function like real ships and can both travel and move cargo. A boat costs a wood and a sheep, and can be built from a harbor settlement, which is a special coastal settlement that’s just shy under the cost of a city. After the trading/building phase, E&P introduces a new phase, the ship-moving phase.

In this phase, players, well, move ships. Every ship has four movement points. The ships are placed on the straight lines between hexes, similar to roads, and moving them from one line to another is one point. Ships may move straight four times, make turns, go forward and backwards, whatever tickles their fancy. Ships can be used both to explore and to ferry cargo, which makes up the majority of E&P’s gameplay.

Exploring

Why build a ship, if not to explore? On the ship-moving phase, players can set out to the unexplored seas. Should the ship end up adjacent to an unexplored tile (the tiles marked with sun and moon icons), that tile is immediately turned over, and the ship ends its movement for that round.

The revealed tile could be one of five things – a blank sea tile, a traditional resource tile, a pirate lair, a fish shoal, or a spice colony. The latter three tiles are new and unique to E&P, and will be expanded upon below under “missions.”

Cargo

Players can load cargo onto their ships, which can be moved around the board. Each cargo serves its own purpose, but the most familiar to players would be the settler. The settler costs the exact same as a normal settlement, only instead of being built on land, it’s placed on a boat. When a boat drops off a settler, it immediately converts into a proper settlement, implying that the boat’s passengers found some permanent residence. This allows you to build settlements on distant lands without having to connect them via roads like in traditional Catan, and makes exploring all the more enticing.

Other types of cargo include crew members, fish, and spices, which will be elaborated on below.

Missions

E&P has three different “missions” that you can have in play, which are basically passive objectives that will earn you points should you choose to pursue them. You can play with all of the missions, none of them, or a combination. By completing the objective in each mission, you’ll move up on its respective victory point track. This gives you something more to focus on than simply settling and trading, as is the case in the base version of Catan.

Pirate Lairs

Exploring a hex might reveal a gold hex, which can give you two gold pieces every time its number is rolled (essentially a free resource of your choice)! Whoo-hoo! Only, there’s a catch—scurvy pirates have claimed it for themselves, and you’ll have to get rid of them to claim the tile.

To get around this, you can build crew members from a harbor settlement. If a ship is adjacent to the settlement, the crew members can be placed on the boat, and they can be released onto an adjacent hex should the boat want to dump them off. Placing enough crews on the gold hexes will defeat the pirates, opening the hex up for settlement. Players can combine in this effort; the crew members need not all be the same color. Whoever contributes the most to defeating the pirates gets a point bonus.

Fish Shoals

A fish shoal is a tile that shows fish, surrounding a certain die number. Players may choose to “roll for fish” during their turns, and if they roll a number that matches any fish shoal on the board, that hex will spawn a fish that can be carried around by players on their ships.

By taking a fish to the “Council of Catan,” an off-shore hex near the mainland, players can earn points. The more fish you bring back, the higher up you’ll move on the VP scoring for fish shoals.

Spice Villages

These hexes reveal local friendly tribes that have spices for trade. If you leave a crew member on their hex, you can pick up a spice bag, and load it onto your ship. By leaving a crew member, you’ve established diplomatic relations with the tribe, and you’ll benefit from a permanent, passive effect for the rest of your game. Each spice hex yields its own reward, such as an additional movement point for ships on the move phase.

Just like the fish, you can bring the spices back to the Council of Catan, which will bump you up in victory points. In this sense, the spice villages’ rewards are two-fold—you’ll get the passive ability, and points for your effort.

Gold Pieces

Gold pieces are in this game, and trading in two during one of your turns will allow you to pick a resource of your choice. However, there’s something much more important about this mechanic: when a number rolls that you’re not producing on, you get a gold piece for free. What this means is that, for every two non-productive rolls gives you a resource of your choice. This is one of the best mechanics that’s ever been made for Catan, and should be played regardless of what expansions you own.

Essentially, this eliminates the “no-production” problem that players can have when they’re either not wise enough to choose good numbers, or if the good numbers you picked just happen to not ever roll. Ever had that game where 6 gets rolled twice, and then 11 gets rolled thirty times? This means that, regardless of where you are, you’re producing, and it’s a good thing. I love this mechanic, and can’t go back to playing Catan without it.

Pirate Ships

Remember the no-good, dirty rotten robber that you love to hate? Good news, he’s gone! There is no robber in Catan. Hold up, don’t get too happy just yet; the robber is replaced by a new pirate ship mechanic.

When a player rolls a 7, they can place a pirate ship anywhere on the board, which functions as sort of a toll bridge for other players. In passing through that hex, they must pay a gold tribute, or they can’t go through. The difference here is that the pirate ship belongs to the player who rolled a 7, so you have the chance to put your own ship on the board, rather than some black, faceless robber.

Variants

These mechanics make up the core of E&P. However, this expansion offers five different variants. Unlike Traders and Barbarians, which has five variants that are wildly different from each other, E&P’s variants essentially stack on top of each other until you reach the final one, which is simply all of them combined into a single game. In this sense, all of the variants are compatible with each other, and the game feels like it was designed for you to play the final one where everything is included. The first one, for example, is so simple that it doesn’t feel like much more than a glorified tutorial. That being said, the game encourages you to play the one that appeals to you the most.

The first variant, “Land-Ho,” introduces the boats and exploration, nothing more. The second, “Pirate Lairs,” adds the pirate mission. The next adds fish on-top of this, and the fourth combines fish with spices, but leaves out the pirate lairs. The fifth and final, the titular “Explorers and Pirates,” combines all of these together.

No cities

Cities are not present in any of E&P’s variants. To be completely honest, I have no idea why. The game is designed to make you focus on the ships, but given the design of the game, having cities as an available option doesn’t seem like it would take away from anything. The only thing I can think of is that cities are similar to harbor settlements in price, and

that players might opt to build cities instead of harbors, thus taking away from the intent of the game. This doesn’t hold up well though; building a city instead of a harbor would be a tactical choice.

Of course, this is amended quite easily…by the players saying “let’s play with cities.” Given that you have the pieces for it already, it’s not exactly a hard house-rule to implement if the thought of a city-less Catan is abhorrent to you.