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Elasund: The First City of Catan Price: £32.99 RRP = £38.99 Board Game, 2-4 Players, by Mayfair Games Elasund? the little settlement on the coast? Well, those days are long gone. Elasund is growing rapidly and Catanians are streaming into the city, eager to make a fortune! You are appointed to help the city develop. You heed the call to drive the city’s growth and prosperity. Will you emerge as Elasund’s savviest and most influential city developer? Find out in this new Catan adventure! ++++++++++++++++++++ Counter magazine review ++++++++++++++++++++ Kosmos / Mayfair 2-4 players, 60 minutes designed by Klaus Teuber reviewed by Alan How Elasund is the latest, but surely not the last, in the Settlers franchise. When I reviewed the Settlers of the Stone Age back in Counter 24, the franchise moved from straight Settlers to one with a settlers theme, but based on the tried and tested formula of throw dice, get resource cards and then develop. The formula still works, so we seem to be heading for a development of Settlers through the ages. Elasund - the first city follows on from Candamir - the first settlers and either suggests a second and subsequent city or (more likely?) the prologue for settlers chapters through different eras of mankind. The basic premise this time round is, as the name suggests, the development of a city. The dice roll applies to the rows of a 9x11 squared grid and a ship is moved to indicate this. The buildings aligned with the row of the dice roll score a hit in much the same way as the numbers do in basic settlers, but perhaps more similarly to the hits on buildings in Crude/McMulti. The buildings hit provide resources, which can be used to gain more building opportunities and this leads to more victory points. Target is again 10. As ever, the layers that are built onto this idea are linked back to previous Settlers games and in Elasund there are a few more twists and turns that take it away from some of the previous versions. Firstly, other than the starting (free) buildings, each player has to put building permits on the board, which define the size of the buildings that will be placed later on. This means there is a measure of planning, as you want to cover more rows, to ensure more hits on your buildings. As the 11 rows are numbered in standard Settlers style (2-6, 8-12), you want to focus on the centre rows where the dice supposedly spend more of their time. The buildings are also different shapes, so you want to place your permits in the right layouts and cover appropriate rows. Unlike previous Settlers games, the competition for space is not irrevocably decided by the first player to occupy a space. (In basic Settlers, once you build on an area, its ownership is yours for the rest of the game.) In Elasund, neither your building permits nor your completed buildings are safe. Other players\' building permits can be used to complete a building if they match the shape you need and if a player has the highest value of permits laid out for the building concerned. So not only have you got to consider the previous requirements, you also have to consider if someone may play a higher total value of permits. While there is compensation for the player whose permits have been used in this way, it is not a great feeling when your developments have been used to help someone else. Similarly buildings can be built over as bigger buildings destroy smaller ones. Both these ideas seem to me to be new and interesting developments in the series. The next good mini system is that there is a church being built. Its location is roughly known and the squares it could be on are known to all players. Building on these squares is not recommended - when the church is built other buildings on its site will be demolished! The 3x3 squares of the church are each worth a victory point but expensive to produce as they require gold, which is one of the resources produced by a hit on specific buildings. Besides the church, victory points are mainly earned from buildings. The larger ones earn 2 victory points and medium sized ones earn one. Game balancing that takes place in Settlers is present again; the low valued rows of the board have special trade tiles (the windmills from earlier games) which provide trade opportunities. This is reflected in a separate chart along the edge of the board which totals the trade points of each player. As more points are scored the players earn more victory points, with a maximum of 5 victory points available from this route. Loss of trade tiles through buildings being built over can reduce the trade points that you have accumulated. Finally, you can also help build the city wall using your own set of 9 wall tiles provided to you at the start of the game. As you build more of the wall (paying gold) you run through your own set in sequence and every third tile laid provides an additional victory point. As the spaces for wall building are limited, as well as being differently priced, there is competition for this area and you may not get to that third victory point. It\'s also worth pointing out what is not in this game. There are no 3:1 or 2:1 tiles to trade influence resource cards. The trading in this game is more about collecting as the influence deck of cards have 3 colours - red, green and blue - and when you gain influence cards from hits on buildings these can be any colour. The influence cards are only used for building permits and generally in combinations of the same colour, while everything else costs gold. Effectively trading takes place when you build city wall tiles that do not gain you victory points as these yield a number of influence cards. The components from Kosmos and Mayfair are first class. Sturdy cardboard buildings, standard Settlers type board and clear cards, rules and player aids. They really are a model of how to complete a board game. So why would you buy this one? Collectors surely will, as will connoisseurs of fine Settlers games, but perhaps the main reason is that the changes in this game advance the Settlers series. It would be possible to tire of a successful series, now over 10 years old, but the fresh ideas building on the earlier core aspects of Settlers are well developed while moving the feel of Settlers away from the main ideas of the series. What I liked about this game were the new concepts and devices, such as the way you can pay for dice rolls that don\'t help you enough by using resources which allows you to get something out of a turn. I particularly like the range of options that are presented. You can save up your resources - the `7\' in this game does not force you to get rid of excess cards, though there are some penalties - and then make your play by using your new opportunities. As usual there are multiple ways of scoring victory points and your luck or decision making can swing you down one route. I think the series is developing further and while there will come a time when Settlers meets the end of its road, with changes like these introduced in this game it is still some way off. More ...

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