Settlers of Catan is a monument in the history of tabletop board gaming. I've even heard people talk about Catan as if it is the "Jesus" of board games, and that the history of board games can be broadly divided up into "before Catan" and "after Catan". It was the first German game to receive mass commercial success and popular acclaim in the United States. In a time when most American tabletop gamers were still playing Monopoly, Risk, and Stratego, Catan almost single-handedly popularized the "Eurogame".
But I've never, personally, been big into Catan. I own a Star Trek version of the game, which was gifted to me, but I've never owned the original Settlers of Catan or any of its themed expansions or revisions. I've only ever played Catan with friends who own the game, and I've always felt very "meh" about it.
Players will build power plants and must manage pollution and climate change.
But when I saw the announcement earlier this year of a renewable-energy-themed edition of the game, called New Energies, I was a lot more interested. I'm very enthusiastic about environmentalism and renewable energy. In fact, for those who don't know, my day job is a software engineer working as a contractor with utility companies regarding energy efficiency, renewable energy, and demand response programs. You know when your thermostats sets your air conditioning 2 or 4 degrees hotter on the hottest days of the year? Yeah, that's what I do. (It's intended to reduce the demand on the grid and prevent brownouts from excessive air conditioning use, so that you don't loose power entirely and have to go without any air conditioning at all!). So I have both a personal and a professional interest in the subject matter of New Energies.
I actually bought this game the week of its release, and made a concerted effort to play it promptly, instead of letting it sit on my shelf, still in its shrink-wrap, collecting dust for 2 years. Actually, it can't sit around in its shrink-wrap, because it doesn't come in shrink-wrap. In keeping with its environmentalist themes, Catan: New Energies does not include any plastic in its components or packaging. All the pieces are bio-degradable wood and cardboard, and all the tokens and cards came wrapped in recyclable, bio-degradeable paper sleeves and bags. And there was no shrink-wrap; the game was sealed with 4 pieces of circular industrial tape on each side of the box. So Catan Studio gets brownie points from me for walking-the-walk in regards to its environmental theming! No bullshit corporate virtue-signaling here!
New Energies commits to its environmental theme, and include no plastic in its components or packaging.
And the components are generally very good, which is part of the reason why the game costs $70 instead of the $40-$50 that the original game usually costs in retail. There's a cardboard insert to organize all of the game components and which also helps speed up set-up and tear-down. My only complaints (components-wise) is that the draw bag for event discs might be a bit over-sized, and there aren't any player aide cards that outline the turn sequence, environmental event effects, or endgame sequence. It's always helpful to have something like that for player to follow along with while I explain the core rules. Yes, the costs of all the player actions are shown on the player boards, but it's real easy for new players to miss certain actions, or not understand what the symbols mean without any kind of textual description. Thankfully, the general turn sequence for Catan is relatively simple and straightforward, so it's still fairly manageable to explain the rules without such player aides.
Catan meets Power Grid
Players can build fossil fuel or renewable power plants
to generate Electricity tokens.
Catan: New Energies is basically what you would get if Catan and Power Grid had a baby. Though that baby definitely takes more after Catan's side of the family. It's a "standalone expansion" to the classic Catan -- an independent and fully self-contained game that basically repackages the original game, along with additional expansion-like content and rules. If you wanted to, you could play classic Catan rules with the content in this box. You would have to look up the classic rules, since New Energies does not include the original Catan rules, but if you are very familiar with classic Catan, it's easy enough to know which rules are new to New Energies.
In addition to the classic Catan mechanics of rolling dice to generate resources on specific hexes of the map, and using those resources to build roads, towns, and cities, New Energies also has players building power plants and contending with pollution and climate change. The core mechanic of New Energies is that whenever a hex containing a power plant produces resources, the player who owns the power plant also gets an electricity token, which can be used for various gameplay effects.
The power plants can be either fossil fuel plants or renewable energy plants. The ratio of fossil fuel versus renewables affects the planet's total carbon footprint. Each turn, the current player draws a random event token. At the start of the game, the draw bag is full of only harmful tokens associated with pollution. As players build more renewable power, more beneficial green tokens will be added to the event draw bag. In general, the higher the carbon footprint of the planet, the more likely it is that the event drawn will be something harmful. Harmful events can generate pollution on cities or hexes, which temporarily block those cities or hexes from producing resources. Events triggered by having more renewables and a lower carbon footprint can lead to extra resources being generated, and other boons for players.
If the global footprint crosses certain thresholds, more random events will occur.
The game also tracks each individual player's carbon footprint. In general, the players with high carbon footprints will also be more likely to be targeted by pollution events, while players with low carbon footprints (or the most renewable infrastructure) will be targeted with beneficial green events. In fact, there is even a victory condition in which the player with the most energy-efficient power infrastructure wins the game, and victory points are simply a tie-breaker.
Wild card resources address one of Catan's biggest problems
However, there are still pretty strong incentives to build fossil fuel power plants. For one thing, they cost a third of the price to build. The electricity tokens that they generate also provide powerful benefits and adaptability to players, which means that getting as many power plants on the board as quickly as possible can dramatically improve your resource efficiency. And, of course, you can still win the game (via victory points) by building only fossil fuels. It's still a perfectly viable (and generally cheaper) path to victory.
This adaptability is perhaps the best new feature of New Energies, compared to classic Catan. One of the biggest criticisms of Catan is how dependent it is on dice rolls. If you've ever played Catan, you've likely had games in which you had to pass on many of your turns because the dice never seem to roll the numbers that you need, and you simply didn't have the resources to build anything. If that player wasn't you, then you probably played with another player who complained about this problem.
New Energies includes 2 "wild card" resources.
New Energies relieves this complaint by introducing two new "wild card" resources. The first wild resource is the power tokens that are generated by power plants, and which I mentioned earlier. The other wild resource is a new "science" card, which is produced by cities. Instead of large cities producing double yields of the same resource (as was the case with classic Catan), they generate 1 resource of the hex's type, and also a Science card.
These Science cards can be used to build power plants (which provide the player with power tokens that can be traded for resources or other benefits). Science cards can also be traded directly for other resources at a 3-to-1 exchange (similar to a harbor).
Between power tokens and Science cards, players usually have much more flexibility to claim a resource that you need, but which the dice (and other players) just won't give you. This dramatically cuts down on the frequency of resource-starved players passing their turn without taking any action. It also generally speeds up the pace of play, since players will have more resources on-hand to build roads, towns, and cities earlier in the game.
And more generally speaking, the effects of the game's randomness will feel much more like a result of the players' choices and actions. If you build a bunch of dirty fossil fuel plants, then you shouldn't be surprised when your cities get inundated with pollution. Thematically speaking, the game really does make all players keenly aware of how the other players are developing their infrastructure. It accurately gamifies the feeling of frustration and hopelessness that many of us more climate-conscious individuals might feel watching real-life people, corporations, and governments continuing to engage in harmful behaviors or refusing to take climate change more seriously.
Tragedy of the commons
The high value of electricity tokens means that, much like in real life, the tragedy of the commons comes into play. The selfish or short-sighted actions of 1 or 2 players can have consequences for everybody in the game.
Pollution will disproportionately affect players with the highest local footprints.
Building fossil fuel power plants early is actually fairly low risk, and can be high reward. They are cheap, and can grant the player easy access to valuable electricity tokens. These can provide a sizeable head start compared to players who try to save up to go renewable right from the start. However, the game's environmental events strongly discourage any player from having the most fossil fuel plants, as many environmental event effects explicitly punish the most polluting player. Yeah, you may get extra electricity tokens early on, but you may also end up spending all of them to clean up pollution that your dirty power plants caused, or to exchange those electricity tokens for cards that events either took away or prevented you from collecting.
Increasing the global footprint past certain thresholds also causes additional event tokens to be drawn each turn. If the draw bag for event tokens is ever empty, then the game immediately ends, and the player with the most environmentally-friendly power grid wins (regardless of victory points).
This helps to alleviate one of the other common complaints with Settlers of Catan, which is that games can often drag out if the dice simply aren't providing players with the resources that they need (or actively taking those resources away via the bandit). In New Energies, the event draw bag acts as a soft turn limit to keep total game time within that 2-hour window. Further, irresponsible building will dramatically accelerate the end of the game, and can even cause all players to loose.
Building dirty power can ironically still be a viable path to victory.
The best version of Catan?
I admit, I haven't played very many variations of Catan. I've heard that the Sea-farers expansion is a very good variant, but I've personally never played it. Of the versions of Catan that I have played, New Energies is by far my favorite of the bunch. I really enjoy the theming and ideological messaging of the game, and I feel that it's unique mechanics directly address some of the biggest complaints with Catan.
If you hate Catan (and I've known plenty of people who do hate Catan), then I doubt that this game will change your mind. It might be more tolerable though, if you're roped into a game. On the other hand, if you do like Catan, then New Energies is a huge upgrade over the classic game, and might be the single best version of the game. Fans of Catan should absolutely pick up a copy!
WHAT I LIKE
- No plastic components or packaging.
- Theme of environmentalism.
- "Wild" resources put players far less at the mercy of the dice.
- A soft turn limit prevents games from dragging on for too long.
- RNG feels more like a result of the players' choices.
- Irresponsible play accelerates the endgame.
- Includes almost all the components necessary for playing classic Catan.
WHAT I DON'T LIKE
- Dice rolls can still make or break a given player's game.
- No player aides.
- Does not include classic Development Cards.
FINAL GRADE: A
Manufacturer(s): Catan Studio.
Lead Designer(s): Klaus Teuber, BenjaminTeuber
Artist(s): Ian O'Toole, Michaela Kienle, Az Sperry
Original release: June 2024
MSRP: $70 USD
Player(s): 3-4 players (best with 4)
Age Recommendation: 14 years old and up
Game Length: 90-120 minutes
Official site: catan.com/catan-new-energies