Pyramid Pick
The Starfarers of Catan
Published by KOSMOS
Distributed by Mayfair Games
Written by Klaus Teuber
Boxed Set, $75
Unlike its predecessors, Settlers of Catan or Seafarers of Catan, Starfarers of Catan takes our intrepid players into the wilds of outer space where no one can hear you trade, even in German.
If you did not already know, Starfarers (or "Asterisk Drivers" as the AltaVista language translator likes to call it) is printed entirely in German, with the exception of the word "Carbon" which is spelled identically in both languages. Well, it's a good thing for us English-speakers that the lovely people at Mayfair Games hired translators to go through and reproduce every word in English. It gives the game a sort of "foreign movie" aspect for the first couple of sessions, as you'll reference the English manual, go back to the German book to look at the pictures, and then back to the English book to realize you're not looking at the right picture in the German book and in fact need to look at the other German book. . . but it's worth the effort.
The translations include a stapled sheaf of German-English playing card translations (each German card is typed out next to its English counterpart) and two stapled paper booklets reprinting the Almanac and Game Overview, sans images. The German versions of these booklets are included as well.
Other than during the initial rules reading, these pages come in quite handy whenever a card is drawn -- you need them to hunt down its equivalent . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: June 30, 2000
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