Catan: Starfarers

The game board consists of six interlocking sectors surrounded by starting Catanian colonies and alien outposts. Numbered disks are placed on planetary systems, matching symbol tokens face down where appropriate. Resource trays are filled with fuel, carbon, food, and goods, alongside reserve decks, encounter cards, and friendship stacks. Each player takes a mothership, nine colonies, seven trade stations, three shipyards, and three transport ships. Players load fuel balls into their rockets, attach a booster to their mothership, take a starting fame metal, and place initial colonies and spaceports on the board according to the introductory layout. Everyone draws three starting resource cards, places their victory point marker on four, and rolls dice to determine the first player.

The main goal in Catan: Starfarers is to guide humanity out into the deep recesses of space to find new homes. Players compete to be the first to reach 15 victory points. Points are accumulated by founding new colonies and upgrading them into spaceports, establishing trade stations at alien outposts, forging friendships, collecting fame medals, defeating space pirates, and terraforming treacherous ice planets.

A player's turn consists of three distinct phases. First, the production phase begins by rolling two dice; matching planets produce resources for adjacent colonies and spaceports. If a seven is rolled, players discard excess cards and the active player steals a resource. Next, during the trade and build phase, the active player can trade resources with opponents or the bank, and spend resources to build ships, spaceports, or mothership upgrades. Finally, in the flight phase, players shake their mothership to determine movement speed and potential encounters, then fly their ships across the board to explore, colonize, trade, or combat hazards.

Victory points are tracked on the central board track starting at four. Every colony established is worth one point, while spaceports grant two points in total. Players can earn two points for holding friendship markers at alien outposts, though these can be stolen if an opponent builds more trade stations. Defeating pirate bases or terraforming ice planets yields tokens worth one point each. Additionally, collecting pairs of fame metal pieces converts them into full victory point symbols.

The game continues over a series of clockwise turns with players producing, trading, building, and exploring. The game end is triggered immediately whenever any player reaches or exceeds the threshold of 15 victory points during their turn. That player successfully proves themselves as the new leader of the Galactic Empire and wins the game.