Settlers of Catan, 5 to 6 player expansion

The Settlers of Catan 5 to 6 player version is an expansion set for the Settlers of Catan game. It contains fifteen additional terrain hexes: two mountains, two hills, two plains, two pasture, two forest, one desert, two water, one general (3:1) port, and one wool (2:1) port. The expanded board is laid out randomly as in the original game, but is shaped as shown below.

	Terrain	Production	Color
	Plains	Grain
	Pasture	Wool
	Forest	Lumber
	Hills	Clay
	Mountains	Ore
	Desert	Nothing
	Water	(trading advantage)

Also the expansion set includes tokens for roads, settlements, and cities in two additional colors, as well as five extra resource cards for each of the five commodities, and nine additional development cards: six soldiers, one Monopoly, one Year of Plenty, and one Road Building.

There is one significant change to the rules as well. In the original version only the player whose turn it is can build. In the expanded game, after each turn each player has an opportunity to build. This is a necessary modification, or else players would accumulate too many commodity cards, and everything would be built in large individual spurts rather than developing more evenly across time and among the players.

Some enjoy playing on the enlarged board with only four players so the board is less crowded, however a lack of space creates important strategic dilemmas which most players prefer to preserve.