CATAN – The Legend of the Conquerors – Developer Blog Series – Part 5
The Conquerors Attack – The Fight
In the last blog post I explained how to determine the direction of the conquerors‘ movement. In the following picture, the conquerors have already been moved in the determined direction.
The leftmost conqueror ended up on a hex next to Blue’s two knights. The conqueror has 2 strength points. Because each of the knights has 1 strength point, their combined strength is 2, and there is a standoff.
If the conqueror had more strength points than the knights’ combined strength, it would have defeated the knights. In that case, the Blue player would have been forced to return the knights to their supply. If the knights combined had more strength points than the conqueror, the conqueror would have lost the battle and would have been removed from the game board.
If Blue promotes one of their knights during one of their following turns, the standoff is broken and the conqueror is defeated.
Yellow has promoted their knight. Moving the leftmost conqueror from its starting hex to the hex marked with a red “x” would have resulted in a standoff.
The movement of the next conquerors doesn’t trigger any conflicts with knights, and neither does the movement of the conqueror on the right because in the previous rounds, White has built a road and cleverly moved a knight backward one intersection. With the knight in this position, White and Red can better defend the forest hex marked with the “12” number token.
Let’s take a look at the following picture to find out what could happen in that section of the game board after the strength 3 conquerors have arrived and the barbarian ship has been moved to “The Conquerors Advance.”
For the strength 3 conqueror on the right, a yellow sword was rolled. The conqueror is moved from its landing hex straight ahead to a hex which has 2 Red knights with a combined strength of 3. A standoff ensues.
For the next conqueror on the left, a red sword is rolled. The hex located in this direction is already occupied by another conqueror, so the left conqueror is moved to the next unoccupied hex in clockwise direction according to the directional token.
It moves to the 12 forest hex which has 2 knights with a combined strength of 3. The conqueror is weaker, so it is removed immediately. As a reward for their victory, both Red and White can move their respective markers upward 1 space on the hero track.
In Chapter 1, solely by successfully combating the conquerors, each player can obtain up to 6 victory points. As you might guess, without getting at least some of those victory points, it is almost impossible to reach 13 victory points – especially since you are not allowed to build metropolises in this chapter. Who would have time to build a university or a trading house when the enemy is at the door or has already knocked it down? Therefore, city improvement ends with the third level in this chapter.
In Chapters 1 and 2, new politics cards replace your familiar politics progress cards. The new cards no longer allow you to bother each other, but rather foster cooperation between the players. This puts you in a better position to push back against the conquerors. Below I’m showing you a selection of the new politics cards.
