Catan: New Energies Review

Do you like playing Settlers of Catan? Are you looking for a tabletop game with environmental and climate themes? If you answered yes to either of these questions, you may be excited to discover that there’s a new(ish) Catan game called Catan: New Energies.

What is Catan: New Energies?

Catan: New Energies is a standalone game that offers a modern twist on classic Catan gameplay.

The core concept and mechanics of the game are the same as the original Catan. Each player controls an expanding group of settlements that harvests natural resources, trades with neighboring settlements, and builds new settlements and other infrastructure.

What’s new in Catan: New Energies is the addition of modern energy infrastructure and many of its associated benefits and costs. This includes fossil fuel plants, renewable energy plants, the energy generated by these plants, the pollution generated by these plants, and a global footprint tracker to track the island nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.

How is Catan:  New Energies gameplay different from the original?

Catan: New Energies adds several new features that have a major impact on gameplay. These features build on the core Catan game to add new environmental themes and strategy considerations.

Changes to core features

Several features of classic Catan have been renamed or slightly modified to match the theme of the new game.

• The five main resources are now called lumber, brick, natural fiber, food, and steel. Settlements are now called towns.
• The Robber has become the Environmental Inspector. This piece is still a useful way to take resources from other players and block production of new resources on hexes. However, it also has the added bonus of protecting a hex from environmental hazards. The idea is that the inspector is preventing hazards but also slowing down production in the process.
• The development cards have undergone significant revision. The victory point cards are the same, but the remaining cards have been redesigned. Progress cards let the player build roads or gain resources. Knight cards are replaced by cleanup cards. These cleanup cards allow the player to either move the Environmental Inspector or remove environmental hazards. 
• The Longest Road tile has been renamed the Longest Trade Route tile to emphasize trade over roadbuilding.
• The Largest Army tile has been replaced with the somewhat similar Cleanest Environment tile. The first player to play three cleanup cards receives this tile. If another player plays more cleanup cards, they take the tile and its associated points.

Most of these changes serve to match the modern environmental theme of the game and phase out the militaristic Knight/Army framework. A few of the changes do technically impact gameplay, but not as significantly as the entirely new elements of the game.

Science cards

Science cards are similar to resource cards but distinct enough to merit special attention. They represent the technological innovation and resources necessary to build advanced infrastructure like power plants.

When cities produce resources during the production phase, instead of giving the player two cards of that resource, the player receives one resource card and one science card. Building a fossil fuel power plant costs one science card while building a renewable power plant costs three.

Player board

Each player receives a player board that helps them keep track of their power plants, energy use, and Local Footprint (LF), which measure the net greenhouse gas emissions of their towns, cities, and power plants.

This new player board is a helpful way to keep track of the new energy-related features of the game. It’s also a tidy and aesthetically pleasing way to organize the player’s stockpile of unbuilt roads, towns, and cities.

Power plants and energy 

Power plants play a central role in Catan: New Energies.

Each power plant is connected to a specific town or city. Towns have a slot for one power plant while cities have a slot for three. Each power plant is also associated with one of the adjacent resource hex tiles.

Power plants produce energy. Energy takes the form of lightning-shaped tokens that the player spends to buy resource or science cards, remove environmental hazard tokens from the board, or demolish fossil fuel power plants to reduce emissions and clear the way for more renewable plants.

These power plants affect the player’s Local Footprint (LF) which is tracked on the player board. They also affect the island’s Global Footprint (GF) which is tracked on the edge of the main Catan board. Building towns, cities, and fossil fuel plants raises both the player’s LF and the island’s GF.  Building renewable power plants lowers both.

Event phase and discs

The event phase is a new phase of each player’s turn. Before rolling the dice (the production phase), the player draws an event disc from the event disc bag. This event disc represents an environmental event that may have a variety of effects on players.

Some of these events are helpful while others are harmful. Green event discs reward players who have a low local footprint (LF) or an abundance of renewable power plants. Brown event discs have negative effects such as adding hazards or making it easier for players to build more fossil fuel power plants. Climate conference discs reward the player(s) with the lowest LF and penalize the player with the highest LF.

These discs are drawn every turn, but they only take effect when players have collectively drawn 3-4 discs of the same type. Until then, they’re kept on the edge of the game board to keep track of when that event type will be triggered. This is helpful because letting the discs affect the game on every single term would be too destabilizing to gameplay. Instead, once every few turns, an environmental event is triggered.

Another interesting aspect of the event discs that plays into strategy is that building power plants affects the supply of available event discs. Building a renewable power plant adds a green event disc to the event disc bag while building a fossil fuel power plant adds a brown event disc to the bag. This means that over time, building renewable power plants leads to more favorable outcomes while building fossil fuel plants leads to more environmental hazards.

If the players run out of event discs before any player reaches ten points, the game ends, and the player with the best ratio of renewable power plants to fossil fuel plants wins. If no one has more renewable power plants than fossil fuel power plants, everyone loses. The concept behind this new way of ending the game is that rapid development has led to a global climate crisis where the only remaining “victory” available to players is that your society is powered primarily by renewables and therefore did what it could to avert the crisis. 

Global Footprint (GF) tracker

The Global Footprint (GF) tracker keeps track of the total net emissions of the entire island. This includes the emissions associated with the towns, cities, and power plants of all players combined. To keep the GF current, players adjust the global footprint marker every time they take an action that affects the GF.

Rising emissions have a major impact on gameplay. Once the GF crosses a certain threshold, players start drawing more event discs per turn. This leads to an increased risk that the game will end early due to a lack of discs to draw.

This GF tracker offers the most direct and obvious connection between the game’s new features and the real-world climate crisis. If one or more players decide to focus entirely on maximizing their use of fossil fuel power plants, the GF will rise rapidly, and the game will end in tragedy. If most players focus primarily on renewables, the game continues until someone reaches ten points. 

Hazard tokens

Some event discs result in the placement of hazard tokens.

Hazard tokens represent environmental disasters like flooding or industrial pollution. Any town, city, or resource hex that is covered by a hazard tokens doesn’t produce any resources until the hazard tokens is removed. Removing the hazard costs energy.

What environmental and climate themes does Catan: New Energies explore?

Catan: New Energies explores the challenges of meeting society’s growing demand for energy in the midst of an escalating climate crisis.

Should communities and societies continue building and using fossil fuel power plants for the sake of energy production and economic development? Or should we stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure right now and rapidly phase out what currently exists?

In the game, as in real life, reducing emissions becomes a collective action problem. There are in-game incentives to build at least some fossil fuel power plants. But if everyone builds them, or any single player makes fossil fuels their primary development strategy, then emissions will rise so rapidly that everyone loses.

Climate conferences play a small but significant role in the course of the game. When players have drawn enough event discs to trigger a climate conference, the conference rewards players who focus on renewables and penalizes players who focus more on fossil fuels. The reward or loss is just one resource card, so the climate conferences have a limited impect.

There are also some implicit climate justice themes. There’s a greater chance of environmental hazards near fossil fuel power plants; players who pollute the most often experience rapid development at the expense of their less-polluting neighbors; and so on.

The instruction manual even includes a two-page Thematic Background section that describes some of the real-world history and environmental concerns that inspired the creation of Catan: New Energies. This section serves both to enhance the player’s immersion in the game’s themes and to educate players on the history of energy production and related environmental issues, including but not limited to the climate crisis.

What works well in Catan: New Energies?

Catan: New Energies works really well if you’re looking for a fun and exciting new version of Catan that includes energy and environmental themes.

I really enjoyed every new feature of the gameplay. The power plants, energy, science cards, greenhouse gas emissions tracking, event tokens, and other updates all fit the theme well and add an enriching new layer to gameplay strategy. Like all good Catan standalone sets and scenarios, Catan: New Energies expands on the core rules in interesting ways while still feeling very much like a Catan game.

So far, in my experience, the game balance is right where it needs to be. The event discs, hazard tokens, and emissions trackers all have a significant impact on gameplay without becoming the only considerations for players to develop a winning strategy. Rapid emissions lead to rapid catastrophe, but building a fossil fuel power plant or two doesn’t immediately end the game in disaster. This balancing act results in a gameplay experience where players must give serious thought to how many power plants (and other buildings) they’re building and what the environmental impact will be. Thinking about these considerations in the game may encourage players to think and talk about energy, environmental issues, and the climate crisis in real life.

If you’ve played the discontinued Catan Scenarios: Oil Springs expansion, you’ll notice a few similar themes. Fossil fuels are a powerful strategic consideration in both games. They both also add a new “everybody loses” ending associated with the overproduction and overconsumption of fossil fuels. However, Catan: New Energies explores these themes in a much more nuanced and smoothly-implemented way. I may still play Oil Springs sometimes if other players are in the mood for it, but now I’m far more fond of Catan: New Energies.

I also appreciated the considerable thought, artistry, and craftsmanship that went into the development of the physical game pieces and box. The new box design has helpful pictures on the interior that make it easier to find and put away all of the game pieces. The designers also minimized the use of plastic in the production of the set, replacing the plastic game piece container and plastic card deck wrappers with paper alternatives.

What doesn’t work well in Catan: New Energies?

People approaching this game from an environmental and climate justice perspective rather than a “fun Catan game with environmental themes” perspective may notice a few significant shortcomings.

The idea that fossil fuel power plants are cheaper and easier to build than renewable power plants is already outdated in most contexts. Especially when you account for the fact that many governments still subsidize fossil fuels. This aspect of gameplay may perpetuate the notion that fossil fuel power is still cheaper and easier to develop, which is no longer the case.

I also find it problematic that renewable energy power plants actively lower the local and global emissions footprints, effectively canceling out the emissions of the fossil fuel power plants. This isn’t how it works in real life! Building renewable energy infrastructure causes emissions and pollution too. It just causes far less emissions and pollution than the fossil fuel alternatives.

This may seem like nitpicking to some people who aren’t climate policy wonks, but it’s actually a significant shortcoming in the game’s energy, environment, and climate messaging. Renewable energy plays a central role in a just transition. But we must be clear-eyed about the fact that it doesn’t actually draw down pollution. In fact, it has its own carbon footprint and environmental impacts that must be acknowledged and mitigated.

The game is also silent on the issue of nuclear power. There’s considerable discourse right now in climate policy and climate justice circles about the role of nuclear power in a just transition away from fossil fuels. Whether you’re pro-nuclear, anti-nuclear, or somewhere in between, nuclear power is still a significant part of real-life energy and environment discourse that Catan: New Energies fails to address. Did they omit it due to the potential controversy? Did they omit it in order to avoid adding too many new elements at once? Was it more of an oversight than an intentional omission? Regardless of why they didn’t address nuclear power,  I see room for future official or fan-made scenarios exploring this question.

Finally, the new themes and rules don’t address what many environmental and climate justice advocates have identified as the root causes of the climate crisis: settler colonialism, extractivism, white supremacy, and capitalism.

The Catan franchise has taken a significant step away from settler colonialism by removing “Settlers of” from the name of the franchise and referring to the smallest population centers in Catan: New Energies as “towns” rather than “settlements.” But gameplay still centers on unchecked expansion into an undeveloped territory and market-based solutions to the climate crisis. This doesn’t really address the root causes of the climate crisis and doesn’t include many important climate solutions that could easily be included in a board game. The game instead portrays a simplistic dichotomy between green growth and fossil fuel growth.

Of course, that’s arguably an unavoidable consequence of making a Catan game with energy, environment, and climate themes. If you take away the unchecked expansion and the primacy of market-based development, it won’t be a Catan game anymore.

Having said that, they’ve done a great job of including about as many meaningful, educational, and enjoyable climate themes as they could without making this game something other than a Catan game. At the end of the day, the main point of this particular game is still for players to have fun playing Catan. Other games and fan-made supplements can explore the themes that are conspicuously absent from this game.

Is Catan: New Energies worth playing?

Catan: New Energies is definitely worth playing! This game offers an excellent combination of enjoyable gameplay and meaningful environmental and climate themes. It should appeal to seasoned Catan players, Catan newcomers, and people concerned about environmental issues and the climate crisis.

Even if you’re not that excited about the themes, the updated gameplay is a fascinating expansion of the core rules. It retains all of the features that make Catan such a popular game, but adds an exciting new layer of strategy. It provides a substantial gameplay update while still feeling very much like a game of Catan. 

If the environmental and climate themes are your biggest draw, there’s definitely some serious substance here. As noted above, this game has some significant limits in terms of what aspects of the climate crisis and climate justice it explores. But when you compare it to almost all other games that are absolutely silent on environmental and climate issues, Catan: New Energies is downright remarkable in its commentary on environmental issues and the climate crisis.

Catan: New Energies offers a wonderful balance of enjoyable Catan gameplay and meaningful environmental and climate themes. It met and surpassed all of my expectations of what a good Catan game about energy, environment, and climate change would look like. I hope that it will inspire players to reflect and act on real-world environmental and climate issues.

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