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A. Background

While loafing around on the Web one day, I happened to encounter some really nice painted wooden resource tokens made by Mayday Games. I don't know for sure, but I think the set of twelve or so token shapes were originally constructed to augment a game called Le Havre. Now, 5 of these shapes coincidentally are sheep, brick, ore, grain and lumber. So as a smart marketing ploy, Mayday re-bundled these tokens as a vaguely disguised add-on to Catan. To get around any copyright infringements, they called the bundle Yucatan Tokens. Get it? Yu-Catan! The bundle contains 125 tokens (25 of each flavour) which are meant to replace the resource cards from the regular game. Note that there is no token equivalent for the commodity cards in Cities & Knights - only resource cards. Anyway, they had to address a big issue - mainly how to keep each player's resources private. People like to hide their resource cards so when a monopoly or robber incident happens they don't get shredded. The tokens are hard to keep private. Mayday's solution? When playing, keep a hand over the tokens. Yeah, right! When the robber calls, hold the tokens in both hands, shake them and then drop one. Yeah, right again! There had to be a way to integrate the wooden tokens into the game without aggravating the privacy concern, as the tokens are really cool. Here's what I came up with.

The resource cards have to stay in the game as they make it easy to hide them from other players. What if one could additionally collect resource tokens? To make this work, the tokens would have to be more desirable than the corresponding cards, but also harder to obtain. The desireability factor was easy. Because the tokens are hard to keep private, why not just exempt them from the clutches of the robber (or the monopoly card). In other words, once you earn a token, it is yours forever until you spend or trade it. No player can grab it and it doesn't factor into the "greater than 7 cards" rule. That certainly makes it more valuable than the corresponding resource card.

To obtain a "rare" resource token, I thought of three methods. Firstly, a person moving the robber has the option of drawing a random card from a player (as normal), or taking a resource token matching the terrain hex. This idea adds more meat to the decision as to where to place the robber. Secondly, a city with added city walls would give the player the option of choosing one matching token in place of a card when an adjacent hex produces (the second resource or commodity must be a card). The city wall would no longer increase the 7 card rule as the player can now carry part of his resource inventory as protected tokens. This also adds a nuance to the choice of where to place the city wall. Thirdly, a citadel would give the player the option of taking one of the resources as a matching token rather than a card (the other two resources / commodities must be taken as cards). These three cases together should provide the right mix of cards and tokens.

One final rule would be that the resource tokens otherwise act as regular resource cards and can be used by themselves or in combination with cards to buy or trade during the game. Also, if a player is hit by the "greater than 7 cards rule", he can make his payment to the bank substituting matching tokens instead of some or all of the cards if he wishes.

The effects of the new token rules would be to make the robber more "user friendly", and reduce the devastation caused by rolling a 7 or playing a monopoly card. Notice that in the previous description of the rules I use the word "option" a lot. There may be times (like near the end of the game), when the player would rather have all his resources in cards for the ultimate privacy. So, whenever a player qualifies to earn a token, he may always take a matching card instead.

As a final thought, I considered two ways of handling the supply of unowned tokens. My first thought was to place the tokens directly on the board at the beginning of the game, 3 or 4 on each corresponding hex. This was visually appealing as each hex would be decorated with tokens. Players would draw their earned tokens from the corresponding hex. The impact would be that each hex would have a finite supply of tokens and city / robber placement would be critical. Once the tokens were gone from a hex, only cards could be obtained. However, this seemed too drastic, and tokens would become very scarce by the end of the game. I thought of various replenishment schemes such as adding one token to each hex whenever a 7 was rolled, or when the barbarians attacked, but it was just too complicated. Also there was the problem of having two citadels or walled cities on a hex with a single token left - who would get it? In the end I opted for having the entire supply located in the bank (just like the resource cards). Not as visually appealing, but much easier to implement.

Note: In the rules below, "card" refers to the original resource cards supplied with the game, and "token" refers to the new wooden pieces.

• The resource tokens (sheep, brick, ore, grain and wood) are used for buying and trading exactly like resource cards. Buys or trades may use any mix of cards and tokens.
• When a player places the robber on a resource terrain hex, he may draw a card (not a token) from another player as per the regular rules, or he may instead take from the bank a resource token that matches the terrain hex.
• If a player upgrades a city with a city wall, that city now has the ability to generate resource tokens. Later when an adjacent terrain hex produces resources, the owner of the city may optionally take one matching resource token instead of a resource card as part of his earnings. The second resource or commodity must be taken as a card. Note: The city wall no longer adds additional protection (+2 cards) for the handcount. Instead, it allows the player to collect exempt tokens.
• A citadel has the ability to generate resource tokens. When an adjacent terrain hex produces resources, the owner of the citadel may optionally take one matching resource token instead of a resource card as part of his earnings. The other two resources or commodities must be taken as cards. In the special case where a citadel also has a city wall, then up to two resources may be taken as tokens.
• When the resource production is calculated, if the requested number of a given flavour of token exceeds the balance in the bank, then none are distributed and all players must take cards instead. Of course, if the players really want tokens and can come to an agreement, they may elect to reduce the total demand for tokens by taking some cards instead, thereby allowing the bank to satisfy the remaining demand.
• The "greater than 7 cards" penalty applies only to resource / commodity cards. Tokens are not included in the card count.
• When returning resources to the bank to satisfy the "greater than 7 cards" penalty, the player can optionally discard a token that matches a card rather than discarding the card itself. In other words, the debt can be paid off with a mix of cards and tokens, as long as the tokens match individual cards that could have been discarded.
• Regular 4 for 1, 3 for 1 or 2 for 1 trades with the bank yield only resource cards not tokens. However, tokens can be used in combination with cards as the items to be traded.
• The Aqueduct city improvement yields only resource cards not tokens.
• When playing the Commercial Harbour card, the player may offer resource cards or tokens.
• The Resource Monopoly card only impacts resource cards, not tokens
• The Mining and Irrigation cards earn resource cards, not tokens
• The Wedding card only impacts resource / commodity cards, not tokens.
• The Master Merchant card only impacts resource / commodity cards, not tokens.
• The Saboteur card (4th edition rules) card only impacts resource / commodity cards, not tokens.
• The Bishop card can only be used to draw resource / commodity cards, never tokens.
• In Fishermen of Catan, a player can trade fish for resource cards but not for tokens. A player spending fish to draw from another player may only draw from cards, not tokens.