I am usually sceptical about new versions of classic board games – but I had to admit that Catan New Energies is a great version of the game. It has the basic game mechanics of gathering resources to build roads, cities and towns to get points to win the game. But there are enough added features to make it interesting and different.
Each player has their own box which contains their Towns (settlements), Cities and Roads, event discs, fossil power plants and renewable power plants. This does help speed up set up.
The game plays very much like the original with collecting resources to build more Towns & Cities. Even though some of the resources are called different things in this version – wood, brick, natural fibre (was sheep), food (was wheat) & steel (was ore), the colours and images are almost identical – so we just call them their old names. The extra resource of science does add a nice addition, and it allows you to buy the different power plants. (Science cards are collected when you collect resources from a city. So instead of getting 2 resources for the city, you get 1 and a science card.)
Unlike original Catan – you always start by pulling out a hazard token – once you have 3 of the same type you must instantly complete the consequence of that hazard. They are just a small hinderance or bonus (depending on your local footprint). The amount of hazard tokens pulled is determined by the global footprint: Every time you build a city or town or fossil plant – the global (and your local) footprint goes down. But each time you build a renewable plant – they both go up. The one thing we forgot on our first game was key – if there are no more tokens to pull from the bag – the game ends there and then. And points don’t matter – the winner is the person with the best local footprint. So, buying lots of fossil plants may be cheap – but they could cost you the game!
But – you do want to build plants though as they produce lighting/energy which do a few things. They are similar to the fishes in the Traders and Barbarians expansion – get enough and they are any resource you like or remove a hazard from one of your towns or cities. They can also increase the number of cards you can have in your hand before the robber takes them. This is a very handy bonus for when you just can’t get the cards you need.
All in all, I do think Catan New Energies is a good stand-alone version of Catan. It has all the basic elements to make it a Catan game, but enough added to make it while buying another version of the game. You can order this at: https://www.bgextras.co.uk/catan/other-catan-games/catan-new-energies