CATAN – Legend of the Conquerors – Developer Blog Series – Part 1

Dear Cities & Knights fans,

More than 20 years ago – in autumn of 1998 – the CATAN – Cities & Knights expansion was released in Germany. Since then, Cities & Knights has become very popular among advanced Catan players, and has been continuously available in retail stores and online. We considered it appropriate to acknowledge this great success and celebrate it with you by means of an anniversary game – a scenario for Cities & Knights.

The German version of the anniversary game – entitled CATAN – Die Legende der Eroberer – was released in July 2019, almost a year after the actual C&K anniversary, owing to its long development time and quite sizable content.

CATAN – Legend of the Conquerors, the English version of the game, is expected to be published in June of 2020.

About four years ago, my son Benjamin and I started developing this game. Strictly speaking, it’s three games, or rather, three successive scenarios that we have woven into an accompanying story.

The story of Cities & Knights is set in the first 100 years after Catan was discovered by seafarers of the Old World (according to the Old World’s calendar, this occurred around 1420 CE). Trade and sharing of knowledge with the countries of the Old World allowed Catan to flourish. Soon the island had aqueducts, trading companies, and its first university.

However, Catan’s wealth also attracted barbarians who ransacked the regions and cities of Catan. Thanks to their knights, the Catanians were able to repel the barbarians.

The story of Cities & Knights is followed by the story of CATAN – Legend of the Conquerors. A powerful Old World country threatens Catan’s freedom and independence. A large army of that country conquers the north of Catan. The Catanians have little chance of successfully opposing the conquerors. Catan’s destruction seems inevitable, but then another country of the Old World comes to the rescue.

In three chapters (or scenarios) the players adopt the role of commanders of the Catanian troops who jointly try to stop the conquest of the entire island and drive the conquerors away from Catan.

In the next blog post, we will introduce the first part of the story of Chapter One.