How to play Catan: Explorers & Pirates

Catan: Explorers & Pirates is an expansion by Klaus Teuber that requires the Catan base game to play. You begin on a modest home island and sail into an uncharted sea of face-down hexes — flipping them as your ships push further out, founding settlements on new coasts, gathering fish and spices, and dealing with pirates along the way. The expansion plays as a series of five scenarios, each adding one new system, with mission goals layered on top of the standard point total.

The core difference from base Catan is not just the map — it is a dedicated ship movement phase at the end of every turn, after trading and building. Your ships carry settlers, crews, fish hauls, and spice sacks across the sea, turning each turn into a cargo-routing puzzle. Choosing where to sail, which hexes to reveal, and which missions to chase before an opponent completes them is the heart of the game.

Comfortable with base Catan but wary of the big box? The chassis is unchanged — roll for production, trade, build — with three honest additions. Nothing teleports: settlers, crews, and goods ride in ship holds and sail edge by edge. Gold is a real currency: a consolation coin whenever a roll pays you nothing, and 2 gold buys any resource. And the robber is gone — a roll of 7 instead puts the roller's own pirate ship on the sea, stealing from ships and charging tribute. There are no development cards and no cities; the new points come from the sea.

What's in the box, and what each piece does at the table. This is an expansion: you also need the Catan base game — its terrain hexes, number tokens, roads, settlements, resource cards, dice, and frame (cities and development cards stay in the box):

• 16 harbor settlements (4 per player) — the expansion's key upgrade: for 2 grain + 2 ore, replace one of your coastal settlements. Worth 2 VP, it produces 1 resource (not 2 like a city), and its basin is your dock — ships are built beside it, and settlers, crews, and cargo are loaded there.
• 12 ships (3 per player) — built for 1 lumber + 1 wool next to a harbor settlement. Each has 4 movement points per turn (pay 1 wool for 2 more, once per ship) and a hold carrying 1 large piece (settler, fish haul) or 2 small pieces (crews, spice sacks). Their bows do the discovering.
• 8 settlers (2 per player) — cost the same as a settlement. Sail one to a distant coast and land it: ship and settler both return to your supply and a new settlement appears — the only way to found your first settlement in each unexplored area.
• 36 crews (9 per player) — 1 ore + 1 wool each. Ferried specialists: land 3 (any mix of colors) on a pirate lair to capture it, or 1 on a spice village to befriend it for a permanent advantage.
• 4 pirate ships (1 per player) — the robber's replacement. When you roll a 7, your pirate ship takes the sea (only one is ever on the board): it steals a resource card from a player with a ship on its hex, and rivals pay 1 gold tribute per ship to sail its waters.
• 12 mission markers (3 per player) — walk up the mission cards' tracks as you capture lairs and deliver fish and spice; the spaces show the mission VPs you have banked.
• 6 fish hauls & 24 spice sacks — the cargo itself. Fish hauls appear on discovered shoals and fill a whole hold; spice sacks are small. Delivering either to the Council of Catan's docks advances your mission marker.
• 88 gold coins (48 of value 1, 40 of value 3) — the new currency: 1 gold whenever a production roll gives you nothing, 2 gold for any resource (twice per turn), plus discovery rewards, tribute, and pirate-lair loot.
• 30 unexplored hexes + 12 number tokens — the sea you flip: 12 standard terrain and sea hexes (green-moon and orange-sun backs keep the two unexplored areas separate, with 6 number tokens each), plus 6 pirate lair/gold field, 6 fish shoal, and 6 spice hexes that enter play scenario by scenario.
• 6 pirate lair tokens — sit on discovered gold fields and block all building there. When 3 crews capture one, the captors take 2 gold each, and the flipped token's number becomes the gold field's production number — 2 gold per adjacent settlement whenever it is rolled.
• 16 frame and sea-hex pieces — snap onto the base game's frame to roughly triple the board, dividing it into home waters and two unexplored areas.
• 3 mission cards + 3 VP cards — one pair per mission (Pirate Lairs, Fish for Catan, Spices for Catan). The mission card tracks everyone's progress; whoever is farthest along holds the mission's VP card, worth 1 VP.
• 4 building costs cards & 10 sorting tiles — per-player reference for the new prices, and bag labels that make the many-scenario setup fast.

The turn keeps Catan's rhythm and adds a sailing phase at the end: produce, trade & build, then move ships.

1. Roll for production. Roll both dice; every player collects from adjacent settlements as usual — harbor settlements produce 1 resource, not 2, and there are no cities in this expansion. If a roll produces nothing for you, take 1 gold instead. On a 7 there is no robber: everyone holding more than 7 cards discards half, and the roller places or moves their own pirate ship onto any sea hex that neither borders the starting island nor sits on the outer frame (only one pirate ship is ever on the board), stealing 1 random resource card from an opponent with a ship on that hex.
2. Trade & build. There are no 4:1 or 2:1 harbors here — everyone trades 3:1 with the supply, may buy any resource for 2 gold up to twice per turn, and can sell 3 identical resources for 1 gold. Build roads and settlements as usual (settlements can also arrive by settler ship), plus the new pieces: ships (1 lumber + 1 wool), crews (1 ore + 1 wool), settlers (settlement cost), and harbor settlements (2 grain + 2 ore, upgrading a coastal settlement). There are no development cards.
3. Move your ships. Each ship has 4 movement points, spending 1 per sea-route edge, in any direction; once per ship per turn you may pay 1 wool for 2 extra points. Loading and unloading at your harbor settlements costs nothing. If a moving ship ends with its bow or stern pointing at the corner of a face-down hex, you must discover it: flip it — a terrain hex gets a number token and pays you 1 matching resource, and any other hex (lair, shoal, spice, sea) pays 2 gold — and that ship's movement ends. Sailing onto, along, or off a hex occupied by an enemy pirate ship costs 1 gold tribute per ship; alternatively, any of your ships that has not moved this turn and touches an intersection of the pirate's hex may roll a die — a 6 chases it away. Your turn ends after movement: no trading or building afterwards, except founding a settlement with a settler ship.

The missions run through this phase: land 3 crews on a pirate lair to capture it (2 gold each plus mission progress, and the gold field beneath opens for building), deliver fish hauls and spice sacks to the Council of Catan's docks for mission progress, and place 1 crew on a spice village for a permanent advantage — faster ships, better pirate-chasing rolls, or selling resources for gold.

A stretch of play. Ana rolls an 8: her harbor settlement beside an 8-numbered fields hex pays 1 grain, while Diego collects nothing and takes his 1 gold consolation. Ana then pays 2 gold for an ore, builds a crew with 1 ore + 1 wool, and loads it into the ship docked at her harbor settlement. In her movement phase, that ship spends 3 of its 4 points sailing east until its bow forces a discovery — a spice hex! She banks 2 gold and the ship halts; next turn the crew can walk into the village. Later, Beto rolls a 7 and parks his pirate ship on the sea hex where Carla's loaded ship sits, stealing a random card from her hand — on her turn, Carla must either pay 1 gold tribute to sail out, or leave a second, unmoved ship adjacent and gamble on rolling a 6 to chase him off.

You win by reaching the active scenario's victory point target on your turn: 8 VP in Land Ho!, 12 in Pirate Lairs, 15 in Fish for Catan and Spices for Catan, and 17 in the full Explorers & Pirates. Because the win is checked on your own turn, there are no ties — first past the post takes it.

The VP sources are fewer and cleaner than base Catan — no Longest Road, no Largest Army, no development cards. They are: settlements (1 VP each), harbor settlements (2 VP each), mission progress (each space your marker advances on a mission card shows the VPs it banks), and each mission's VP card (1 VP), held by whoever currently leads that track — so a rival can take it back from you.

Strategically, read the active missions before choosing where to sail — the player who identifies the highest-value deliveries early and plans efficient cargo routes around them almost always finishes ahead. Remember that a hold carries only 1 large piece or 2 small ones, so deciding what each ship ferries matters more than raw speed — and a harbor settlement placed where sea lanes cross does triple duty as dock, warehouse, and 2 VP.