The Maine Gamer

A factories and wealth expansion for Settlers of Catan (revised)
By Mark Leaman

The Industrialist victory point card may be used with basic Settlers of Catan or with either (or both) the Harbormaster card expansion and the Rivers of Catan expansion found in Catan: Traders & Barbarians.

You may use the gold coins and Glassworks markers (as factory markers) that come with Catan: Traders & Barbarians. If you don’t have access to the Catan: Traders & Barbarians expansion you will need to use something as gold coins (such as pennies) and something with which to mark factories (such as a glass token/counter).

The Industrialist card works best combined with the Rivers of Catan expansion (which adds rivers and bridges to the map, providing an additional means to produce gold) and the Harbormaster card (both found in Catan: Traders & Barbarians). If you use the Industrialist with the Rivers of Catan expansion do not use the Richest Player and Poorest Player victory point cards (as the Industrialist card takes the place of the richest player card).

Setup:
In addition to the standard Catan setup with or without the Harbormaster card and Rivers of Catan expansions from Catan: Traders & Barbarians…

• Each player receives 3 factory markers. (No player may build more than three factories total.)
  
  
• If you are playing without the Rivers of Catan expansion each player starts the game with 2 gold pieces.

Factories:
Factories may be added to an existing settlement or city for 2 Brick, 2 Wood and 2 Gold. Only one factory may be attached to a settlement or city. You receive a gold coin every time you score a resource(s) from a hex (not blocked by the robber) adjacent to a settlement or city with a factory.

You may trade two gold for a resource from the bank (as per the Rivers of Catan expansion rules). You may not do this more than twice during your trading phase. Gold resources may not be stolen by the robber (as per Rivers of Catan expansion rules). You may use harbor ports or trade four resource cards (of the same kind) to the bank for a gold piece during your trading phase.

FACTORY BUILDING COST: 2 Brick, 2 Wood, 2 Gold

The Industrialist card:
As with the Longest Road and Largest Army cards the first player to meet the Industrialist card’s requirements takes the card. Another player can take the Industrialist card away from a player by having a 3 factories and more gold than the player currently holding the card.

Basic strategy:
As with any resource generator it’s best to build a factory early in the game. The sooner you build a factory the sooner it can begin generating revenue for you.

The Industrialist by Mark Leaman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.