My friends and I had played Settlers of Catan about 4 times before I bought this expansion. It is really fun and doesn't change the game that much. The ways it does change it are all good in my opinion. There is a new tile added called a gold title. Whenever the gold tile yields a resource you get to pick your choice. They also added boats. Boats work like roads but have to boarder a sea tile on at least one side. They count towards the longest road card as well. Another change that would work in the original game as well is the idea of exploring tiles before you know what they are. So these tiles are left face down and when one of your roads or boats touches a corner of the tile it is flipped and you yield whatever resource it is. The only draw back is that it takes a really long time to set up and the board does not hold together as well as the original game, which is why I gave it only 4 instead of 5 stars.

If you have bought the original within the last year don't worry about compatibility. (IE: the bad reviews)

The frame to make the older and newer versions compatible is available from Mayfair Games on their site for about $10. If you buy the 4th edition of Settlers and Seafarers together, you have nothing to worry about. And I strongly recommend it. Seafarers adds some nice new wrinkles to Settlers while preserving the spirit of the original game. You, your neighbors, and your kids will get hooked! But remember, you have to start with Settlers!

I found this expansion to be a great addition to the Settlers series. It adds much game play value to the original base game (Settlers of Catan) and it allows for even more creativity in creation of your own game maps.

Durability-wise, this expansion is the same as the other settlers games--the board pieces are on nice quality cardboard and the pieces are made of painted wood. The box this expansion comes in is of very high quality as well.

Again, this game has lots of little pieces so be aware of that (though they do all come with storage baggies, and everything fits nicely and securely in the box.

Make sure that you have the 4th edition of the original expansion set, as this one is incompatible with the 3rd edition. If you have the 3rd edition you need to purchase the 3rd edition of Seafarers as well.

We purchased this from Amazon for our son who loves the Catan series. We were very disappointed to discover that this version does not work with the Catan that we purchased 18 months ago. We contacted the manufacturer several times via email and asked them to remedy the problem, but were told that we had to purchase another product that was not yet available. Thank you Amazon -- they made good on the return since it did not work.

I was very excited to get this expansion since I am a fan of Catan as well as the Cities and Knights expansion.

I was hugely confused when I opened this box, not realizing that I had a new edition, and that they drastically redesigned the cardboard tiles. The red brick pieces now look like little hills, and the desert pieces look tan, rather than the darker shades of it's predecessor. The ocean pieces look light blue rather than the dark blue they used to be. This is all very nice for a redesign, but you will need to combine the pieces from the original catan game with these pieces, and if you have the old game, the combination of different looking pieces can get absolutely confusing. I think they still sell the old version of seafarerers.

Also, they indicate that the edge pieces should be combined with the edge pieces from the original catan game. I don't remember ever getting edge pieces with the original. Maybe they include edge pieces with the new edition catan game? From my memory, the edge pieces I got came from the cities and knights expansion. Any way, these new light blue edge pieces did not seem to connect in any way I could figure out with my old cities and knights edge pieces, so I had to go without. All in all, extremely upsetting.

So far, I have played one of the scenarios. A scenario is a set up of islands. There are lots of scenarios with different layouts for different sized islands. They all look very cool. There is even one scenario which allows you to build major monuments like a "great wall", etc.

It's important to note that certain scenarios are larger than others and require certain expansion packs to have enough tile pieces to create the scenario.

This addition can be played with the cities and knights expansion, but only with certain scenarios. The scenarios which work are the ones with the big islands surrounded by smaller ones. The instructions indicate that it is too hard to defeat the barbarian attacks with certain scenarios.

I played my first game without including cities and knights in order to keep it simple for the first time. It was a remarkably simple addition to the game. I played with the 4 small island scenario, and the game seemed to move along faster than normal. We were done in only a few hours, compared to the unbelievably long games I am used to. It's basically the catan game with some sea trading routes (symbolized by little ships) added on to it. You get bonus points for creating settlements on islands you have not yet populated. For the first new settlement on a new island you get one additional victory point (a marker is put under the settlement to indicate this added point). Each additional settlement put on an island you have not populated yet is 2 pts added to your settlement (3pts total, 4 pts if it turns into a city).

A barbarian ship is also added to the game. If a 7 is rolled, the player has the choice of moving the robber, or the barbarian ship. The barbarian ship prevents people from moving or continuing to build their trading routes, and the person who moved the ship to that tile is allowed to take one card from a player (similar to how it works with a robber), from anyone who has a trading route touching the tile.

There is a new tile piece which is a gold tile piece. If your settlement is adjacent to this tile, you are allowed to take your choice of any of the resource cards. This tile is not used in all of the scenarios, only certain ones.

All in all, I liked the seafarers expansion and would have given it a high mark except for the fact that I felt so upset that the redesign messed up the whole layout.