How To Play Catan Seafarers Cloth for Catan

Cloth for Catan is the sixth scenario in the Catan Seafarers expansion. And after encountering four small islands inhabited by members of the Forgotten Tribe—a tribe that produces magnificent cloth garments—Catanians make it their mission to establish trading routes.

Table of Contents

Components Needed for Cloth for Catan

Cloth for Catan requires the following components:

Terrain Hexes

Sea x 18
Desert x 2
Gold field x 2
Fields x 5
Hills x 3
Mountains x 4
Pasture x 4
Forest x 4

Number Tokens

2s x 2
3s x 3
4s x 3
5s x 3
6s x 3
8s x 3
9s x 3
10s x 3
11s x 3
12s x 3

Additionally, you’ll need 50 Catan chits and nine harbor tokens (5 special 2:1 (one for each resource) and 4 generic 3:1.)

Setting Up Cloth for Catan

After setting up the game map as shown in the diagram below, place the harbor tokens from your stack that you have shuffled reverse sides up. Refer to the diagram for the correct placement of the harbour tokens.

On each of the four islands, place a number token (again, refer to diagram) on the right and left intersection. These number tokens represent a village.

Next to each of the 8 villages, place 5 Catan chits. You will need to place the remaining 10 Catan chits beside the board. These leftover chits will act as a general supply.

In the Cloth for Catan scenario, each Catan chit represents a bolt of cloth.

Rules and Objectives

Settlements

As described in Basic Catan, you can build your first two settlements in Cloth for Catan with roads or ships on the two main islands.

Once the last player builds their second settlement, all other players can begin to build their third settlement. By building your third settlement, you’ll then be able to receive your starting resources.

During Cloth for Catan, you aren’t able to build settlements on any of the four Forgotten Tribe islands. These little islands are strictly reserved for the Forgotten Tribe and their villages.

Trading Cloth

Once you’ve established a shipping route between your settlements and the Forgotten tribe, you can then build trade relations with the village. These trade relations will allow you to collect bolts of cloth that you can then combine to make victory points.

Upon establishing trade relations, you can:

Immediately take a bolt of cloth from the supply of the village. Every time the number of the village is rolled, you will receive another bolt of cloth.
If more than one player is connected to a village, and the number of the village is rolled, then each of those players receives a bolt of cloth from the village’s supply.
In times when there aren’t enough Catan chits left in the village’s supply to give a chit to all players connected to that village, take a chit from the general supply you created at the side of the board.
If the number of a village is rolled, but there are 0 chits left in the supply, no one connected to the village receives a chit.
In order to create one victory point, you will need two bolts of cloth.

Moving Your Ships

If you’ve connected your settlement to a Forgotten Tribe’s village, then that route is closed. You won’t be able to move any ship that is part of that shipping route.

Pirates and Robbers

In Cloth for Catan, you can play the following scenario with the robber and the pirate:

The robber begins on the fields hex with a 12 number token. The robber cannot move over to the Forgotten Tribe’s islands.
The pirate begins on the sea hex that is marked with a pirate ship. The pirate cannot move until there is at least one shipping route between your settlement and a Forgotten Tribe village.
Once there is a shipping route, you can move the pirate by drawing a resource card. Alternatively, you can take a bolt of cloth from players who have a ship adjacent to the pirate hex.

Longest Trade Route

There aren’t any victory points available for the longest trade route.

How to Win the Game

You can win Cloth for Catan in one of two ways. Firstly, if you reach 14 victory points. And secondly, if three or fewer of the Forgotten Tribe villages each contain one Catan chit. The winner will be the player with the most victory points at that time.

In the case of a tie, then the player with the most bolts of cloth wins the game.