The Cities and the Knights

Ooooooookay, you want to know about the Cities and Knights expansions?  Here you go:

So many things, where to start?  Ah, yes, for the set-up phase, when you're first setting up, when you build your second settlement, you put down a city instead.  Therefore, you start with 3 victory points instead of the usual 2!

Instead of a building cost card to tell you what resources you need to do things, you have a new development flip chart.  Now what is a development flip chart, you may ask?  You can flip it with commodities (more on that later).  On your turn, there's a third die to roll.  If the barbarian ship is rolled, move the barbarian ship on the barbarian tile one space forward.  When they reach catan (every seven barbarian rolls), good or bad things happen, depending on the knights.  More on that later, too.

If it comes up yellow, green, or blue, you look at the corresponding flippity-flippity thing on your development flip chart, and compare the red die numbers shown there with the one on the red die.  If they match, you draw a progress card of the same color as the one on the third die!  (Progress cards replace development cards in this game.  No development cards.  (Sorry!)  All of this is done before you receive resources.

Now, receiving resources.  For a settlement, it's done the same way as in regular Settlers.  However, it's done differently for cities.  Well, it's done the same for fields (grain) and hills (brick).  For the other three, forest (lumber), pasture (wool), and mountains (ore), you get one resource produced by that hex and one commodity: paper, cloth, and coin, respectively.  You use them to flip the development flip chart.  Yes, I'm about to get to those, so hang on.  If you're playing Seafarers in addition to Cities and Knights, you cannot receive commodity cards for gold field hexes.

There are new things you can build.  You can build a city wall for two brick, putting one of the squares underneath one of your cities and increasing lethal capacity by 2 cards.  (Lethal capacity is the maximum number of cards you can have for a 7 without having to discard any.  Yes, I made up the term.)  They help protect you against the barbarians, which I'll get to later.  Postponing a bunch of things.

You can also build knights, which have actions that I'll get to.  I'm doing this in the same order as the rulebook, by the way, so that's why I'm getting to things later.  You put them in places just like settlements, though they don't have to not be adjacent to anything.  You can have two knights right next to each other, or a knight and a settlement.  Building or promoting a knight takes a wool and an ore.  If you promote a knight, you replace it with the kind of knight with one more ring around it.  The two-ring one can't be promoted to a three-ring one unless you've flipped enough coin (YES, I'M ABOUT TO GET TO THAT, JUST HANG ON!), and knights with three rings cannot be promoted.  You wonder why knights get promoted?  You'll have to wait to hear about their actions and the barbarian army.  Activating them so they can do things costs a grain.  Flip them to the colored side.

Okay, the flippity-flipping.  They look just like resources from the back, and all rules applying to resources also apply to commodities.  For instance, the robber can steal them (though the stealer still must blind-draw, they cannot ask specifically for a resource or a commodity), and you can trade them and for them exactly like resources.  However, if something, such as a progress card, says "resource", then it means resource, not commodity, and if it says "commodity", it means commodity, not resource.

So flipping.  In each color of your development flip chart, there are some commodities that you can build something with.  You pay the commodities, and then flip that section of the flip chart down.  Now you have revealed another section, which lets you get progress cards for more rolls and requires one more commodity to flip.  Once you've gotten to the part where you pay three commodities, you get a special ability.  For coin, you can upgrade knights with two rings to knights with three rings.  For cloth, you can trade any two commodities for any one resource or commodity.  It basically gives you all three commodity harbors (not that there are any commodity harbors).  And for paper (This one I highly recommend focusing on unless you collect resources for almost every roll already), if, when the dice are rolled, a 7 wasn't rolled, and you normally wouldn't collect resources or commodities for the roll, you may take any one RESOURCE of your choice!  Great!

Ah, the metropoli!  The next time you flip, assuming no one has gotten it yet, you get a metropolis of the color you just flipped.  There's one metropolis of each color, so don't panic if someone has already gotten a metropolis of a different color.  Well, all of the metropoli are yellow, but they each have a corresponding colored token that's colored the color of the metropolis.  You put the metropolis on one of your cities, and the colored token goes on your development flip chart.  The metropolis is immune to the barbarian army, and is worth 2 extra victory points, in addition to the 2 provided by its city.  However, if someone gets the last flip on their development flip chart before you do, they get your metropolis.  Yes, the barbarians can destroy cities.  YES, I'm getting to that!  Just wait until I've talked about what knights can do!

So, progress cards.  Unlike development cards, you can play any number of them on your turn, and on the turn you get them.  With the exception of the green alchemist card, they are played on your turn after you roll the die.  You might want to consider playing your cards if anyone has blue cards, as the blue spy card lets you look at an opponent's hand of progress cards and steal two.  You CANNOT trade progress cards or steal them with the robber.  If you draw a fifth progress card after you have four, you discard one.  If you draw a victory point card, you must play it immediately.  Some game-changing progress card include the green alchemist, which lets you decide what the dice will roll on your turn, the green inventor, which lets you swap any two number tokens on the board besides 6, 8, 2, and 12, the blue deserter, which lets you steal an opponent's knight, the blue saboteur, which forces everyone tied with you or ahead to discard half their cards, the blur spy, which lets you steal an opponent's progress card, and the yellow master merchant, which lets you steal any two resource or commodity cards from any player with more victory points than you.

So what can knights do?  You can deactivate them to perform one of three actions, though you cannot do this the turn you activate them.  You can move it to another spot along the road it's on (or trade route, in Seafarers).  If you have a road to an opponent's knight of inferior (lower, not the same) power to yours, you can force it to move to a spot along your opponent's road (or trade route) adjacent to the one it's on, and move your knight to where it used to be.  Finally, you can chase away the robber (or pirate, if you're playing Seafarers) to another hex of your choice and steal like normal.

There is one other thing that knights can do.  They can defend Catan from the barbarian army.  When the barbarians reach catan, count the number of cities on board.  (A city with a metropolis still counts as one.)  That number is the strength of the barbarians.  Now add up the rings of the knights on board.  That is, a one-ring adds one to the total, a two-ring adds two, and so on.  This number is the defenders' strength.  If the barbarians are stronger, whoever contributed the least to the defenders' strength loses a city or city wall, or whoever tied for contributing the least.  If the defenders are stronger or equally strong, whoever contributed the most gets a Defender of Catan victory point card.  If more than one person ties, everyone who ties draws a progress card.  Either way, the barbarians go back and all knights are deactivated.  If the barbarians pillage your last city, you cannot flip your development flip chart until you have a city.

Ah, yes, the merchant.  One of the yellow progress cards lets you move the merchant.  He basically gives you the 2:1 port of your choice, as long as you can get that resource and no one steals it with another merchant card.  He's also worth a victory point.

This game is played to thirteen victory points.

Whew, that was a lot.  A LOT!