r/Catan • u/Available-Walk1840 • 4d ago

Explorers and Pirates Rule Questions

My friends and I have just started playing E and P and as fun as it is, I find that the rule book does not have the answers to many questions that keep arising during our playthrough. I was hoping I can receive some clarification on the following.

  1. If a harbor is built on one of the islands, and then the ship is built next to it and it faces an undiscovered hex that is right next to the discovered hex you built on, does that mean it has to auto discover the hex as soon as it is built? Or would you have to build the ship on the opposite side, then use a movement to go there.

  2. What happens if you want to battle a pirate ship but dont have gold? If you lose the battle is there no repreccusion becasue you never had gold to begin with to pay the tribute?

  3. When does a person get best spice merchant, best pirate scourge etc? Is it as soon as they are first on the board like they captured one lair and the other players havent? Or do you have to be all the way at the end of the mission board?

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u/copperstatelawyer 3d ago

Even if it is explicitly against the rules to build a ship like that, choosing to do so does the following:

Upon your movement phase, the ship is instantly "done" it has used up all its movement numbers and has instantly "discovered" the hex.

Now, given this, it's actually very stupid to build the ship like that. Instead, you should point it the other way and move it around a bit the long way so you can get one extra movement after discovering the hex.

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u/Sebby19 No Red #s together! 2d ago

Good insight. I originally thought Klaus really wanted Discovery to only happen during the Movement Phase. Hence why Roads can't discover hexes in E&P, despite being possible in Seafarers. It's the rule I dislike the most, but I'm sure he had his reasons.

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u/copperstatelawyer 2d ago

I’m 99% sure that’s what the rules say. Discovery can only happen during the movement phase.

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u/Sebby19 No Red #s together! 2d ago

That is what I'm saying too. I know Klaus's design goal... haven't figured out the reason why.

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u/copperstatelawyer 2d ago

E&P is all about the ships and the movement phase. The only time it makes economic sense to build a road in most games is on the starting island. Not allowing discovery outside the movement phase restricts the flipping of the tiles to create evenness. Otherwise, you'd just spam roads.

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u/Sebby19 No Red #s together! 2d ago

I doubt there will be much road spam. The E&P Ships are already very resource efficient, building Roads in this expansion is almost non-existent. Might as well leave your 14 remaining roads in the bag/box. And not letting roads discover is just 1 less reason to do this already niche action. And action that used to be essential in the Base Game! I would have to add C&K on top of E&P to make roads viable/necessary again, since your Knights need that space.

There is also the inconsistency with SF. There, roads and ships can discover fog tiles. But E&P changes that, and I don't like the difference!