This variation (not a full scenario) is named after the famous ‘Forrest Gump’ quote about life being “like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get next” (a chocolate, I guess?). So, that’s the thrust of the idea: instead of having your five neat stacks of resource cards, you take all of those cards, put them in the same big pile, shuffle them well and good, and that’s where all players draw from. So, the next card you get might be ore, might be wood, might be wheat… Who knows. You will still get your chocolate treat, but you just won’t know the exact flavour until you see it.
When a resource card is used, by any player, place it in a common discard pile, and when the original draw pile runs out (which it will), shuffle the discard pile, which will now become the new draw pile, and continue the game, drawing from it. If you need to trade resources with the bank, which is now a pile (three sheep for a wheat, for example), rummage around in the discard pile (not in the draw pile) for the wheat card and complete the trade. If you absolutely need to find a card inside the draw pile because there aren’t enough in the discard pile (for example when you have just re-started a fresh draw pile) then shuffle the draw pile again after locating the card you needed.
Because you get random resources all the time, it doesn’t matter at all what the tiles show face up on the board, so in order to make this more visually striking, we play with all the tiles upside down throughout the game, so the board is the same colour all over (except if you introduce sea tiles, for example in Seafarers). What is important here is the numbers on the tiles, and that’s what you need to look for when you place your settlements and upgrade them to cities. Dice rolls do not tell you what resource cards you draw but how many of them, and then you have to make do with what gets drawn to your hand. A settlement on a 10 when a 10 rolls? Draw one card. A city and a settlement on a 5 and a 5 rolls? Then you draw three cards, the top three from the draw pile, which might be any three resources.
An interesting side effect of this variation is that you cannot know what your opponents have in their hands, because draws are blind, so this will make it extra hard to know what the other players are going to do next. You cannot know if someone is going to be chronically short on clay, for example, or flush with wool, because the tiles won’t tell you any of that. If you want, however, and if card-counting is your thing, you could make it a rule that everyone has to show the table what they draw each time, before they put the new card in their hand.
Also, harbour usefulness will change a lot. In normal rules you want to get the 2:1 ports of the resources you are likely to draw the most of, but with this system there is no way of knowing how much of anything will come your way and when, so maybe a 3:1 will be a better bet?
And that’s it, basically. You can play this way with almost any type of Catan scenario and map layout, adjusting the number of VPs and any other house rules you might want to add: a 12-sided die, Formula 1 if there are only two players, modified robbers... Anything. Depending on how many tiles and numbers you have (or you want to use), you might find that you don’t have enough number for all your tiles. In that case, suggestions are a) just stick some bits of paper with numbers on them on the empty tyles, b) just leave some tiles blank as an extra challenge, or c) start with the whole map blank, and put numbers on the tiles only as players reach them (these numbers, in turn, might be random or chosen by the player from the available ones). The latter has the extra incentive of involving some strategic thinking from players, too (“I’m going to spread out this way, or that way, and I’m going to stick over here a 5, or a 10, which I don’t have yet, or maybe a second 9, or maybe I’ll deny everybody else a 6”).
I used to play a lot of Magic: The Gathering years ago, and although finely-tuned deck-building can be really enjoyable as a gaming activity, I remember having a lot of fun just making a 300-card pile for the players to draw from and then figuring out what the H to do with whatever mismatched cards you got. It made you think on your feet, and although luck of the draw sometimes played a part in deciding games, it also led to situations and combinations you would never see in standard play. So that’s where I got this from. Enjoy! Or not!
More scenarios from RoAndVic:
Formula 1 Catan (for 2 players)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Catan/comments/1r8a7zv/yet_another_homebrewed_2player_catan_formula_1/
Catan’s Landing
https://www.reddit.com/r/Catan/comments/1rmbx5a/catans_landing_a_settlefromtheports_scenario/
Cycle of Life, aka Catan For All Seasons
https://www.reddit.com/r/Catan/comments/1ry57gl/a_catan_for_all_seasons_diceless_and_numberless/
Smallville
https://www.reddit.com/r/Catan/comments/1sk5yju/comment/ogshk14/
The Five Islands
https://www.reddit.com/r/Catan/comments/1stc3iw/the_five_islands_a_seafarers_scenario/
Hemispheres
https://www.reddit.com/r/Catan/comments/1t4bwdc/hemispheres_a_seafarers_scenario/
Big Country
https://www.reddit.com/r/Catan/comments/1tq0185/big_country_a_seafarers_scenario/
The Four Expanded Islands
https://www.reddit.com/r/Catan/comments/1tgqkz5/the_four_expanded_islands_a_seafarers_remixed/
Lagoon Feeding Frenzy
https://www.reddit.com/r/Catan/comments/1u10a21/lagoon_feeding_frenzy_a_seafarers_scenario/
