Happy 2019 from Kelvin!

2019 is now here, and this year is promising for Catan.  I haven’t been blogging much, which kind of underscores how interested I am in my day job and how little I generally game nowadays (which meant that I was generally not incentivized to make a 2018 revision to the Guides).  Given the amount of new content for Catan is going to be out, a 2019 revision consisting of the newest things will probably be out within the year, again, most likely after most of the content for the year is published.

There is absolutely no shortage of new content planned for the Guide whenever I get around to it.  I did get myself new additions in 2017 (Hawaii – both the English and international versions) and 2018 (Crop Trust), and 2019 has the C&K 20th anniversary expansion (tentatively titled “Legend of the Conquerors”) set to release mid-year at least internationally (it’s likely Catan Studios will release it in English, possibly in 2019, but there is no English announcement as of yet.).  Additionally, there are a bunch of errata, and I still owe you, our audience, that Bonus Volume.  (No, Legend of the Sea Robbers was not my motivation for releasing the 2017 version at all, but if there is anything that will motivate me to release a 2019 Guide, the C&K 20th anniversary expansion might.)

These changes by themselves won’t cause the Guide to balloon to over 500 pages in length, but then again, there are some additions to the Guide that could possibly push the issue.  Want to know more?  Find out after the break.

One of the things that I did do in 2018 was to upgrade my set from an English set in various editions (mostly 3rd and 4th, Legend of the Sea Robbers is my only 5th edition add-on) plus some German add-ons, to a full international set, complete with plastic pieces. As you might have seen from the 2017 guide, I did start on doing some component comparisons based on the sets that I do have.

Given that, I’m hoping that I won’t have to do a full rewrite, but I do feel that there’s probably a better way to present the Guide than a 500 page document that is structured as a relic of a bygone era.  I’ve actually been considering compiling “the glossary” where I can better make use of the ways that I can present the information in the Guide in a form better reflective of modern times. (For example, I won’t have to repeat myself when I have to present the same concepts in different areas of the Guide.) Experimenting with the format of the Guide is something I don’t take lightly, given the noted failure of my earlier attempt (six years ago!) to build a rudimentary web app to host the Guide. So if I ultimately consider adding a glossary component to the Guide, I might as well be rewriting the entire Guide from the beginning.

A side aspect with reformatting the Guide that I did not fully mention is that I can have a single document that encompasses different Catan games (remember that the CCG and Rivals Guide to Miscellany is still a thing, even though I haven’t really made an effort to work on it), and I can use that to work on some features that have been requested by readers (for example, the full line of Catan spinoffs, given that the Guide has focused on the base game and its add-ons).  The final formatting decision will likely be down to whether I can peel myself away from my day job to work on it, and whether I can export directly from my note-taking software into a reasonably comprehensive website or not.

For those of you who may want to ask (and I know no one is asking), I do not have a crowdfunding platform, nor will I ever accept any kind of monetary incentive to commit to working on the Guide: I do not feel that it is in good faith to make money on something that ultimately I am not the IP owner of, but also the terms of my employment do not permit me to accept compensation for outside work. The Guide is, was, and will be, a strictly volunteer effort, though I have to admit that it would be nice to get some kind of endorsement or guidance from Catan IP holders in this endeavor.

Anyways, this labor of love is likely going to be on my mind in this coming year.  I can’t commit to releasing a new version, whatever the form it may be, but I do hope that you, the reader, will be satisfied by the result.