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Hello All,
My group tried a modification to the City Walls that went over really well and I'd like to share it with everybody. It's a simple rule with multiple applications. If you try it out, please feel free to leave a comment!
The first part is the same as the standard rules (4th edition):
City Walls
To build a city wall, you must pay two brick resources to the
bank. The city wall (square wooden token) is placed under
any city you own on the board. There are three restrictions on
the placement of city walls:
a. You may only build city walls under cities,
never settlements.
b. You may only build one city wall under each city.
c. You may never have more than 3 city walls at one time.
---> CHANGES START HERE:
Each city wall you control acts as a "safety deposit box" where you may store Resource and/or Commodity Cards (not Progress Cards). Each city wall can shelter 1 card. Sheltered Cards are physically removed from your hand and placed partially under the Development Flip-Chart. Cards sheltered by the city walls cannot be stolen by the Robber or by Progress Cards, and do not count toward your hand limit when a “7” is rolled. A player may only withdraw and deposits cards on their turn, after the dice phase has been resolved. Sheltered Cards may not traded with other players.
If the barbarians pillage your city (i.e., reduce it to a settlement), the city wall is also destroyed. You must remove the city
wall from the board. If each wall was sheltering a resource or commodity card and you now have more Sheltered Cards than city walls, you must return one of the Sheltered Cards to the bank.
--->Got all that? Here's some reinforcement:
Example: Paul has 2 cities (both with city walls), no active knights, 7 Resource/Commodity Cards in his hand (all Wood), and 1 Sheltered Commodity Card under his Development Flip-Chart (paper - he's saving up for the Aqueduct)
Nelly rolls the Barbarian Ship on the event die and a 7. No only do the barbarian attack, but they are stronger than Catan's active knights. Paul is forced to replace his city with a settlement and consequently remove its city walls. He now has 1 city wall in play and 1 Sheltered Commodity Cards, so he does not need to discard it to the bank.
A 7 has been rolled, so Paul checks how many cards he's holding and he is safe, as the Sheltered Card is not added to the cards in his hand.
Nelly, who has less Victory Points than Paul, plays the Master Merchant card and chooses Paul. She may only look at and steal from the 7 cards in Paul's hand. Nelly does not find the paper she desperately needs in Paul's hand. Paul may not trade his paper to Nelly until it is his turn, so he can withdraw the paper from the protection of the city walls.
--->The only thing I am unsure of was should you be able to store something in the city walls on the same turn it is built? It seems like in all the Catan games you can't execute in the same turn as you build/buy, and I feel that city walls should be no different.
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Nathan Cornelius
United States
Indiana
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I like the concept but I haven't tested it out yet. I would say though that when a wall is sheltering a card, it should only increase your hand limit by one instead of the standard two. This effectively makes it two (one in your hand and one being sheltered). I also agree that a player should not be able to do so on the same turn the wall is built.
The question is whether you should keep track of which wall is sheltering which resource, or if that would even matter.
Another concept which could be added to this or done independently is to allow each wall to also increase the Progress Card limit by one.
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