Catan Traders and Barbarians 5–6 — Rules FAQ

You need four boxes on the table: the base Catan game, the 5–6 player base expansion, the Traders & Barbarians expansion, and the T&B 5–6 player extension. The T&B 5–6 extension provides the additional component tiles (extra fish, more caravan markers, more barbarian-camp tiles) needed to scale each scenario to six players.

Three differences: (1) the larger 30-hex board from the 5–6 expansion, (2) the build-phase between turns from the 5–6 expansion still applies (so non-active players can build during the active player's end-of-turn), and (3) more scenario components — extra fish tiles, additional caravan markers, more barbarian camps. Core T&B mechanics are unchanged.

Highly variable by scenario. Fishermen and Rivers in 5–6 mode play in 90–120 minutes; Caravans and Barbarian Attack run 2–2.5 hours; the full T&B title scenario at six players is 3.5–4 hours. The build phase keeps things moving, but the larger board and more components add length.

Yes — after the active player ends their turn, every other player gets a build phase: build roads, settlements, cities, knights (in Barbarian Attack), or scenario-specific pieces; spend fish or gold tiles; play one progress card. No trading happens during the build phase.

Fishermen 5–6 and Barbarian Attack 5–6 are the most popular six-player T&B scenarios — they parallelise well across more players. The Caravans and Rivers work but move slower with six. The full title T&B scenario is technically supported but rarely played at six because of length.

Yes. The T&B 5–6 extension box contains additional fish tiles, extra caravan markers, more barbarian-camp tiles, and the additional knights/wagons in two extra player colours. The base T&B box does not contain these by itself.

Same as 3–4 player T&B for each scenario. Most scenarios use 10 VP; the title T&B scenario uses 13 VP because gold coins, caravan bonuses, and castle income create more VP sources. Some 5–6 groups raise the threshold by 1 to compensate for the longer game, but the official rulebook keeps it at the per-scenario default.

Yes for some scenarios — Fishermen and Barbarian Attack combine cleanly with Seafarers. You'd need all five components: base, 5–6 expansion, Seafarers, Seafarers 5–6 extension, plus T&B and the T&B 5–6 extension. It's a long, complex game (4+ hours).

The 5–6 extension adds extra fishing-ground tiles to scale Fishermen of Catan to six players around the longer 30-hex coastline. Exact counts are in the extension's component list.

Yes — the 2025 reprint cycle by CATAN GmbH includes both the base T&B box and the T&B 5–6 player extension. Availability varies by region; check your local game stores or Catan's official site. As of 2025, both boxes are widely available in English, German, and French; other localisations may have intermittent stock depending on regional distribution schedules.

Rivers of Catan 5–6 places three to five river hexes (per the scenario sheet) on the 30-hex stretched layout, replacing land hexes at specified positions. With more total hexes, the rivers cover proportionally less of the board than in the 3–4 variant, so bridge density drops and gold-coin accumulation slows. The scenario remains playable but tends to run 30–45 minutes longer than the 3–4 player version. Coastal hexes also become disproportionately valuable in this configuration because the long sea-edge perimeter of the stretched board offers more 2:1 port opportunities.

The 5–6 board has two desert hexes (vs. one in the 3–4 board). In The Caravans 5–6, both deserts become oasis tiles — the scenario sheet treats them as paired desert cities, doubling the destination targets for camel caravans. This creates a more parallelised race because more players can have caravans en route simultaneously without all targeting the same single oasis. The caravan path between settlements and oases is correspondingly longer, and players who plan their settlement placement near a viable caravan route generally fare better than those who chase production hexes exclusively.

Yes — the 5–6 extension provides additional barbarian-camp tiles. Barbarian Attack 5–6 typically places four to five camps (vs. three in 3–4 mode), reflecting the larger board and increased number of players. The extra camps don't make the scenario meaningfully harder per player, but they do create more parallel knight-marching objectives, which keeps all six players engaged in defence rather than concentrating the action on one corner of the board.

The 5–6 expansion already provides additional resource cards (4 of each non-desert resource) and development cards to handle six players. T&B doesn't add scenario-specific deck scaling beyond that — fish tiles, caravan markers, and barbarian-camp tokens are the components that need the T&B 5–6 extension. The standard resource and dev-card decks from base + 5–6 expansion are sufficient for all T&B 5–6 scenarios.

It can be played, but it's not recommended. The title scenario uses a fixed prescribed layout that's tuned for 3–4 players; expanding to six requires component substitutions that the rulebook doesn't fully spell out, and the resulting game frequently runs four hours or more. Most experienced groups play the four shorter scenarios in 5–6 mode and save the title scenario for a 3–4 player session. If your group is determined to play the title scenario at six, expect to invent house rules for some component placements and budget a full evening.

Friendly Robber (one of the four short variants in the T&B box) prohibits the robber from being placed on a hex adjacent to a player with two or fewer VPs. It works exactly the same in T&B 5–6 as in 3–4 — the rule applies to whichever player's settlement count yields ≤2 VP. With six players the early game is busier, so the "protected" pool is larger for longer, which makes the variant's catch-up effect more pronounced in 5–6 mode. Groups that find six-player Catan too brutal for new players often enable Friendly Robber by default.

No — the four short variants (Harbor Masters, Friendly Robber, Catan Event Cards, Catan for Two) are rule overlays that work on top of any board, with or without the 5–6 expansion. The 5–6 extension is needed only for the five main scenarios because those are the ones that require additional component tiles to scale. Harbor Masters and Friendly Robber in particular layer cleanly onto a standard 5–6 game without any T&B-specific components.

Resource starvation is a known issue in 5–6 mode because the bank can run dry mid-game even with the expansion's extra cards. Specific to T&B: fish tiles and gold coins are not resources and don't count toward the bank, but they substitute for resources in many scenarios. If your group routinely runs out of brick or ore, consider enabling Harbor Masters (extra port variety) or playing Fishermen of Catan (fish tiles relieve some resource pressure). The generator's resource-diversification constraint also helps by ensuring no terrain type is over-concentrated in the 5–6 layout.

Several digital Catan implementations support T&B with 5–6 player rules to varying degrees of completeness — Colonist.io and the official Catan Universe app are the most active in 2025. Coverage of every T&B scenario across digital platforms is incomplete; some scenarios (notably the full title T&B and certain Caravans configurations) require physical play. Consult the platform's current scenario list before committing to a digital session.

The lake tile sits at the centre of the board in Fishermen of Catan and produces fish when its number is rolled, regardless of whether a settlement is adjacent. In the 5–6 player version, the lake is positioned per the scenario sheet on the 30-hex stretched board — its exact placement varies, but it's always a central, hard-to-reach hex. Because more players are competing for adjacent settlement spots, the lake is more contested in 5–6 mode; the player who locks in a settlement touching the lake gets a meaningful production advantage that compounds over the longer game length. The generator on this site does not place the lake tile — that comes from the T&B 5–6 extension box per the scenario sheet.