Norderwind = Starship Catan?!

Actually, that title should read:

Is Norderwind just a redesign/retheme of Starship Catan?

But, hey, this is the Internet - I had to be both more pithy and more mysterious to attract your eyeballs here to the blog.

Note: what I know about Norderwind comes from watching a German TV news story about the designer, Klaus Teuber (in German - and, no, I didn't understand all of it) as well as the preview video from W. Eric Martin and the good folks at BGN.

That said, it looks to me like Norderwind is a parakeet-friendly multi-player take on the Starship Catan engine.

The similarities:

• multiple separate exploration decks that are reshuffled after each player turn
• purchase and sale of commodities
• each player has a "ship" that is upgraded
• the memory element in exploration

The differences:

• multi-player
• change in theme
• didn't look like the decks "changed" over time (a nice trick that Starship Catan uses)

Whatever. I'm interested & excited... and wondering if Mayfair will be reprinting this in English.