Players: 3-5
Time: 90-180 minutes
Difficulty: 6 (of 10)
This version of Puerto Rico was coproduced in Germany by Alea.
The Components
Puerto Rico comes with:
- 5 player boards
- 1 game board
- board markers
- 49 buildings
- 58 island tiles
- marker cards
- 8 role cards
- 1 governor card
- 5 ship cards
- 1 trading house
- 1 colonist ship
- marker chips
- 54 doubloons
- 50 VP chips
- wooden pieces
- 100 colonists
- 50 goods
- 1 rulebook
Player & Game Boards: Each player has his own playing board, which depicts an island and a city amid very colorful artwork. On the island there are 12 island spaces, for placing plantations and quarries. On the city there are 12 city spaces, for placing buildings. There's also blank space around the board's compass rose for putting all the chips and wooden pieces that you might acquire; below that is a fairly complete listing of what each role does, which is extremely helpful for new players.
There's also a central game board, used by all the players, which simply has spaces for all the buildings that can be bought as well as a bank for doubloons. All of the buildings are very carefully arranged on the board, so that production facilities lie toward the top, and other than that they're arranged in order of cost. Each of the four columns on the game board matches up with the number of quarries that can be used to build those buildings and the number of victory points those buildings are worth (each from 1 to 4). Overall, it's another good, intuitive design.
Other markers, cards, and pieces (of which there are quite a lot) are arranged around the game board in an order specified by the rulebook. Without this board and its attendent organization, this game would be a mess; with it, everything is perfectly easy to find.
All 6 boards are printed 4-color on very sturdy cardboard.
Board Markers: Buildings and island tiles each are placed on the player boards in pre-marked positions. The markers are printed printed two-sided in 4-color on sturdy cardboard.
The buildings list cost and victory point value. They also give a short explanation of the building's power and provide spaces for colonists to staff them. The design is overall very clever, with colonists covering up the building cost of the buildings so that you don't get confused between cost and VP value after you've played them. The buildings are all very plain, with a simple gradient running behind the text.
The island tiles are broken into two types: quarries and plantations. Plantations depict a type of crop while quarries depict bricks, each next to a space for a colonist to staff the building. A gradient runs in the background, with the colors for the crops clearly matching the colors for their related production buildings. Because of the crop artwork, these tiles are more attractive than the plain buildings.
Marker Cards: The marker cards serve a wide variety of purposes in the game. Each one is printed on sturdy cardboard. They each tend to feature a small amount of attractive artwork and either words or icons depicting their purpose; they were all easy to use in play.
The role cards, which are the heart of the game each briefly list what the role does and what its privilege is. The governor card simply marks who started the current round. Together these cards proved very useful, as it was always easy to see who had done what and how many more actions they were left in the current round.
The ship cards depict ships with different sized holds, from 4 to 8, ready to take goods back to the Old World. The goods fit cleanly in boxes depicted on the card. The Trading House is for good sales, and also has places to put goods; it also features icons which clearly show the value of each good.
The colonist ship was simply a place to toss colonists waiting to come to Puerto Rico. The colonists occasionally tried to jump off the ship, usually when bumped, so I'm not sure a marker card was really the best way to go here.
Marker Chips: This was more cardboard, in the form of round doubloons and hexagonal victory point chips.The doubloons are printed in 1 and 5 increments, and are different sizes and colors so that you can tell them apart. The VP chips are also printed in 1 and 5 increments, and are in different colors, but not different sizes (so that you can't tell them apart when they're flipped upside down).
Wooden Pieces: The wooden pieces are all painted and well, though simply, crafted. The colonists are small brown discs which fit snugly into the appropriate spots on buildings and island tiles. The goods are octagonal "barrels" which come in five different colors which match up with the colors of appropriate plantations and production buildings. They fit neatly upon ships and in the trading house.
Rulebook: The rulebook is standard for the Alea Big Box series. It's 12 pages, glossy, and fairly plain. The rules are explained in the main text of the book, and then very helpfully summarized in a sidebar on every page (a feature that I love in these releases). A couple of pictorial examples help explain things. The back of the rulebook features a quick reference for all the building types, which proved very helpful during play.
Box & Tray: The box is attractive and sturdy enough. It has a "7" emblazoned on the side to help encourage you to buy the rest of this series of bookshelf games. The tray has 6 compartments, and though it doesn't look like it was specifically designed for Puerto Rico, it nonetheless does an adequate job of helping separate out all the Puerto Rico pieces.
All told the Puerto Rico components are attractive and utilitarian. I think some beauty has been sacrificed to make the game play easily and to allow for complexity, but nonetheless it's well done. I give it an above average "4" out of "5" for Style.
The Game Play
The game of Puerto Rico is ultimately about producing goods for sale and for shipment back to the Mother Country.
Setup: The lengthy setup of the game involves putting many little bits around the game board set in the middle of the table. All the money and buildings get put on the board; then the victory points, ships, trading house, goods, role cards, quarry tiles, and plantation tiles are all placed around the game board in a very specific order. Everything's face-up except the plantation tiles which are shuffled and placed face-down in 5 piles; a set of plantation tiles equal to the number of players +1 are then flipped up for use in the Settler phase, as discussed below.
Each player gets their own gameboard, between 2 and 4 doubloons, and 1 starting plantation tile, which is either corn or indigo.
Goods & Roles: There are two important concepts in the game: goods and roles.
Goods. These are marked by little octagonal wooden barrels. There are 5 types: corn, coffee, tobacco, sugar, and indigo, which are available in various quantities. In order to produce goods you first need to have a plantation tile of the appropriate type, which is placed in the island section of the board. You then need to have a production building of the same type. (There's one exception to this: corn needs just the plantation, just a production building too.) Finally you must have a colonist staffing both the plantation and the production building. For each matched pair of plantation and production building you'll produce one of the appropriate good when production occurs (during the Craftsman phase, as discussed below).
Once you have goods you can do two things with them: sell them during the Trader phase or ship them home during the Captain phase. The first produces doubloons, the second produces victory points.
Roles. Each round each player takes their turn by selecting a role. There are 8 total in the game: settler, mayor, builder, craftsman, trader, captain, prospector, and prospector (the latter two only both being used in 4 and 5 player games). Immediately after taking a role, and starting with the phasing player, every player gets to take an action associated with the role. The player who selected the role sometimes gets a slightly better action than everyone else, and sometimes gets a bonus action. (This is called a privilege.)
The players actually take their role cards when they choose their role, meaning that only one person can select each role each round. After each of the players has selected a role, and everyone has taken their actions, all the roles are then returned to the common pool. In addition, any roles which were not selected during the turn (there are always 3 more roles than players) get a doubloon placed on top of them, which is taken in a future round by the person who takes the role. (Sometimes a less popular role will get a couple of doubloons on it before it's taken.) The first player/governor marker is then passed to the player to the left and a new round of play begins.
The heart of the game is all in what the players get to do using their roles.
The Settler Role: Starting with the phasing player, each player selects one of the face-up plantation tiles and places it on his island. As his privilege the phasing player may instead take a quarry tile, which will help out in the Builder phase.
Afterward unused tiles are discarded, and a new set of n+1 tiles is placed face-up.
The Mayor Role: Starting with the phasing player, each player takes one colonist from the colonist ship until the colonist ship is emptied. As his privilege the phasing player also gets to take one colonist from the supply. Each player may also arbitrarily shuffle his colonists among his buildings, plantations, and quarries as he sees fit. (Building powers are only available when the building is staffed.)
Afterward a number of colonists equal to the number of empty spaces in player buildings is added to the ship, to a minimum of the number of players.
The Builder Role: Starting with the phasing player, each player may build no more than one buildings in his city. Each building is marked by between 1 and 4 tiles on the game board, and thus is innately limited. These buildings have a variety of effects, as noted below, but building effects only occur when the building is staffed (meaning that the player won't be able to use them until the next Mayor phase). Each building also has a cost (1-10 doubloons) and a victory point value (1-4 VPs). As his privilege the phasing player pays one doubloon less for his building. Quarries also reduce the cost of buildings by 1 per quarry, though there's a limit to how many quarries may be used on each building (only 1 quarry can be used on the smallest buildings, while 4 can be used on the largest).
The Craftsman Role: Starting with the phasing player, each player produces goods on his island, based on total number of manned plantations with corresponding manned production buildings. Afterward as his privilege the phasing player may take one extra good of a type he produced.
There are between 9 and 11 of each good, and this is a hard limit for how much can be produced.
The Trader Role: Starting with the phasing player, each player may sell no more than one good to the trading house. This is one of the more complex roles, and there are a number of rules for how it works:
- Each player may only sell 1 barrel of goods.
- There are only 4 spaces in the trading house, which limits sales.
- A player may not sell a type of good that's already in the trading house.
- Goods are worth variable amounts: 0 for corn, 1 for indigo, 2 for sugar, 3 for tobacco, and 4 for coffee.
As his privilege the phasing player earns 1 extra doubloon if he sells.
At the end of this phase the trading house is emptied if it's full. If it's not full, it'll be partially filled next time someone takes the Trader role, and it'll be that much harder to sell goods.
The Captain Role: Starting with the phasing player, each player loads goods on ships back to Europe until no player can load further goods. This is the most complex role in the game.
This role centers around the ships. There are always 3 in the game, though their exact size will vary depending on the number of players. In a 3-player game, for example, the boats have cargo space sizes of 4, 5, and 6, while in a 5-player game they're sized 6, 7, and 8.
There are a number of rules for how loading onto ships works:
- Play goes around the table, one at a time, until all the players, in order, can't load anything more.
- Each turn each player must load one good if he can.
- Each boat will only take one type of good.
- Once a player has selected a good to load he must load as much of it as he can (either using up all of that good or filling the boat).
A player gets 1 Victory Point marker for each good he loads. These are stored face-down on the player board, so that the exact number isn't known. As his privilege the phasing player gets 1 bonus VP the first time he loads goods on a ship.
At the end of this phase all full boats are emptied, while partially filled boats are left partially full. Also, each player must now discard all of his remaining goods except for 1 barrel.
The Prospector Role: There is no action associated with the prospector. As his privilege the phasing player takes one doubloon from the bank.
The Buildings: There are many buildings which the players may build in their city. Small buildings each benefit the player during a specific phase. There are two of each (other than the production buildings, of which there are 2-4). The buildings are:
- Production Buildings. Associated with specific goods. Small production buildings are manned by one colonist, large production buildings by up to 3 (the latter producing goods for up to three associated plantations). Craftsman phase.
- Construction Hut. May build quarry instead of plantation. Settler Phase.
- Factory. Get +0/1/2/3/5 doubloons with production, depending on how many of the 5 goods you produce. Craftsman Phase.
- Hacienda. Take a second plantation tile from a face-down pile. Settler phase.
- Harbor. +1 VP per time you load goods on a cargo ship. Captain Phase.
- Hospice. Place a colonist on your new plantation or quarry. Settler Phase.
- Market, Large. +2 doubloon per trade. Trader phase.
- Market, Small. +1 doubloon per trade. Trader phase.
- Office. Sell a good to trading house that's already in trading house. Trader Phase.
- University. Place a colonist on your new building. Builder Phase.
- Warehouse, Large. Store all of 2 kinds of good when required to discard goods. Captain Phase.
- Warehouse, Small. Store all of 1 kind of good when required to discard goods. Captain Phase.
- Wharf. Acts as your own private cargo ship. Captain Phase.
There are also a number of "large" buildings, which take up two normal building spaces. They're the most expensive buildings of all (10 doubloons to build, may use up to 4 quarries, worth 4 VPs). Each building is unique in the game:
- City Hall. Bonus VPs for non-production buildings.
- Custom House. Bonus VPs for VP chips.
- Fortress. Bonus VPs for colonists.
- Guild Hall. Bonus VPs for production buildings.
- Residence. Bonus VPs for occupied island spaces.
Winning the Game: The game ends when VP chips run out or when colonists run out or when someone fills their twelfth building space. At that point the current round of turns ends, then everyone counts their Victory Points. Players will have VPs from:
- VP Chips earned for shipping goods.
- The VP value of buildings.
- The bonus VPs earned by large buildings
Relationships to Other Games
Puerto Rico is #7 in the Alea Big Box series of games. Alea is a division of the publisher Ravensburger in Germany, whose goal is to produce games of "particularly high strategic requirement". In general, they tend to be innovative designs as well. They've published many of the most memorable strategy games of the last couple of years.
Alea games still in print in English include The Princes of Florence (#4), The Traders of Genoa (#6), and Mammoth Hunters (#8). Previous Alea games now in print from other companies include: Hoity Toity (#5). Of these, Puerto Rico bears the greatest similarity to The Princes of Florence, another game centering around the acquirement of resources on singular player boards.
One of Puerto Rico's most unique gameplay elements is its idea of players choosing individual player roles, each of which have different powers. Earlier games which feature this gameplay include Verrater and Citadels. A more recent game, which uses player roles in a very similar way is Age of Mythology.
The Game Design
Puerto Rico is one of the most highly ranked and well-received games published in Germany in many years. It probably remains eclipsed by The Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne amidst the general public, but among hard-core strategy gamers it's thus far unparalleled. It was named Games Magazine's top Advanced Strategy game of 2003, then made the list again in 2004. It was also named the DSP game of the year in 2002, a top prize among serious strategy games. This all goes to say that gamers think fairly well of the design of Puerto Rico.
I agree.
Here's some of the good elements of Puerto Rico:
Strategic and Tactical Balance: Puerto Rico has elements of both strategic and tactical play. On the one hand you can make long-term plans, deciding whether to ship or trade, which goods to go with, etc. On the other hand play is very tactical each turn, based upon which roles are available to you, and what you'll be leaving to your opponents.
Many Strategic Possibilities: Beyond that, the variety of strategic possibilities are immense. What goods do you produce? Generally and in relation to players around you? How do you make use of roles? When can you skip a role you want to be used presuming that your opponents will activate the role for you? How do you balance VPs and money?
I've seen a number of different people on the 'net claim that they've found the killer strategy for Puerto Rico. These "killer strategies" are all different, telling me that beyond having many strategic possibilities, they're well balanced. This also dramatically ups the replayability of the game because depending on your starting conditions you'll play quite differently from game to game.
Large Buildings Increase Variability: The large buildings that each award VPs for slightly different gameplay are just another way that the variability of the game is increased, because each one impels a player to act differently.
Roles Balanced Well: Innately there's some nice balance to the roles because they each do advantageous things within the game. However, this balance is improved by the fact that doubloons are placed on unused roles--meaning that even if a role is less advantageous during a specific game, it'll grow more and more appealing from round to round, until someone finally takes it.
Scarcity Increases Strategy & Competition: There's a lot of scarcity in the game. For example, there's only between 1 & 4 of each building. In addition, the goods are sufficiently limited that they'll run out regularly in a five-player game. This adds another factor to strategic calculations and also increases the inter-player competition, when players grabbing scarce resources before they're taken by opponents.
Easily Expandable: The game is easily expandable, by adding new buildings which do different things. There's already one official expansion available (alas, only for download), and any number of unofficial expansions running around the net.
Here's my only complaint:
Analysis Paralysis: Overall, Puerto Rico does a good job of isolating individual decisions--so that, for example, you choose one of the roles, and then you decide what individual action is required by the role. However, because of the high strategic element of the game, the players are encouraged to look ahead, and this can mean that they end up spinning their wheels with too many choices. A few of our players ended up frequently paralysed by the choices, and I expect this is a somewhat common occurrence.
Overall, the strategic gameplay of Puerto Rico is superb. There's a lot of opportunity to plan ahead in a lot of different ways. Thus I agree with the general assessment of the game and give it a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
Puerto Rico is indeed one of the best game out of Germany in recent years. If you're a serious strategist, I suggest picking this one. However, if you're a fairly casual gamer you might prefer sticking with The Settlers of Catan or Carcassonne.
