Review of e-Raptor Insert Puerto Rico

Blurb from the publisher: 'The e-Raptor Insert compatible with Puerto Rico is a perfect accessory designed to organize and improve the gameplay of the board game.

The insert is durable and made of high quality HDF. No glue is required to assemble it.'

What you get: Your EUR 25,50 or equivalent will buy you the e-Raptor Insert Puerto Rico, an organizer that helps you organize the contents of Puerto Rico, one of the most recognizable and most successful board games of the third millennium.

Upon opening the organizer one is greeted by 3 HDF panels containing 29 laser-cut wooden elements. When assembly is finished you will end up with three trays with a total of 22 compartments . The number and size of each tray's compartments varies.

The strong points: The inserts of e-Raptor are light years ahead of the competition when it comes to the quality of the laser cutting process and the lack of saw dust, splinters, and any kind of wood residue. It is always a good idea to clean the panels before assembly, yet in reality you don't need to. Engineering kicks ass for another reason as well. All the components that crisscross the insert's base at its full length have a lock of sorts in order to be easily assembled and disassembled. In that sense, they require a single clicking motion, not raw power, nor do they grind against their interlocking components. Other publishers can take a lesson or two here about how this is achieved. This also eliminates any need for glue, seeing how the locks take care of everything.

The inserts help with box storage as much as they help your run the game. Just pull them out of the box, and you have practically set up the game when it comes to the tokens. Plantations and quarries are also faster and easier to set up, as are the small buildings. Out of the three total trays, two can stay in the box for the duration of the game while the other will actively help you contain the small bits. No danger of losing a goods token or misplacing VP chips.

When it comes to horizontal storage, the tray works as advertised. There is ample space for all the game's components, and I used it with the 2019 edition of Puerto Rico which includes the initial game's two expansions. It is rather unlikely that new expansions will come out for this game any time soon. There is no risk of the insert becoming outdated.

Assembly is very easy once you understand what you need to do and shouldn't take more than 15 minutes. The pieces are sturdy, and you can't really break anything unless you try.

You don't play Puerto Rico? E-Raptor's line of inserts supports more than 60 different games up to now. You might want to consider an organizer for those you play systematically.

The weak points: The insert is way better than the game's initial plastic tray, an inadequate mess where, if you didn't put your components in plastic ziplock bags you would have to waste a lot of time every time during set up. Unfortunately, it is nowhere near perfect. To start with, it requires effort to put and remove the trays from the box. The corner links of each tray touch upon one another. You need to push here, twist there, shove there, in order to make everything fit perfectly. This shouldn't have worked this way.

I do not understand the logic behind the building compartments. Buildings are already positioned during setup, so what is the point of the present configuration? It is spacious, yet it doesn't appear to serve a game-related reason. The few images on the publisher's website don't make things easier to understand. What's the point of the insert if all the goods tokens are dumped into the same compartment? I am afraid that not much thought has been put into this, seeing how many of the game's components need to be extracted before the game begins. Hell, even the publisher's blurb talks about 'sleeved cards' when the game doesn't include any cards at all, this last part however could happen to everybody. To make a long story short, the design could have benefited from further development. A lot of further development, because...

...what is the point of an expensive, hardcore gamer luxury item when it only works with horizontal storage? You read that right: the insert is not fit for purpose when you store the game vertically or diagonally. Compartments do not have lids. Goods tokens and VP chips will fly all over the box, rendering the insert totally useless. Who thought of this, and how can it possibly pass muster and reach the market as a final design? No, no, and no. Even if it were ok to market an insert like that (and frankly, it's not), this should have been clearly stated both on the website as well as the product: 'not good for vertical storage'. Hint to all publishers for inserts: if your insert does not work for all kinds of storage, keep working on it. Do not market it. It is not ready.

The instruction leaflet could have been better designed. Ultimately the insert is not difficult to assemble (as I wrote, you will hardly need 15 minutes to do it), yet the leaflet is not obvious about the order in which pieces whould be inserted. If that order is not followed you will need to disassemble and assemble again. It's not a biggie, it just prolongs the assembly time by a few minutes.

This is a luxury item addressed to deep-pocket gamers who play Puerto Rico often. It practically costs as much as a game. If you can't have it, probably you don't need it. Incidentally, and in case you didn't figure that out, by using the present product you will have to dispose of the game's original insert or store it elsewhere.

Conclusion: The e-Raptor Insert Puerto Rico is a better insert than the game's original plastic one, and provides added value if you store the game horizontally. Under no circumstances however can it be used for vertical storage, something that severely limits its usefulness.

To find out more about e-Raptor and its Puerto Rico Insert take a look at http://e-raptor.pl.

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