Puerto Rico preview
Flam
automatic translated (funny) English or German
It's on JesWeb:
http://jesweb.free.fr/critique/puerto/puerto.html
Flam
Zenao
http://www.fairplay-online.de/archiv/berichte/prevpuerto.html
Z.
"Flam" <pnlap@-wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:a33ub5$ca0$1...@s1.read.news.oleane.net...
ASF
http://www.brettboard.dk/cgi-bin2/webdata_games.pl?cgifunction=form&fid=9992
59666
Looks like a great game.
Stan Hilinski
Flam wrote:
Flam wrote:
I mentioned this on Spielfrieks, but a guy in a group was sick for about a
week, and since he had nothing better to do, he constructed a homemade
prototype of Puerto Rico based entirely on photographs and Mik's
description. The buildings, cards, and play areas were hand drawn, and he
borrowed bits from Serenissima and Urland. Normally he'd find no one to
play, but I looked it over and said "Jeez, there's a real gem in here." So
we gathered together five of our most jaded, hardcore gamers and went at
it.
Now usually this is a dangerous thing to do because in lots of games one
blown rule can really hose the game. However, we decided to come to
agreement on things we missed (we did not know what players started with,
and we didn't know what the Guild did, for a couple) and made things up
for others. Normally I'd say nothing here about the experiment. except for
one thing. Our lame wannabe copy of Puerto Rico was received with complete,
total enthusiasm. At our next friday gathering, the original five showed up
just to do it again. I have not seen anything close to this since Princes
of Florence hit our table last year. It is all they want to play.
So I took the lame copy home and spruced it up a bit by replaced the
handwritten parts with nicely printed versions, and last saturday we played
again -- back to back games. And this friday it will be the featured event
again. The joke is that seating will be by reservation only.
Ok. A description. This may not be completely accurate, but it will give
you an idea of what's ahead.
Picture yourself as John Wayne or Charlton Heston on as a bigshot company
man on some island (Puerto Rico, for instance). You own the plantations,
and you own the town, and you expect to make more money (well, VPs) than
any other bigshot on the island.
In front of you, you have a small grid where your plantations and quarries
go. The island grows coffee, sugar, indigo, corn, and tobacco, and you
compete for those commodity markets. It's up to you if you concentrate on
sugar plantations, or some other commodity, or do you spread yourself
around to plant a little of everything.
You also have a town with no buildings. Here you will build the necessary
mills that will refine your goods so they can be sold or shipped overseas.
You will also build other buildings (a university, a small market perhaps)
each of which gives you an edge in the game. There are about 20 different
buildings that you can build, and it's a game in itself figuring out which
is best for you. There are small buildings, and there are 4 or 5 big ones,
so you place them sort of like the buildings in POF. The big ones are like
POF prestige cards; they generate bonus VPs at the end, except you know
ahead of time what you are buying.
But none of these buildings or plantations are worth spit unless each one
is occupied by a colonist, and there's a shipload of colonists at the dock
just waiting to get onto the island.
So how to play. In a 5-player game there are eight faceup cards, each one
but two representing a personality (the mayor, the captain, etc), and it
reminds me of Citadels a bit. You, the starting player, choose one and do
the action on it, and then every other player in turn sequence chooses a
remaining card and does that in turn order. At the end there are three
cards left, so one doubloon is placed on each unchosen card. Later if you
choose a card with doubloons on it, you keep the money AND do the card.
Pretty nifty. The unpopular cards start becoming real popular, real quick.
I lied a mite. You don't really do an action when you pick most cards; you
actually start a game phase. For example, if I pick the Overseer card, I
cause the production phase to begin. I start, and my active plantations and
mills produce first. I might be producing, say, 2 sugar and a coffee, so I
pick them out of the pool (hopefully there will be sugar and coffee
available). Then each player in turn order does his/her production, with
the last couple players getting hosed as the game goes on. Since I picked
the Overseer, I get to produce a bonus good. Then the next player picks a
card, and it might be the Major who causes the colony ship to distribute
colonists to the player, or the Captain who cause goods to be loaded on the
ships. The picking player always gets some sort of bonus, and usually the
last players in the phase usually get shut out, but it all evens out in the
end. Often you will think maybe I should choose the overseer and load the
ships, but Doug over there has corn up the wazoo and he'll do better than
me, so maybe I should choose the settler and get some plantations or
quarries, but Susan wants to do that I see, and so on. Lots of fun.
There's a natural progression to the game phases, but of course everyone
picks them in the order that suits them, so it makes for some interesting
moments. Two cards are Gold Diggers, and they do not start phases. You
choose one and you get one doubloon plus any others stacked on it. Not very
exciting, but you need money desperately, and someone will choose it
especially if a couple doubloons comes with it. If you were to do the
phases in a logical order, they'd go something like this (forgive me if I
get the characters wrong)
The Settler (I think) lets each player in order choose a new plantation to
add to their domain, but the chooser may substitute a quarry instead. In a
5-player game, 6 plantation chits are randomly drawn and displayed, so you
are never certain which will be the hot commodity.
With the Architect, each player can buy a building. You need money for
this. You need the mills to refine the tobacco, sugar, etc, and there are
only two each of the special buildings, so you snooze, you lose. The
quarries, by the way, reduce the cost of buildings. They are only 8
quarries available, and they go fast.
The plantations, quarries, and buildings need colonists. With the mayor,
each player gets a colonist to put on his diplay; the chooser gets two. One
way the game ends if there are not enough colonists left to fill the colony
ship.
The Overseer causes each player in turn to produce. For corn, you get one
corn good for each active corn plantation you have, but for the others you
need both active plantations and active mills. There are a limited number
of goods (8-12 depending on the type) and some will be unavailable (on a
ship, at the market, or in a player's warehouse), so often you won't get
what you could produce. This is especially true if you decide to grow, say
sugar, and the player to your right is suddenly producing 3 sugar each
phase.
The Merchant lets you sell a good to the market, and this is one of the few
ways you get money. The market is like a port in Serenissima. There are
only four open spots and each spot must have a different good type. And if
the phase ends and the market is not full, it stays partially full until it
does fill. If the phase ends and its full, it's finally emptied.
The Captain lets you load ships. There are 3 ships in the game, each with a
limited capacity. Each ship, once loading has started, is dedicated to a
single good, and no two ships can carry the same good. Ships are cleared at
the end of the phase but only if they fill. As you might guess, there are
NUMEROUS ways you can be the hoser or the hosee when it comes to ship
loading. When you load a ship, you get one VP for each good you load (not
money), which you take from a pile of available VP chips. When they're gom,
the game ends.
And that's about it, and I've written enough already. It's a game rich in
strategies but not one that I think will bog players down in overanalysis.
Forgive me if we've blown anything.
Oh, and our next friday game, you want to make a reservation? Forget it.
It's already overbooked. :}
Stan Hilinski
ASF
chicagosoul
pretty neat in itself. I have read Mik's explanation and it does
indeed lay the game out pretty clearly. (Ideas, ideas ...)
Having read this post and then the descriptions I am more than fired
up about Puerto Rico. I concur that it hasn't been since Princes of
Florence that I was so excited about a game!
(Counting the days until mid-to-late February ...)
Jason
Joseph Czapski
Alan Kwan
<cza...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>Better, try http://brettboard.dk/games/play/puert.htm
Just from looking at the rules, this game looks like '02 DSP candidate
to me.
"Live life with Heart." - Alan Kwan / ta...@notmenetvigator.com
http://home.netvigator.com/~tarot (hard-core video game reviews)
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