Puerto Rico Review (board game)

Board games can be simple and straight forward, like Snake and Ladder. It can also be long-winding and wasting time like Monopoly. Or it can have so many rules and exceptions like Munchkin.

This board game called Puerto Rico won International Gamers Award in 2002 and was ranked number one on BoardGameGeek. Without overwhelming rules and uncontrollable randomness, Puerto Rico is suitable to have relaxed and fun hours.


The story is about when there is colonization of Puerto Rico. You are to ship goods produced from Puerto Rico to Spain, where you will get Victory Points (VP) for every good produced. In this game your objective is to get as many VP as possible. In order to get VP, you need to plan your steps of planting, building, trading, and shipping.

By spending money to grow plantations and creating production building you can get goods. Then you can choose what to do with the goods. If you choose to sell them, you will get more money. If you choose to ship them to Spain, you will not get money, but you get VP.

The player takes turn by taking a role. The role determines what action the player takes and the other players will follow. After all players are done, the next player will choose the role until a round is done (all players have taken a role). The action can be selling, building, etc. as has been mentioned before.

Game Elements

In Puerto Rico you have money units called doubloon, plantation blocks, building blocks, VP chips, role cards, goods, and colonists.

1. Player board


Each player will have this board placed before him. The board is used to store doubloons, plantations, buildings, goods, colonists, VPs, and role cards. Everybody else can see any player's status by looking at this board.

2. Doubloons


With the money you can build buildings. Each building have different functions. The money needed depends on whether you have previledges or discounts from quarries. Shipping goods earns you money.

3. Plantation blocks


In the player board there are 12 empty spaces for plantations. When the active role is settler, a player may choose one plantation to put on their board. The kind of plantations are corn, indigo, sugar, tobacco, and coffee. There is a special plantation called quarry, having which the cost of constructing a building is discounted. Plantations is only active when it is occupied by a colonist.

4. Building blocks


Production building produces goods - when there is colonists operating it and with the suitable plantation type. There is also other types of building to let you have advantages, for example getting a free colonist for certain role or extra goods in trading. Building costs money.

5. Role cards


Each card determines the action the player take. This is central in the game. Each player chooses the role he wants to play on his turn, and this decision affects his performance greatly. The roles are:

• settler puts a new plantation
• mayor calls new colonists
• builder constructs buildings
• craftsman produces goods
• trader sells goods for money
• captain ships goods for VPs
• prospector earns 1 doubloon without doing anything

The player who chooses the role gains extra previleges, for example, for trader there is one extra doubloon when selling goods, for settler he is allowed to plant a quarry instead of normal plantations.

6. Victory Points


VP is the determinator of the outcome of the game. VP can be gained in three ways:

1. Each shipped goods earns 1 VP
   
2. Buildings owned at the end of the game have VP values
3. Bonus VPs from "large" buildings

Conclusions

I find this game to be very well-balanced. The decision is mostly non-random, players have great control over what can be done for them. The rules seems complicated at first, but in less than an hour, players should be able to grasp the main idea and play it.

At the beginning of a game, the numbers of objects are determined based on number of players. The number of players can be only 3 to 5, having less than 3 will make it monotonic and not challenging, having more than 5 will make the players wait too long for their turn. For example, the number of available colonist is 55 for 3 players, 75 for 4 players, and 95 for 5 players. Similarly the number of VPs are 75, 100, and 122 respectively. The designer must have considered this carefully before releasing the game. The limitations also apply for the number of goods, VPs, role cards, available space for shipping, etc. This is good because it prevents the game from becoming very long. The game can be finished in about an hour for 3 players.

The freedom to choose the action to take, calculating the benefits and costs of each possible choice of roles, buildings, plantations, and goods, is the thing that makes the players really feels that their decision matters. The only random element in this game is the available plantations to choose, which are taken from shuffled piles of cards.

There is no single best strategy for winning. Players concentrate on buildings to get VP at the end of the game. Players can also ship goods to get VP soon or instead trade it for money for even larger production rate in the future. This needs a good planning without making the game dull. I really recommend this game for those who wants moderate difficulty board game suitable for general players.