Hat tip to Matthew Leach, who covers the Cardinals for mlb.com, for pointing out that The Roots’ new album, How I Got Over
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I’ve been promising a writeup of the game Puerto Rico
The goal in Puerto Rico is to amass Victory Points* by producing and shipping goods from your “island” back the mother country and/or by constructing buildings, especially one of the five large buildings that provide bonus points at the end of the game based on what else you’ve accomplished. Your island is a board with spaces for twelve plantations and twelve buildings; the plantations, which are free, can grow one of five crop or house a quarry that reduces the cost of any building by one doubloon. Corn is the least valuable crop, with a trade value of zero, but doesn’t require a processing building; coffee is the most valuable crop for trading but you can’t produce more than two units per turn.
*One thing you have to get used to when playing German-Style board games is that even a fairly concrete game concept, the goal is nearly always the abstract victory points. Completing certain tasks, building specific buildings, or shipping goods earns you points, but the assignment of points to deeds can feel a little arbitrary. I’ve just learned to accept it for each game and move on.
Buildings come in three types: Production buildings, for processing any of the four crops beyond corn; small buildings, each of which grants you a few victory points and some special privilege on every turn; and large buildings, which offer no in-game benefits but can provide significant bonuses after the game ends. Every building and plantation must be manned by a colonist, but their supply is limited, especially early in the game.
In each round, each player chooses a role, with options including the mayor (obtaining colonists), the settler (choosing plantations), the builder (obvious), the craftsman (producing goods), the trader (each player can put one good on the trading ship, as long as another good of that type isn’t already there), the captain (shipping goods for points), and, in larger games, the prospector (take a doubloon). Every player gets to utilize the roles chosen by other players, but the player who chooses a specific role gets an extra privilege, such as producing one additional good of his choice. Roles that go unselected are worth an extra doubloon in the next round.
The complex and slightly crazy part of Puerto Rico is that shipping round. There are five goods that players can produce, but there are only three ships available to take goods to the mainland, and a ship can only hold goods of one type. When a player chooses the shipper, all players must ship all of their goods; if there’s no room, most of their goods spoil and are lost with no compensation. (There are large and small warehouses that a player can buy and man to protect some of his goods.) The ships empty at the end of a round and only when they’re full.
Every good shipped is worth a victory point, and in the later rounds a player could easily ship five goods or more in a single shipping phase, especially if he’s the shipper and can place his goods first. Since points from shipping can easily be around 40% of a winning score, possibly more, there are a host of considerations behind the set of decisions of what goods to produce, how much to produce, and when to ship them, and those decisions also include considering what your opponents plan to produce and what they have on hand. A well-timed decision to choose the shipper role can grab you six points while spoiling goods for several of your opponents.
That’s what makes Puerto Rico a great game, and I’m going to assume it’s why the geeks over at BoardGameGeek have it at the top of their rankings: The decisions each player has to make are rich and complex and depend on potential future moves from both the player and his opponents. Just choosing a role means weighing four or five variables – money, colonist supply, the shipping situation, production potential, and what your opponents will do with this role if you choose it … or what someone else will do with the role if you don’t. Given the game’s complexity, it’s surprising that it works as smoothly as it does, and I think the only truly difficult part of Puerto Rico is setting the game up and putting it away.
It is, however, the most complex game I’ve reviewed on the dish so far, so I can’t just tell you that, say, if you love Settlers of Catan or Stone Age, you should try Puerto Rico. It would be more fair to say that if you’re looking for a more involved game than those two – both among our favorites – you should try Puerto Rico, not just because I recommend it but because the consensus of the boardgaming world is that it’s the best game out there.
Back to Tropic Euro, I’ve found that the software works very well; I’ve had occasional trouble logging on, where the main window was blacked out, but closing and restarting the app solved it. It offers PR expansions, swaps the prices of the Factory and University buildings (per the original boardgame’s designer’s suggestion), and the AI moves quickly and pretty logically, enough to punish me for making rookie mistakes. The app’s author, Chris Gibbs, says on the site that there will be a “hard” AI option available in the next week or so.
I’ve previously reviewed San Juan, the card game variant of Puerto Rico; while it’s consistent with the theme, it is a massively simplified game. I enjoy San Juan in its own right, but it’s just a different experience.
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Posting here will be sporadic over at least the next seven days as we pack and await the moving vans. I should have at least one ESPN chat either this week or next, and both ESPN and dish blogging will become more frequent by the week of September 20th. If you’ve emailed me or asked me a question in any forum without receiving a response, I apologize, and I hope you understand.
Glad you came around to liking it, Keith! It’s an excellent game…
My five favorites, in order, are probably:
1. Agricola
2. Stone Age
3. Puerto Rico
4. Small World
5. San Juan
Tropic Euro is an anagram of Puerto Rico. (My first two points!)
I really enjoy Puerto Rico, but you’re right that it takes a long time to set up. And while some games can take a long time to learn for one person (who can then quickly summarize the rules for new players), Puerto Rico always takes a long time to explain to new players even by someone that knows that game well. That said, everyone I’ve played with has managed to get the hang of it after a few rounds.
Is the review of Agricola in the same boat as Puerto Rico (ie you want to play it several more times to get the full gist of the game)?
Exactly. Played Agricola just twice, and my wife was not impressed (too long and she’s annoyed that the animals are just cubes rather than animal-shaped).
I am really grooving on the new Roots album. Very solid.
I agree it is a very long game, but it does play a bit quicker once you play it several times as you get the hang of the flow of the game. My wife had the same complaint, but there are places you can buy actual animals if you are so inclined (people have created there own as well if you look on boardgamegeek in the photos section. #toomuchtimeonyourhands)
Glad to see your initial negative impression of Puerto Rico have been dampened as you’ve played it more. It is certainly more complex, and I warn anybody out there that is thinking of buying it to consider not just their appetite for complexity but whether they can find sufficient companions to join in playing; it is definitely less accessible to new players than Settlers, I think your experience of needing several plays through is pretty typical. I know I’ve had some difficulty in convincing my regular gaming companions to play as much as I’d like.
That being said, one positive I’d like to stress on top of the review is that Puerto Rico lends itself well to 3,4, or 5 players. The one negative of Setllers that I’ve found is that I really don’t like playing with 3 players, and the expansion that allows for 5 or 6 also isn’t my cup of tea. While PR does vary somewhat depending on how many players there are (the effectiveness of certain strategies varies), I find it equally enjoyable as of 3,4,or 5 player game.
“…she’s annoyed that the animals are just cubes rather than animal-shaped.”
Does that make her a candidate for the Board Games Writers Association of America…?
Would you put Puerto Rico up there with Dominion and SmallWorld?
Also, waiting to hear your take on Tiffany going home on Top Chef. She is probably in my top 3 for favorite people on the show.
Non-related to the above: 1. I’m terrified Jan Brewer will be our Governor. Terrified. You should be too considering you have a child about to enter school.
2. Trader Joe’s negotiates food contracts with vendors in a similar manner as Walmart – short contracts that are always renegotiated at lower and lower rates. Not exactly ethical or helpful to the actual vendor. Once a vendor sells to trader joes and starts to move huge units, that contract is ended. (short contracts are key). The vendor suddenly has a lot of product it cannot move. There aren’t ready buyers for many items Trader Joe’s sells. So the advantage rests with TJ’s as they can simply reduce buying rates again and again as the supplier has no choice if it wishes to continue to do a certain volume of business. Considering the supplier likely took out large loans to meet TJ’s demands, loosing TJ’s as a buyer, even at a discounted rate, means sure default on those loans. It is a vicious cycle and the reason many of TJ’s prices are so low.
Something to keep in mind next time you’re in TJ’s and wondering why the heck that awesome smoked gouda you love so much only costs a dollar.
I bought Ticket to Ride recently mainly on the strength of the KLaw recommendation – looking forward to trying it out. Will have to take a crack at Puerto Rico as well.
Have you ever played the Settlers of Catan card game, Keith? I played that a few years ago and recall it being more complicated than the full board game.
I have, and we own the expansion set. I like the concept but it takes well over an hour for one game, near two with an expansion. Mayfair is supposedly coming out with a simpler two-person card game soon.
Having found Tropic Euro on your suggestion I feel like I have the handle of the game and of Puerto Rico by extension (fingers crossed I get that for the holidays). I can’t however find a strategy at all that can combat the “Harbor.” It seems like once those two are purchased there is no way to beat a Hard Computer.
There has to be something, otherwise that would be the strategy. I have tried to fill my building plots quicker to end the game sooner, but it never seems to work quick enough.
Any suggestions?