Hot Carribean Action

So after a few attempts that were called off due to sickness, I finally got a chance to play Puerto Rico from Rio Grande Games yesterday.

Expectations were high as it is the most popular game on BoardGameGeek, and first impressions after a single game are that it is really good. The wife is already saying that she definitely prefers it to Citadels which is also a great game.

It uses similar mechanics to Twilight Imperium 3 and Citadels where players choose a different role each round. However, unlike citadels where only one player gets to perform the action associated with the role, and Twiglet where the actions differ depending upon whether you choose the role or someone else did, in Puerto Rico everyone gets to perform the same action (although the person who chose it gets a related bonus).

Players take it in turns to choose a role, starting with the 'Guvnor' (which rotates clockwise each turn), and they and then the other players get to perform the action for that role. Because of this, you spend very little time waiting for other players like many of the other German games.

The aim of the game is to have the most victory points at the end, and there are two ways of gaining points: by shipping goods to the Old World, and by building buildings. You also get to create plantations which provide an income of goods for trade or shipping. In the game (with the wife, Jochen, Karen and Roman), I didn't concentrate much on generating money, so I couldn't build many buildings, which bit me at the end as I came out 4th out of 5. Next time I think I'll keep that in mind and try to get more building done.

In conclusion, there are a lot of really nice mechanisms in the game, and at first blush it seemed to be very interesting and certainly replayable, and, as usual with German games, the wooden pieces are great and the printed pieces are nice enough. All in all, I'm very happy with my purchase.