Table Top Fun – Puerto Rico

Have you ever wanted to be a colonial governor and exploit the resources of an indigenous population? Then Puerto Rico is the boardgame for you!

A lone Spanish colonial looks out across this brave new vista and thinks, 'This fruitful land is paved with Victory Points'. We know he's Spanish because he has a hat.

The objective of Puerto Rico is to amass ‘victory points’ in order to win the game. Players do this by constructing buildings or shipping goods produced in their plantations; in order to achieve these goals, each player needs ‘settlers’ to work in their plantations and occupy their buildings. They also need to make money by selling goods to pay for buildings.

In Puerto Rico, each player starts off with a plantation tile (either corn or indigo) and three Doubloons*. The players then take it in turns to be a governor. As governor can choose from a number of roles and once they complete their move, another player chooses a role. When each player has chosen a role and completed the tasks associated with it, the round is over. The next player is made governor and a new round begins.  

*Well, we did the way I played it; rules are slightly varied based in the number of players.

As demonstrated here, the game requires minimal set up...

An example round goes as follows:

• A player is made governor. They get to choose one of the following roles, represented by cards:
• Settler – Sets up plantations
• Mayor – Procures settlers
• Builder – Constructs buildings
• Craftsman – Produces goods
• Trader – Sells goods
• Captain – Ships goods
• Prospector – Gains a Doubloon

• The player completes their task; for example, if they choose the role of Settler they choose a crop to grow on their plantation by selecting the appropriate tile and placing it on their plantation board. They will also receive a bonus option that the other players will not. This is dependent on the role they have selected; for example, the player who chooses Settler can opt to have a quarry added to their plantation map which will give them money off buildings once it is populated.

• The other players take it in turns to complete the task chosen by the governor; for example, in the Settle example, all other players may choose a crop to grow on their plantation (but they will not be able to choose the special option of placing a quarry).

• The next player chooses a role from the remaining cards and once they have completed their task, each player takes it in turns to do the same (as above).

• Once every player has chosen and completed a role, a Doubloon is added to each unused role card and the title of governor is passed to the next player.

Sounds simple enough, but all of the roles are interlinked. To get ‘victory points’, which is the name of the game, you need occupied buildings and shipped goods. To ship goods someone has to play the Captain role. To get goods to ship in the first place somebody needs to play the Craftsman role. To obtain the raw materials to craft anything, somebody needs to play the Settler role so crops can be planted. In order for the crops to produce anything that can be crafted, you need someone to play the Mayor card in order to procure settlers. For buildings to be viable, they need to be populated with settlers. To construct buildings you need money, which you can only get by playing the Prospector role or by selling goods in the Trader role. To get goods, you need to… you get the idea. This whole set up invites strategic thinking, as you may desperately need to populate a shiny new building with a settler, but one of your opponents will be able to get an extra person to make their plantation start producing goods; should you bide your time or go for it?

And this person has probably populated the largest ship with their corn, rendering it useless to the other players who have to scramble to obtain a smaller ship to hold their goods. This person is also known as 'a dick'.

On top of that, there are a number of buildings you can purchase that give you bonuses, such as the ability to store more goods, or sell additional goods in a Trading phase. These are always in limited supply, so there’s extra strategic tactics involved in deciding what types of bonuses you want, obtaining the Doubloons to purchase them and whether you want to screw an opponent over by snapping up the last building that they look to have been angling for.

There are a number of things that make this game quite, well, blunt. The ‘settlers’ are represented by brown counters who arrive on a crowded ship to be randomly picked by players to place on their sugar, tobacco, coffee and indigo plantations in order to produce said goods. This aspect of the game does appear to generate discussion at the very least. I’ll just say it’s not trying to sugar-coat the colonial period. I’ve often idly wondered if they should just go the whole hog and make a proper crime lord version with piracy and opium trading.

The game won the Deutscher Spiele Preis in 2002; with its combination of high-strategy and low risk gameplay, plus the opportunity to unleash your competitive side by deliberately ruining your opponents’ chances, it’s not hard to see why. Definitely a fun game to play with friends, but if it’s a party game then you probably want to play it early on; this is not a game that is easy to play when large quantities of alcohol are involved.