Review: Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is a really good game and has to be the favourite board game in our group. It's no wonder it remained #1 at BoardGameGeek for so long (currently at #3). It has been months now where we would just gather and have hours of fun on this game.

Dude, you are kidding right? Favourite game? More like the only game. Tell me. What other games do we play?

Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game. Ticket to Ride.

Don't recall playing that with you.

Fine ... Puerto Rico is the only game that our group actually plays. So, we are new to board gaming and we have endless fun on it and I just want to share that awesome experience with others. There are bound to be new guys this very day picking up their very first board game, having tonnes of fun and then itching for their next board game.

With all the other awesome review sites out there ... 

Stop being a dick!

Haha alright. I'll leave you to your "review" then. 

Fucker.

So, where were we ... Puerto Rico ...

In this game, you play the role of a governor of your very own island . Everyone will have their own island card with spaces to construct buildings and build plantations.

The main mechanic of this game is role choosing. Every round, you take turns choosing specific roles to help you - the settlers will build plantations, the mayor to give you colonists (workers), the trader allows you to trade and so on. Everyone will play the chosen role with the person choosing the role receiving the role's bonus. Say, the builder role is picked. Everyone builds, with the person choosing the role receiving the bonus of one doubloon (currency in the game) discount. The mayor role will distribute all the colonist with the one choosing receiving an extra colonist. I won't go on, but you get how it works.

Buildings.

Every building will have their own purpose. You'll need production buildings like a sugar mill to produce goods from the sugar plantation, the coffee roaster for your coffee plantation. Other buildings like the small warehouse allows you to store one type of good and the market will give you more doubloons whenever you trade. It is these different building effects that gives Puerto Rico its magnificent strategic potential.

Oh yea, and the objective of the game is to achieve the most victory points which are obtained through shipping and building points.

So, that's it. That's Puerto Rico in a nutshell.

Nobody is going to buy this game after reading this review.

I'm not done damnit. And why are you still here??

Muahahaha.

As simple as the game goes, there are countless strategies that can be put to the game. You can go with shipping strategy, producing tonnes of goods and snatching away victory points as you ship. Or the builder strategy where you control buildings, filling up the map and pushing for an early game end. But the question is, would you be able to pull the strategy off?


Found this pic where they have a really neat arrangement. Source

Rule of thumb, choose the role that benefits you the most and the others the least. Selecting the trader role when the trade house has only one available slot left, will leave your friends eyeballing you as you are the only one that benefit from that role. Choosing the Captains role to ship when others  have goods that they need to trade desperately. Or seeing their goods burn when they have no ship to place their goods and not having a warehouse. Ah, it's the small things in life that makes my day.

Another thing I really love about Puerto Rico, is that there are no dice rolling in this game eliminating any luck factor.

So, yea, it's a great game, lots of strategy, and most of all fun.

A definite recommendation.