Puerto Rico is a 3 to 5 player game in which the players are plantation owners who perform several roles which benefit all but in the end the one who picks the right roles at the right time will be the winner.

Puerto Rico Cover

This medium weight game is played in about 90 to 120 minutes.
Puerto Rico is currently on the number 1 spot on BGG (though Agricola is sure to take that spot in the coming months), it is a fairly simple to grasp game, but a very confusing one at first.

Puerto Rico boards

You win the game by accumulating Victory points, you get victory points any time you ship your goods to the old continent and by building on the island. This may seem easy enough to do, just plant your crops, produce and ship them or sell them to buy more buildings but how to accomplish it?

Here is where Puerto Rico shines; the player who is the governor will choose one of the various available roles.

Puerto Rico role cards

He will then perform a bonus action while other players perform a “normal” action, then it’s the next player’s turn to choose a role which has not been chosen and so on until everyone has had his choice. Only the role of the prospector (which gives the player who chooses it one coin) does not have benefits for the other players.

The governor token will then pass to the next player, all the roles which haven’t been chosen get a bonus coin and all the ones that were chosen are available again.

These roles allow you to bring more colonists to work with you, plant new crops, crafting your crops to goods, sell goods, build new buildings, send goods to the Old continent and dig for gold.

The game ends when there are no more victory points, when there are no more colonists or when a player builds his 12th building.

Puerto Rico building tiles

Buildings all have special abilities that only work when they are occupied by a colonist. Some of them are useful to boost what you can do in the game (like earning extra doubloons when you sell goods), others give you extra victory points at game end, and the production buildings which allow you to produce goods from whatever you have in the plantations.

Puerto Rico goods

The game has a useful reminder of what each role does on each player board and each building has a short version of their function. You will need the rulebook on the first games to actually know for sure what each building does as they are not explicit in extreme cases.

It’s an overall greatly produced game, with quality components, the only defect I can point in this area is that the buildings should have an illustration so we could more easily tell them apart (some editions like the polish edition do have them).

In the box
In the box you’ll find besides the rulebook:
- 5 player boards
- 1 governor card
- 8 role cards
- 1 game board
- 49 building tiles
- 54 doubloons (coins)
- 58 island tiles (i.e. plantations)
- 1 colonist ship
- 100 colonists
- 1 trading house
- 50 goods
- 5 cargo ships
- 50 Victory points chips

Is this game for me?
This game is all about the player interaction what a player does, influences all the others. The only random element about this game is the crop rotation, so plan in long term what you’re about to do and hope other players don’t screw you a lot (it’s often without intention though).

How many times will I play this game?
Well, you’ll play a lot and keep playing a lot until you get sick of it. The lack of random elements makes this a game to play with different groups, playing with the same group will often lead to some boring games as some people use the same strategy over and over again. This can be a solved a little just by people not seating in the same places, because the interactions will be completely different that way.

Final Score

It’s a great game, almost perfect, but because you’ll be playing it so often you’ll start to feel  that this game gets a little on the repetitive side.
See where Puerto Rico is available (prices from $34.95).

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