Puerto Rico is one of the top board games, and continues to amaze people with its brilliant mechanics. Puerto Rico is a well-run game that can be played in about an hour and handles up to five players. Players take on the Role of a Colonial Governor that Run their own island of San Juan. Each player uses a separate small board with spaces for city buildings, plantations, and resources. The goal of the game is to accumulate victory points by shipping goods to Europe or by constructing buildings. All players share the three boats and a trading house. The trading house will help you earn doubloons and the boats help earn victory points. Doubloons can be used to buy buildings, which allow players to produce more crops or give them other abilities. Every person in the beginning is given a crop to start out with, usually corn or indigo. Every building and crop must be occupied by a colonist to operate.

In order to start out someone must select the governor and become the player to make the first move. During each round, players take turns selecting one out of seven role cards. When a role is chosen, every player gets to take the action associated to that role. The player that selected the role also receives a small privilege to go along with their role. For example, choosing the “Builder” role allows all players to construct a building, but the player who chose the role may do so at a discount on that turn. After everybody has gone through one round, one doubloon will be placed on the role cards that did not get selected. Each player’s shipping chips are kept face down and come in values of one or five. This prevents other players from being able to determine the exact score of another player. As you go further and further into the game you have to start making your moves more strategically. Think of what would benefit you the most and would the other play a disadvantage. The Game is over when victory points are completely gone or the player has built a building in all of their spaces. Sometimes you have to end the game early to defeat the other player. For Example Dr. Peterson and I played a match were I had plenty of crop to sell for Victory Points, but before I was able to get more points off of crops, Dr. Peterson Filled all of his building spaces to end the game early. Dr. Peterson was thinking strategically and won by earning points through buildings instead of crops and it worked! Examples like this represent the different approaches you can take to try and win. If you like it fast paced and daring then you would love Puerto Rico.

by Jade Bradford