I tried playing the board game 'Puerto Rico 20' aiming for success in the new world by repeating farmland reclamation, building construction, and crop shipping.



In the Caribbean has become the United States of Dominion

Puerto Rico on the theme of the Spanish colonial era, the Japanese version of the board game 'Puerto Rico' new edition to ship to make the crop will give the earnings on the farm 'Puerto Rico 20' Will be available for pre-sale in the fall of Game Market 2021. The general release is expected to be ahead, but this time I was able to borrow the real thing, so I tried playing the real thing a little earlier.



◆ Table of contents
・ Opening-Preparing to play
・ Seven roles
·play

◆ Opening-Preparing to play
The outer box looks like this.



It is packed with components such as boards and pieces.



Among the components, the building tile with the name in green is expanded 1 'new building', the building tile with the name in red and the red wooden disc are expanded 2 'noble', the Buccaneer card and tile Expansion 3 'Buccaneer', target board is expansion 4 'Festival'. We'll play only the basic components first, so avoid these extensions elsewhere.



When you're ready to play with the basic components, the center of the table looks like this.



Each player will be given one player board. The board is divided into an island tile space at the top, a harbor at the top right, and a building space at the bottom. The basics of play are to build farmland and buildings, place workers to work to produce crops, sell them to merchants for profit, or export them to Spain to earn victory points.



◆ 7 roles
In this game, the play itself progresses relatively quickly in about 10 minutes per round, but it is quite difficult to grasp the rules as a preliminary step. There are many parts that depend on the choices of other players, so it is better to understand what role and what effect it has before playing.

In each round, the player chooses one role from 'Pioneer', 'Master', 'Architect', 'Director', 'Merchant', 'Captain', and 'Golden vein digger' and executes the action. In this phase, the actions are basically executed by all players in sequence, but only the active player gets the 'privilege' defined for each role. This is the characteristic of 'Puerto Rico' called 'Variable Phase System'.



' Pioneer ' is the role of creating a new farm on the island. You can choose one of the face-up farm tiles in play and place it in your cultivation space. As a privilege, the active player can place a quarry instead of a farm.



There are five types of farms: corn (yellow belt), indigo (blue belt), sugar (white belt), tobacco (brown belt), and coffee (black belt). Quarrying has the effect of lowering construction costs.



The ' master ' is the role of dispatching workers. Workers (purple pieces) can be obtained from the employment agency and placed on each tile. As a privilege, the active player gets an additional worker from the supply instead of the recruitment agency.



Each tile has one to three semicircles drawn on it and will not work without at least one worker deployed. During the master's phase, it is possible to relocate the workers who have already been placed, so it is important to look at the trends of other players and move to 'switch to production of another crop because this crop is likely to be saturated'. If there is no vacancy, the worker will leave it in the harbor until the next Master Phase.

At the end of the Master Phase, one worker will be dispatched from Supply to the Employment Placement for each player's 'building' empty semicircle. At a minimum, the number equal to the number of players will be replenished, so there will be no workers in the next master phase.



' Architect ' is the role of building a building on an island. You can choose one of the buildings on the game board and pay the cost (doubloon) to place it in your space. As a privilege, the active player can reduce the construction cost by 1 doubloon.



A building with a band of the same color as an agricultural product is called a 'production building', and in order to produce products, a 'production building' corresponding to the 'farm' is required. You can get the product only with corn, without the production building.



In addition, each building has a different effect, and in combination with the farm, each player will have a unique island. The five types of large buildings have a particularly high doubloon, but the effect is also strong, so I definitely want to build one in order to win. The building is divided into 4 stages according to cost, and the construction cost can be reduced according to the number of quarries in operation. Large buildings are commonly 10 doubloons, but if 4 quarries are in operation, they will be built in 6 doubloons.



' Director ' is the role of producing products. Products are created by combining farms and production buildings. For example, suppose you have the following islands. A corn plantation can produce corn on its own, but the plantation does not operate because there are no workers deployed, and corn production is zero. Indigo has multiple workers in the tub, but there is only one worker in the farm, so the production volume is 1. There are two people in the farm, but one in the roasting place, so the production is 1. Production cannot be increased without expanding the farmland and allocating workers to the buildings. As a privilege, the active player can get one additional product.



The 'merchant' is the role of selling goods. You can sell one item piece to a store. The sale price is fixed: 0 for corn, 1 doubloon for indigo, 2 doubloons for sugar, 3 doubloons for tobacco and 4 doubloons for coffee. As a privilege, the active player gets an additional 1 doubloon at the time of sale.



There are four empty spaces in the store, and if the empty space is filled before the turn, the player will not be able to sell the item. In addition, you can only place one product piece for each type in the store. In the following cases, sugar, corn, and coffee are already in place, so you can put indigo and cigarettes, but you cannot sell coffee. At the end of the Merchant Phase, if there are 4 merchandise pieces in the store, return the pieces to supply. If there are 3 or less, the product pieces will remain as they are.



The 'captain' is the role of shipping goods. I will leave the goods on the cargo ship.



However, for loading, 'one cargo ship handles only one type of product' 'cannot handle the type of product loaded on other cargo ships' 'when it is your turn, the player ships as much as possible. There is a rule that 'must be'. In the example below, the cargo ship still has free space, but it is already loaded with corn, indigo, and sugar, so it cannot load cigarettes and coffee. You will get 1 victory point for each loaded item. Also, as a privilege, the active player gets an additional 1 victory point.



One of the unloaded items can be stored in the port, but all others will be returned to the supply without any reward.

' Golden vein digging ' is a slightly special role, there is no common action for all players, and only the active player gets 1 doubloon from the bank as a privilege.



◆ Play
The card 'Governor ', which has a similar design to the role card, indicates the starting player of the round. At the start of 4-player play, the 1st and 2nd players will start with indigo, and the 3rd and 4th players will start with corn.



Here's what the first player will have at the start. 3 Doubloons are the initial funding.



Select 'Pioneer' as the first move.



We will build a quarry immediately and aim to build a building at low cost. Other players have no privileges, so they each clear a farm.



When Player D creates a farm, a new governor-general Player B is born and goes to the second round. Player B selects 'Architect'.



Although there is a quarry, there are no workers deployed, so the cost reduction effect cannot be obtained. However, if you do nothing from the second round, you will be late, so pay 1 doubloon to make a 'small indigo tub'.



After the 4th round, the governor-general makes one lap. Since there are four players and seven positions, there are three positions that were not selected. One doubloon from the bank will be placed in this position. If it is not selected in this next lap, one more doubloon will be added, so there will be a position that will be selected by saying 'I do not want to take action in the position but I want doubloon'.



'Golden vein digging' originally gets 1 doubloon by card action, so if you are left unselected, you will get 2 doubloons next time.


As the game progressed, products began to line up in both cargo ships and shops. However, there are three types of corn, sugar, and indigo, and I feel that the island's products are biased.



Eventually, the cargo ship's corn was full and shipped (returned to supply).



In the middle, with the effect of an architect and two quarries, he succeeded in building a 6 doubloon coffee roaster for 3 doubloons.



However, player D next door has only two farms and four quarries in operation.



I can't afford to lose, so I proceeded with the construction plan and succeeded in building a large building 'Guild Hall'.



The game says, 'At the end of the Master Phase, you can't put the required number of Worker Pieces in the Employment Place.' 'During the Architect Phase, at least one player fills all 12 of his building spaces.' 'Captain The final round is the one in which at least one of 'All Victory Chips have been won during the phase' is satisfied.

In this game, the conditions of 'worker pieces run out' and 'someone fills the building space' seemed to end at the same time, so we built a 'small sugar refinery' at the end to increase the victory points. In the end, I got 54 victory points. However, the top was 61 victory points, so it was slightly short of reach.



When I first started reading the manual, I was worried about how to use the seven roles properly, but when I was playing, I suddenly realized that I don't need this role. I went.

Due to the characteristic 'Variable Phase System', your island grows and the islands of other players grow at the same time, so depending on the timing of role selection, it may greatly benefit other players, so it is direct. Although there is no attack that destroys the opponent's building, you can enjoy thrilling bargaining.

A play report article will be posted later on the expansion.

[to be continued]

Related Posts:

in Review,   Game, Posted by logc_nt