Puerto Rico Game

The Puerto Rico game by Rio Grande Games is a strategy game that is based on the colonization of the island by Europeans. Serving as colonial governors, players are responsible for shipping goods, constructing factories and other buildings and growing crops. The game is for three to five players of ages 12 and up and requires a lot of observation and thought.

To get ready to play the Puerto Rico game, each player needs the following:

• One player board – There is no shared board.
• Doubloons – These serve as money during the game. In a three player game, each player gets two doubloons. For four or five player games, it increases to three and four doubloons respectively.
• One plantation tile – It will say either indigo or corn on it. The first and second players always get indigo tiles. The third player gets corn in a three player or four player game and indigo in a five player game. The fourth and fifth players always get corn.

These additional items should be laid out on the table so players can easily access them. All can be face up:

• Quarry tiles
• Plantation tiles
• Role cards
• Wooden cylinders representing goods
• Four colonist ships
• Wooden circles representing colonists
• Cardboard victory point chips

Decide on a player to go first and have that player choose one of the seven role cards. He or she performs the duties of the role of choice, as follows:

• Settler – Take one quarry tile or one plantation tile and put it on an empty space on the player board. Allow other players to take one plantation tile, if they so choose, passing play around the table.
• Mayor – Receive up to one colonist per empty circle on each quarry or plantation tile. This activates the tiles so that they can be used to produce goods. The mayor takes the first colonist from the colonist ship and play passes around the board until the ship is empty. Then the player adds up the remaining empty circles on all player’s cards and uses this number of colonists to restock the ship for the next turn.
• Builder – Put up a building for a cost of one doubloon lower than the normal cost. Let the other players build one building each at regular cost.
• Trader – Sell goods to the bank at a rate of zero doubloons for corn, one for indigo, two for sugar, three for tobacco and four for coffee and take one extra doubloon. Then allow other players to sell goods, in clockwise order. The trading house can only sell four goods per turn, and they must be of four different types. If there are less than four put up, they remain in the trading house until the next trader.
• Craftsman – Take goods (corn, coffee, tobacco or indigo) for each plantation or quarry tile that is manned by a colonist. Allow other players to take goods in clockwise order. Take a bonus good at the end of the turn, if there is one remaining of a producible crop.
• Prospector – Take one doubloon. Pass play to the next person with no further action.
• Captain – Load goods of the same type onto a cargo ship, getting one victory point chip per good added to the ship. Pass play around the table until all ships are filled or no one has any goods to play.

Once the first player chooses a role, the second player must choose one of the six remaining ones. This continues until each player has picked a role once. Place a doubloon on any role card that wasn’t used and start the process over. The player that chooses the role with a doubloon on it gets to keep that doubloon. Continue adding doubloons as long as no one uses a particular role.

In the end, the only thing that matters is how many victory points a player has. The player gets these points by shipping goods, as described above, and each building has a victory point value. Large occupied buildings qualify for extra points.

The game ends when one of three things happens:

• The mayor doesn’t have enough colonists to fill the ship.
• A player builds on his or her 12th space.
• There are no more victory point chips.

The winner is the person with the most victory points when this event occurs.

The Puerto Rico game can be difficult to learn, but once players understand all of the rules and the strategy behind them, they will find that it gets easier. This game is available at major toy retailers and online at Amazon.com, among other places.

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