Product Description

The players are plantation owners in Puerto Rico in the days when ships had sails. Growing up to five different kind of crops: Corn, Indigo, Coffee, Sugar and Tobacco, they must try to run their business more efficiently than their close competitors; growing crops and storing them efficiently, developing San Juan with useful buildings, deploying their colonists to best effect, selling crops at the right time, and most importantly, shipping their goods back to Europe for maximum benefit. A novel game system lets players choose the order of the phases in each turn by allowing each player to choose a role from those remaining when it is their turn. No role can be selected twice in the same round. The player who selects the best roles to advance their position during the game will win.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #761 in Toys & Games
• Brand: Rio Grande Games
• Model: 4098399
• Released on: 2007-05-01
• Dimensions: 8.75" h x 2.75" w x 12.25" l, 2.50 pounds

Features

• One of the most popular Eurogames
• Brilliant mechanics
• Each player utilizes different roles to score the most victory points
• Great for game nights
• Everyone plays all the time

From the Manufacturer
Prospector, captain, mayor, trader, settler, craftsman, or builder? Which roles will you play in the new world? Will you own the most prosperous plantations? Will you build the most valuable buildings? You have but one goal: achieve the greatest prosperity.

Customer Reviews

BEST STRATEGY GAME EVER!
Winner of an International Gamers Award in the General Strategy category for 2003.

Chosen Best Strategy game in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands and USA

Winner of the Golden Feather for the best game rules.

THIS GAME ROCKS!!!

I am a game collector and have played them all. Honestly this game is by far the best game I have ever played. My friends and I are literally addicted to it. Having NO DICE at all means 100% strategy and ZERO LUCK. You have to make the right decisions or you WILL lose. The best part is that you will not find a winning pattern on this game. The strategy used to win in one game will be useless once your friends catch up on it. This means each time you play it will be different.

Here is a raw description of this great game.

Each player has a small board with city and land spaces to build on. You start with one plantation and a small amount of money. Each player in turns will chose a role according to their strategy. These roles will allow you to create more plantations, build structures in your city that will help you according to your strategy (e.g. warehouse, office, factory, harbor, etc), bring in workers for your crops and buildings, produce goods, and sell or export those goods in exchange for money or victory points. You have to choose these roles carefully since they will also make or break your opponents.

Each building you chose to purchase will give you an advantage and will cost differently. The most expensive building will give bonuses at game end. So you must choose how to spend your hard earned money wisely. The crops you chose to build also work differently. Corn can be produced quickly and in larger amounts and have little to no value in the market but gives you an edge while exporting. On the other hand coffee is slow and hard to produce but will sell nicely in the market giving you a large amount of money. Of course you can produce a little of everything if you wish, though it takes more time.

It will take you a couple of rounds before you get a hang of this game but once you do there is no turning back. You will get hooked, guaranteed. The game is at its best with five players so include as many as you can. It can be a bit pricey but have in mind that every single piece of this game is made of high quality material. I'm saying no plastic but wood pieces, and the tiles and boards are made to last a lifetime of total abuse. You will not find this quality in any Hasbro game. This game looks like a Special Collector's Edition kind of thing. It is very educational and will stimulate your thinking cells to the max. Game play will last about 1½ to 2 hours.

An EXPANSION PACK is available which you can download for FREE at riograndegames.com. This expansion pack is awesome and a must for experienced players.

If you call yourself a game player and have not played Puerto Rico you have missed on one of the best experiences in your life. This is a no brainer. Buy this game and thank me latter. BRAVO Amazon! I never thought you will listen to my pleads to include this awesome game in your site.

EXPERTS: To make this game even better we raised the victory points to 200, use all the expansion tiles and invented a large building bonus card called World Bank - It will allow it's owner to count all the doubloons he has in hand as victory points at game end (cost 10 doubloons/value 4 vp's). Try it; it will broaden your strategy options.

Have fun!!

How to Run an Island
Players get a chance to make the island of Puerto Rico a successful venture. This is done by producing corn, indigo, coffee, tobacco and sugar. Success comes from production, sales and trade. Except for corn, the commodities need to be processed after growing. Players make plantations and build buildings but each of these needs population (colonists) to activate. Players try to balance production and trade in order to gain the most victory points. Sales produce money but shipping goods produce victory points. Different buildings help with production or offer other benefits including exceptions to limitations.

On each cycle of the game there is one phase per player. Each player takes turns being first in the cycle. The phase is determined by a player taking a job. They can be Mayor and provide new population to man the buildings and plantations. They can be a builder, a prospector, captain of a trade ship, or other jobs. There are more jobs than players so each cycle will be made up of different phases. Players must figure out which phase will be best for them on their turn and how best to play the phases of other players' choosing. Once a cycle ends, all jobs are again available.

The game consists of player boards for keeping track of their plantations, buildings, money, produce and victory points. There are tiles representing jobs, buildings, plantations, money, the colony ship, trade ships, money and victory points, and wooden tokens to represent colonists and barrels of produce. All of these pieces make set-up take a little longer but helps to add a great deal of variety to each playing of the game. Game ends when a city fills up, there are no more colonists, or no more victory tokens. Victory points and bonuses are tallied to determine the winner. Game play runs over an hour and improves as players become familiar with each of the different jobs and types of buildings. Although there are a lot of different things in the game, it is very easy for a first-time player to follow and do well. Check it out.

There is also a card-game version called San Juan.

Most impressive game i've ever played
Puerto Rico is the best all around board game i have ever played. The balance i would say is near perfection and of all the games I've played the score was always very close.
While this game out of the box takes a little while to understand the nuances of the rules and how to take advantage of the different roles, it's very worthwhile and rewarding. After two plays, my friends were all very into it and anxious to play again.

The fifty foot view of the game looks something like this. Everyone has a board that has an area for placing plantations and city area for buildings. Plantations grow crops, you need certain buildings to produce/store the crops which go in the city area and you eventually want to ship those crops(back to the mainland...whateva) and that's how you ultimately score points. There are variety of different crops you can grow and different types of buildings which give different type of advantages(and are worth a certain # of victory points). Each person takes a turn and on their turn chooses a certain role which is how the game functions. Each role offers different functions/phases of the game, ie building where everyone gets to build a building, or captain where you get to ship your goods....the player choosing the phase typically gets and additional bonus which is where a lot of the strategy revolves around.

Some of the things i like about Puerto Rico, are that you really don't know who's going to win until the game ends and the points are counted up. This keeps everyone interested and playing intently throughout. You also have to be alert on each turn and take advantage of other players moves in order be successful. Also, as the other reviewers have stated, luck simply is just not a factor so it's hard for people to be sore losers or point to game flaws that caused them to lose(or someone else to win), instead it's typically a friendly chat about how picking x and y strategy seemed to make the most sense.

The only real downside to this game, is that there really isn't the need for much interaction with other players, or any direct conflict. Those coming from a Settlers of Catan background, the robber phase and the trading are really what makes that...these features are lacking in Puerto Rico. Some say the captain phase can be like the 'conflict', but i disagree. This is a small quibble, and allows you to play with friends and non-friends with no-one getting upset.

Many say that this game is too deep for non-gamers and that you may want to start off with simpler games to get up to speed. I would actually disagree with that. I've bought a lot of games in the past few months, and i think we could have played Puerto Rico right off the bat. If you are in the market for new board game, go with this game! Take a quick read through the rules, set it up and take a few rounds to get the questions out of the way...than start over and you'll be all set to enjoy a great game.