Puerto Rico

Game time: 40+mins

The aim of Puerto Rico is to win.

Winning is achieved by having the most Victory Points.

Each player is given a printed board on which there is a plantation section (squares) and a building section (rectangles).

A central board holds all the buildings tiles available to purchase (not enough of each type of building for all players). There are also shuffled stacks of plantation tiles, cards representing ships of different sized holds, a trading ship and a colonist boat holding colonists.

Finally, there are 5-6 action tokens.

Players take turns picking an action token. All players the get to undertake the related action with the player who picked the token getting a bonus for doing so. Tokens are not returned to the middle until all players have chosen a token. Tokens not picked in a round have a doubloon added to it to increase its appeal.

Actions are:

Build:- buy a building using your accumulate doubloons and add it to your map, if it fits;

Colonise:- get/move colonists and assign them to building and plantations;

Plough:- Choose a plantation from a random selection and add it to your map;

Harvest:- Plantations with matching buildings both occupied by colonists will produce goods;

Trade:- Sell a good for doubloons to the trading ship – only four spaces available and won’t buy anything it’s already got;

Captain:- Take turns to load all of one type of goods onto the ships, each ship will only stock one type of goods and will pay Victory Points for every item. Any goods left over are lost – bar one;

Mayor:- Get doubloons and nobody else gets to do anything;
The game ends when all the colonists or Victory Points are claimed.
Acquired Victory Points are counted as well as points for buildings and points from buildings that generate points for other reasons.
The winner is the one with the most points.