Yi Ting Chen (Jeffrey) - Puerto Rico Board Game Analysis Report #1
Puerto Rico is an interactive board game designed by
Andreas Seyfarth and published by Alea in 2002. Until
today, Puerto Rico has received numerous awards and is
highly ranked by many authentic websites, such as
BoardGameGreek. This game can have a total of 2 to 5
players and each of them may spend up to 150 minutes to
finish it. Before playing Puerto Rico, my friends and I went
on Youtube to find some tutorial videos. These videos
gave us a better understanding of the game and saved us
much time of figuring out the rules.
Unfortunately, we had to play Puerto Rico
twice because we misinterpreted one rule at
the first time. We were supposed to pass the
"governor" token at the end of each turn to the
next person. So, each player had a chance to
select a role first. Without passing the
"governor" token around, the game became
unfair and unbalanced. The person with the
"governor" token always had the advantage to pick what role he wants first and the
last person was always left with the remaining tokens. So, to fix this mistake, we
decided to play Puerto Rico again.
After correcting the mistake, the game had become much interesting and exciting at
the second time. Each of us went with different strategies and tried to get as many
victory chips as we could. Two of my friends went for buildings instead of victory
chips because buildings could transfer into victory chips at the end of the game. To
win this game, there are three criteria:
1. Mayor is selected and there are not enough colonists to refill the colonist ship with the appropriate
amount.
2. Captain is selected and the last VP chip is given to a player. (Additional chips are to be used once the
supply is exhausted)
3. Builder is selected and at least one player has built their 12th city space.
When one of the criteria is met, the game is over and the person with the most
victory chips plus building values wins the game. The final winner of our second
game play was Eric.
With the experience I had in Puerto
Rico, I figured out there are two
primary strategies to win this game.
The first strategy is to produce many
low investment plants, such as corns.
This is because one low investment
plant and one high investment plant
get the same victory chip in return, but low investment plant cost less to produce.
Therefore, players can get more victory chips with only producing low investment
plants. Another strategy will be to produce high investment plants and sell them to
get many doubloons. High investment plants receive more doubloons compared to
low investment plants when players sell them to traders. With the extra doubloons,
players can use them to buy more buildings or higher value buildings. So, in the end,
these buildings can transfer into many victory chips and this is how second strategy
can win the game. Overall, these two strategies are basically using either low
investment plants or high investment plants to win.
I have to say that I really love Puerto Rico. The game is designed in a very balanced
way that every player has a chance to win it. However, nothing is perfect. I think
there is one improvement needed to be done in this game. Before the game starts,
every player gets a free plant, but depends on your "governor" order, not every
player has the same plant. For example, in our situation, we have five players in the
game. The first three players get to take indigos for their plants and the last two
players can only take corns, which indigos can trade for more doubloons than corns.
This is kind of unfair. Designer makes this rule because of the "governor" order.
However, if everyone has the same opportunity to become "governor", I do not think
players should get different plants at the start.
Overall, I have learnt a lot from playing Puerto Rico. I know designers have put lots of
efforts in producing Puerto Rico. They draw everything from sketch and have to
consider aspects of the board game, such as fairness. Hopefully, one day I can make a
game similar to this one.