--- Matthew Horn <mhorn@...> wrote:
> But Puerto Rico (the game) seems to take the best
> elements from Die Handler and Princes of Florence
> and put them in one game. A very satisfying gaming
> experience.

I like both PoF and Die Handler. Puerto Rico does
remind me a little of both. After two games - one
with 5 players and one with 4 - I found the game to be
fun and interesting as well.

> THings I liked about PR:
> - No yawning. THere is little to no downtime in PR
> since everyone goes on everyone's turn (mostly)
> - No first-mover advantages. There are multiple
> paths to victory (The CORN strategy is a winning
> one?!?!) and the player order does not seem to
> matter.
> - No dice. THis game has a very low randomness to it
> (just placement of plantation tiles is random)
> - Pretty pictures. PR has nice bits and color scheme
> (the color scheme is one of the things I really
> dislike about Pussies of Florence, but the blues and
> greens of PR are very pleasing to the eye)
> - A bit gamey. THis is not a game you will introduce
> your family to on Christmas day. That is a good
> thing as I like meat.

I agree with all of the above except the part about
the game art which I don't like all that much.

> Things I was not crazy about:
> - Longer to take out and set up than some games. PR
> is difficult to set up because with varying number
> of playuers, you have to set up different numbers of
> EVERYTHING (colonists, plantations, personalities,
> etc)
> - Game length. THe game is a little on the longish
> side. But then again, we were playing with Adam!
> Seriously, even with experienced players, PR will be
> close to 90 minutes.
> - Unintuitive rules -- if I didn't like the game so
> much, I might accuse it of being fiddly. This game
> needs to be played a few times before you can PLAY
> it. An example of unintuitive rules: the existence
> of the "San Juan" region seems to be an afterthought
> in the design.

The game is a pain in the ass to set up. As far as
play length. I can see this game playing in 75
minutes. Maybe 90 with pokey players.

As far as the rules being unintuitive, I thought
everything was fairly straight foward. What seemed to
make the rules a little complicated outside the basic
turn sequence were the buildings which created all
kinds of exceptions to the basic turn sequence. After
a few playings, you should be familiar with the
various buildings, but that definitely can cause some
confusion at the start.

As I mentioned above, I played a five player game with
Richard, Jake, Phil and Brian. It took us about 15
minutes to set up the game and go through the rules
for the first time, but then we were off and running.
I think everyone in our game regretted some early
decisions later in the game as they put us in bad
positions. I'm also not sure if anyone followed a
given strategy in this first game. Jake ended up
winning (I'm not quite sure how), but the scores were
very tight.

I had a chance later in the weekend to try a 4 player
game. This time I tried to follow a specific strategy
and it worked to a certain extent. I finished second,
but I think the game has a number of paths you can
take to try to win the game. Like Dave, Matt and
others who have reported in on Puerto Rico, I liked it
quite a bit and look forward to repeated playings.

Craig


=====
Craig W. Massey
cwmassey@...

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