Here is an example of what a player board might look like during a game of Puerto Rico. Some things to note here:
- The Victory Point chips you get for shipping goods in the captain phase are kept face down, so that nobody knows how many points you actually have.
- This player is only 2 buildings away from filling up the building spaces on his board and ending the game.
- There are 2 manned coffee plantations, but the Coffee production building only has one colonist on it. During the Craftsman phase, only 1 coffee can be made.
- There are 2 sugar plantations, but only one of them is manned. The sugar production building has 2 colonists on it, but because only one plantation is manned, this player may only produce one sugar during the Craftsman phase.
That about wraps it up for this introduction to Puerto Rico. It's a great, great game, which plays equally well from 2 to 5 people. Even though there are a lot of things that you can do, some simple analysis of the other player's boards will generally tell you when it's not a good idea to choose a particular role, because it will help them more than it helps you.
I can't say enough good stuff about this game! As I mentioned in the introduction, the only downside to the game is the setup time involved; Counting out the colonists needed, sorting out the buildings that will be available and setting up the proper number of them, and so on. Once you get past that, however, it's tons of fun!
