Tuesday 18th January - Puerto Rico + Expansion
Well, numbers down to 3 tonight, but Puerto Rico plus the expansion beckoned and off we go. The new buildings in the expansion add some more options and the way you pick which buildings you use at the start of the game can seriously affect gameplay. As Steve found out, so did I come to that. Anyway these are the new buildings:
This expansion adds the forests and the following new buildings to the game: Aqueduct, Forest House, Black Market, Storehouse, Guesthouse, Church, Trading Post, Small Wharf, Lighthouse, Library, Speciality Factory, Union Hall, Cloister, and Statue.
The old and new buildings are laid out before the game starts and in turn order the players chose a building and place it on the game board. Once the all the spaces for a particular cost of building is filled any remaining buildings that share that cost are out of the game. So we started the game proper with no warehouses at all, only the new version of the storehouse. Also making the cut where the church, small wharf, lighthouse, library, statue, guesthouse and forest house. All these buildings add new options for gameplay and consequently the game took longer than normal for a 3 player game as none of us had played with the expansion before.
Richard grabbed one of the 2 storehouses straight away and I followed suit nicking the other one. Steve suffered after this as all through the game he had to throw quite a few barrels over the side. Steve reckoned he made a mistake buying the church, he was going for small production buildings and thought the bonus the church would give him would be significant. It didn’t help him as much as he hoped. I made a critical mistake I think in buying the library instead of the wharf. Although double privileges are handy, I had limited opportunities to ship. Mainly because Richard had a wharf and was tieing up one of the ships with his tobacco and was shipping stuff to his wharf as well.
I did get a couple of 10 buildings but in the end the lack of shipping VPs crippled me. Steve kept saying he wasn’t doing well and wanted to limit the number of points he was going to come last by. I think that was a good bluff. Richard was crafting and shipping at every opportunity and soon the game ended through lack of VPs. It was an enjoyable experience and in the end the scores were extremely close. In the pic you can’t really see the new buildings, they have a thicker line round the cost, and the forest tiles are bottom right.
Final Scores (VPs+buildings+bonuses)(*denotes starting player)
Richard 32+14+0 = 46, Steve 24+15+6 = 45, *Colin 12+25+7 = 44
Rating (0-10)
Colin 8.5
posted by Colin @ 11:57 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
As it was my choice this week (being between skiing trips the rota had been kindly been amended) I decided that I would like to have a go at the new official Puerto Rico expansion. As Colin has already listed the possible extra building and explained how you choose them I won’t expand to much on that bit, except to say that the lack of warehouses was obviously going to be a problem and that I accordingly made it my first objective to purchase one of the new Storehouse buildings, which I managed.
Being the last player in the first round I was the only player initially with Corn, but any possibility of becoming a Corn magnet was scuppered by Steve, sitting to my right, picking all of the corn initially available. Still I persevered initially with getting some income, purchasing the small market and picking up any jobs with doubloons on them. Eventually I was able to purchase a tobacco storage (To my amusement as Steve had gone to great lengths to stop me purchasing it, only forget that the builder would have money on it when I can to my turn) to go with a Tobacco plantation I had picked up earlier
With the tobacco storage both Colin and myself were keen to use the trade (he was producing coffee by now) and generate income. With my income I purchased a Wharf whilst Colin went and purchased a Library – as he say he thinks this may have been a mistake, but you never really know when you try something new just how it will turn out.
With an a active wharf and eventually crafting 3 Tobacco, 2 Corn & 1 Indigo I blocked one ship with the coffee (to reduce the shipping options for the others) and set about crafting and shipping (Causing poor Steve to have leave large amount of produce to rot on the Quay time after time) as much as possible.
The final score were very tight and luckily I was able to ship enough victory points to negate any advantage Colin &Steve had from having the special purple buildings.
The strange thing about this game is that I only purchased 2 of the new building, Storehouse and Forest House and the only one I reallty used was the Storehouse - which is similar to a warehouse in many respects (I only got the Forest House near the end of the game and only managed to get one forest!).
So basically I won the game by not really using the new buildings!
I think I need to play this game again.
I am sorry we missed this - it sounds like a fun expansion! I need to go and see if it is available on BSW yet, now...
--
Natalie
Post a Comment
<< Home