The PR Massacre

Well, not really. But my wife beat me in two games of 2-player Puerto Rico. It was an interesting set of buildings:

Assembly Line 1/1: All production buildings can hold additional colonist.

Small Fashion District 2/1: Trade indigo at +2.

Forest House 2/1: You can take forests. -1/2/3 ... building cost for 1/3/5 ... forests. Forests don't need colonists.

Small Warehouse 3/1: standard.

Guest House 4/2 (2 circles): Move colonists off of Guest House onto other buildings at any time.

Irrigation 5/2: Produce an extra barrel. [Note: this usually costs 4/2, but I thought it might be too strong. Nope. 4/2 is the right cost.]

Large Market 5/2: Trade at +2.

Beachfront 6/2: You can take forests. You have a wharf with capacity equal to the number of forests that you have. Forests don't need colonists.

Factory 7/3: standard.

Large General Workhouse 8/3 (2 circles): Each circle counts as production when paired with any manned plantation. Decide each time you produce.

Large Business 8/3: Pay 1 less for any building. +1 VP if you ship any goods. [i.e. Builder and Captain privileges.]

Private Boat 9/3: Ship any three additional barrels of any type, as wharf.

Cathedral 10/4: +1 VP/3 red building VPs.

Fairgrounds 10/4: +0/1/2/3/5/7/9 VP for having 1/2/3/4/5/6/7 different types of plantations.

Fortress 10/4: standard.

Customs House 10/4: standard.

City Hall 10/4: standard.

As you can see from the above, the forest strategy is an interesting new stategic addition to the normal buildings. Large Business is a better building than Harbor in a 2 or 3 player game (we play 2 player: 3 ships, 6 roles, 3 roles/round, 50 VPs, 37 colonists, -2 barrels, 1 GP/player at start). LGW is a little powerful, but not overly so, even in combination with Factory. Fairgrounds was also a little strong; usually it caps at +7, but with forests in the game, you could get to +9.

In the first game, Rachel started off with the Forest House. I perversley decided to take the Beachfront. I never used the wharf capability, but seeing as she was corn player, it seemed like a good idea. She ended up getting Factory and then Fairgrounds, while I had Large Business. She eked me in shipping and bonus building points.

In the second game, she started as corn again. This time I started with Forest House and eventually took Beachfront as well. I even had a quarry and three large buldings, but it wasn't enough to compete with her corn advantage, Large Business, and Factory.

This corn advantage seems to be a problem. I'm considering changing to sugar/indigo instead of indigo/corn for starting positions. Has anyone ever tried that?

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In other gaming news, I received some helpful feedback on my game. It seems few people like the Menorah theme. Oh well. I have been spending time cutting up the last prototypes in preparation for mailing.

Now I get to start making new ones with a different theme.

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Oh, and I'm finally adding some of my session reports to the Geek.

Yehuda