Sunday, August 05, 2007

Farewell For Now Games of Puerto Rico

Nadine is off to the states for a while, and Rachel will be leaving for Canada before she returns. Today we played our "farewell for now" games of Puerto Rico.

I chose the following set of buildings:

- Assembly Line (1/1) - All production buildings may hold an additional colonist.
- Small Fashion District (2/1) - Trade Indigo at +2.
- Forest House (2/1) - May take Forest during Settler. Pay -1/2/3 for buildings when owning 1/3/5 forests.
- Storehouse (3/1) - Store any three barrels.
- Irrigation (4/2) - Produce one additional barrel during Craftsman.
- Trading House (5/2) - Trade directly to supply.
- Commodity Harbor (5/2) - Ship Indigo/Sugar for additional +1 VP.
- Beachfront (6/2) - May take Forest during Settler. You have Wharf with a size equal to the number of Forests you own.
- Specialty Factory (7/3) - +1 doubloon for all barrels of one type of good produced (may not choose corn)
- Large Business (8/3) - Pay 1 less for buildings. Earn +1 VP for first shipment.
- Library (8/3) - Double each privilege.
- Private Boat (9/3) - Wharf for 4 barrels of any type.
- Cathedral (10/4) - +1 VP / 3 VP from red building VPs.
- Fairgrounds (10/4) - +0/1/2/3/5/7 VP for 1/2/3/4/5/6 types of plantations
- Custom's House
- Fortress
- City Hall

This set is an interesting set that allows for a number of different strategies.

In the first game, I was second position with no corn showing. I chose the Forest strategy. Rachel took Irrigation and was shipping up an early storm. Nadine also had Irrigation, but it didn't help her as she kept having to dump barrels. Yeah, I was slowly building my way towards cash, but I produced only 2 goods for most of the game.

Commodity Harbor helped make up he difference. Add Large Business to that, and I earned significant shipping points even from only 2 or 3 barrels. I ended up with one big building to Nadine's 2 and Rachel's 1. Nadine had more building points, and Rachel more shipping points, but I ended up winning by 6 points, anyway.

In the second game, I went first. This time I tried Small Fashion District and Library. Nadine and Rachel both went for Irrigation again. Nadine also did well with Assembly Line and Specialty Factory. Rachel did quite well with Private Boat. Again, I had no VPs for some time. Nevertheless, I won again by another reasonable margin.

So, two victories for me. Yay. And no more games for the three of us until Simchat Torah or beyond.

Affiliate Headline News reports that doctors in Hong Kong have found that Mah Jong can trigger epileptic seizure. It goes on to say that this is a result of having to make decisions, implying that other board games with decisions could cause epilepsy?

RSDancey has a long article about the CCG game industry, making predictions about current industry players.

Mariacristina talks about a dream interpretation workshop where dreams are turned into board games.

The Las Cruses Sun-News covers board games, old and new.

Yehuda

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