Raanana Session Report, in which Laurie compares Puerto Rico favorably to Age of Empires III

Participants: Jon, Peleg, Abraham, Rochelle, Tal, Ellis, Laurie, Ben Ah, a normal sized game night (for Israel). It's been a while since I saw one. Rochelle is a new player. The others have experience with gaming.

Parade

Abraham 16, Tal 19, Rochelle 19, Peleg 23, Jon 23

Or something like that. First play for everyone except me, I think. Everyone enjoyed it, and there was definite direct confrontation.

Settlers of Catan

Abraham 10, Tal, Peleg, Rochelle

First play for Rochelle. She liked it a lot. She kept Longest Road for some a lot of the game - though not because she was pursuing it - until Abraham Tal stole it. I don't know much else about the game.

Puerto Rico

Jon 56, Rochelle 51, Ellis 41, Ben 33

First play for Laurie, third or so for Ellis. Ben had played before, but certainly nowhere near as much as I had. I'm guessing that his experience is limited to a small group of other players, a) considering his strategy and b) considering two rules misconceptions that he held. As to the former, his first play as Governor was Builder/Construction Hut, which he followed up with Hospice, Hacienda, and three quick quarries (and eventually a forth). He shipped only 8 points, and ended with two large buildings, one of them unmanned. As to the latter, his first misconception was that you could buy multiples of the same building, and his second was that, if you didn't like the available plantations, you could instead draw one at random from the face down supply.

Ellis also put stock in a Hospice and some early corns. His major mistake was in choosing tobacco as his trade good, even though Laurie on his right had already acquired tobacco. Laurie accepted guidance, of course, but also made a good number of her own decisions. She had a hard time keeping the roles straight, especially as to how they fit into the "production path".

As second player, I took Small Market on round one, and then Settler/quarry, despite two available corn plantations. Most of the rest of the corn showed up early, so I got some anyway. I took indigo and coffee. I had a coffee monopoly until the end of mid-game. My chance for a third row building was at the end of mid-game and I chose Harbor over Factory (I had enough money with coffee). The other players also left me Guild Hall, even after I encouraged them to take it.

Like many Puerto Rico games, unexpected choices occurred frequently. While this sometimes helped me, it also sometimes threw me off my game.

Whatzit

Tal, Rochelle, Abraham

I picked this up from someone for free. No one is interested in playing the game, but the cards are fun to look at.

Yinsh

Abraham, Rochelle

First play for Rochelle. It started off okay, but once there were a lot of pieces on the board, she started to get a headache.