Ra, China Town, Taj Mahal, The Princes of Florence, Adel Verpflichtet, and The Traders of Genoa. These are the first six games in Alea's 'bookcase' series. If you play and enjoy German-style board games, then chances are high that at least two of these games are on your Top-20 list. Each game in this series provides a unique experience for players, yet each game shares the same high quality components and attention to detail that we have now come to expect from Alea. Even the most casual collector can appreciate the appearance of these games when stacked book-like on his game shelf. And now Alea unveils for us game #7 in the series: Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico is a game of resource management and empire building set in colonial Puerto Rico, the New World. Players start the game with their own small region of the island and one plantation. They must then use the skills of various island inhabitants to develop their regions by constructing buildings (each with a special ability), planting crops, and gathering colonists. The measure of a player's success is victory points, earned mainly by constructing buildings and shipping goods back to Europe. However, buildings cost money, while goods require plantations, workers, and mills. So players must understand how these various, often sparse, resources interact to maximize their victory points.

The components of Puerto Rico are high quality, consistent with the other games in Alea's bookcase series. Co-lonists and goods (corn, tobacco, indigo, sugar, and coffee) are represented by sturdy wooden bits. Playmats are thick and strong card stock, identical in quality to those in The Princes of Florence. Each player receives one playmat that represents his section of Puerto Rico. Each playmat has 12 empty rectangular spaces for buildings and 12 empty square spaces in the fields for plantations and quarries. There is also a central playmat on which available buildings as well as the doubloons (currency) are kept. These playmats make the superficial appearance of Puerto Rico similar to that of The Princes of Florence. Beyond appearance, however, Puerto Rico and The Princes of Florence are not all that similar other than both being fantastic games. Buildings, ships, plantations and 'role cards' are represented by rectangular pieces of gloss-coated cardboard, thicker and stronger than the buildings in The Princes of Florence. Despite these sturdy components, the appearance of the buildings in Puerto Rico is uninspiring.

Each building is labeled and contains all the necessary text to remind players of its special abilities. In this respect, it is very user friendly. However, the buildings are devoid of any artwork that could actually make them look like buildings. This lack of artwork and glut of text leads to a game that looks less beautiful than it could and much more complicated than it is. The eyes of new players invariably glaze over at the sight of a freshly setup game of Puerto Rico. It is often the job of the rules-explainer and veteran players to smack the attention back into these overwhelmed players and convince them that they will understand the game within the first round.

Puerto Rico borrows mechanics from many different games, while retaining a smooth integrated feel, free of fiddley exceptions. The central feature of the game is the roles that players must choose each turn. There are eight roles to choose from, each with a special ability - similar to games such as Verräter, Meuterer, and Ohne Furcht und Adel. What is unique to Puerto Rico, however, is that the special ability of a chosen role card is performed by all players. Thus, it is more accurate to refer to the roles as phases of a turn that can be played in a different order every turn or sometimes not at all, as will be described later. The player who chooses a role performs the corresponding action first and receives a special bonus for choosing the role. After each player has performed the action, the player to the right of the previous role-chooser openly chooses another role that has not yet been taken in the current turn. He and all other players perform the action on the new role and play continues this way until each player has chosen a role. This constitutes one turn of three, four, or five phases depending on the number of players in the game. As previously mentioned, there are eight roles available, yet only a maximum of five players to choose. Thus, three phases are not performed each turn. One doubloon is placed on top of each unused phase at the end of each turn, reminiscent of passed-over civilization tiles in Vinci. Accumulated doubloons on a role card go to the player that next chooses that role. Therefore, although it is theoretically possible for a phase to be repeatedly skipped for many turns, it rarely happens because the accumulated doubloons are too enticing to pass up.

Finally, a game of Puerto Rico ends in one of three ways making it difficult for games to drag on too long. The game ends after the current turn is completed when the colonist ship can no longer be refilled at the end of the Captain phase (described in more detail below), when the last victory point has been distributed, or when one person fills all of his building space (not plantations). In my experience, games nearly always end with the depletion of colonists.

The action of each role is simple and straightforward. The Settler role allows players to acquire plantations necessary for producing crops. The player who chooses this role may instead take a quarry that makes buildings cheaper to purchase. The Mayor role is how players acquire colonists to work in the players' buildings and plantations. The special actions of buildings cannot be used, and the plantations will not produce crops unless each are occupied by colonists. The player who chooses the Mayor role receives one extra colonist. The Supervisor role allows players to produce goods assuming they have occupied plantations and corresponding occupied factories. Corn is the only crop that does not require a factory for production. The player who chooses the Supervisor role receives one extra good. The Architect phase allows players to purchase buildings; a discount of one doubloon goes to the player who picked the Architect. Players may sell goods at the market when a player chooses the Trader role.

The market consists of four squares. Only one good may be sold to each square and each square must contain a different good. Each player may, if able, sell one good per Trader phase. The market is only 'cleared' when it is filled at the end of a Trader phase, which may be several turns later. The player who chooses the Trader role receives an additional doubloon if he sells a good. The action on the Captain phase requires players to ship goods to Europe if they are able. This is the trickiest phase of the game, although it is still relatively simple. There are three ships on which goods are placed. In a five-player game one ship can hold six goods, another can hold seven goods, and the third can hold eight goods. Onto each ship only one type of good may be loaded, and no two ships may be loaded with the same type of goods. Starting with the player who chose the Captain role, each player must, if he can, load as many goods as possible of one type onto a ship. Players receive one victory point per good they load. The first good loaded onto a ship determines the only type that can be loaded there, and means that that type may not be loaded onto the other two ships. Play continues until no player may legally load goods. Ships that are full are then 'cleared', and players must discard all but one (not one type) of their unloaded goods. Ships often go many turns before they are emptied like the Market of the Trader phase. This is often a very feared phase of the game because some players can earn many victory points as their goods are loaded onto the ships, while other players watch their hard-earned goods rot away without ever making it to Europe. Finally, there are two identical special roles called the Prospector. The player who chooses one of these Prospectors receives one doubloon; none of the other players partake in this phase. The Prospector is often the choice for players who are afraid that any of the other choices will help their opponents more than it will help them.

The buildings of Puerto Rico are the keys to tailoring one's strategy and come in three flavors. Factories are necessary for the production of goods. A plantation will only produce goods during the Supervisor phase if the player also owns the corresponding factory, and both buildings contain colonists. Five large buildings constitute the second flavor. There is one of each of these buildings, they are the most expensive, and they are double the size of the other buildings. Each large building has a special ability that awards bonus victory points for various resources at the end of the game, similar to Prestige cards in The Princess of Florence. For example, the player who owns the Fortress receives one victory point for every three colonists he has at the end of the game. Finally, there are two each of 12 different support buildings in four price categories. These are the essential tools with which players construct and attempt to carry out their strategies. One of the most popular initial strategies is the use of the Hazienda and Hospice to quickly gather colonists and plantations in order to start producing many goods. The Hospice allows a player to gain one colonist during the Settler phase, and the Hazienda allows a player to receive two plantations instead of one during the Settler phase. Another strategy is to quickly purchase both the Small and Large Markthalles, which give the player a +1 and +2 doubloon bonus when selling goods during the Trader phase. Then, use the income generated from this to invest heavily in buildings primarily for victory points and to end the game before those players using shipping strategies can gain too many victory points. What makes Puerto Rico an outstanding game is that there are many of these equally viable strategies with which a player can start. Furthermore, when these strategies get compromised (and they will) through the vicious tactics of opposing players, the depth of Puerto Rico allows for the execution of plans B, C, and D through clever tactics and the variety of support buildings.

The player-determined phase order of Puerto Rico leads to clever and often ruthless tactics. One of the most common tactics is illustrated in the following example. Andy has made himself the "King of Corn" by using a combination of the Hazienda, the Hospice, and a little bit of luck. So during his turn he chooses the Supervisor role to produce six corn for himself, while each of the other players each receive only one or two goods. Andy is very pleased with himself. However, Bob is next to choose a role and he is a wise and experienced player. He notices that although all three ships bound for Europe are empty, he, Carl, and Donna each have a different type of good. So, Bob chooses the Captain phase, loads his indigo onto one ship, then convinces Carl and Donna to occupy the other two ships with sugar and tobacco. Poor proud Andy has no ship in which to load his six corn and therefore must discard all but one of them at the end of the Captain phase.

Several important factors are illustrated in this example. First, timing and preparation are everything. Had Andy been a more experienced player, he would have never chosen the Supervisor phase, aware of what might happen. Alternatively, Andy could have prepared himself for such evil tactics by the previous purchase of a Warehouse, in which he could safely store his unused corn at the end of the Captain phase. The other factors that come into play with Puerto Rico's player-determined phase order are whistle-blowing, negotiation and perceived threat. In the above example, Bob was the whistle-blower drawing the attention of Carl and Donna to what Andy could potentially achieve. Of course at the same time Andy tried to shift the perceived threat onto Bob, since Bob would have an extra coffee at the end of the Captain phase with which he could fetch a handsome price during the next Trader phase. This is the part of the game that will ultimately determine its length. If players are allowed too much time to argue and bully other players, the game can easily run past the 2.5-hour mark. However, if players are experienced and keep this talk to a minimum, then a game of Puerto Rico can be finished in under two hours. Puerto Rico has quickly become one of my favorite games, currently competing with The Princes of Florence for the #1 position of my Top-10 list.

Both games are in Alea's 'bookcase' series and have a similar superficial appearance as previously mentioned, but in regards to actual game mechanics, the two games are quite different. What they do share that makes them so appealing is the same broad range of viable strategies. There is a key difference between Puerto Rico and The Princes of Florence that may determine a preference for one or the other. The worst thing a player can do to other players in The Princes of Florence is outbid or out-buy important limiting resources such as Landscapes and Freedoms. This tactic is also available to players in Puerto Rico, in addition to the tactics arising from the player-determined phase order. Thus one may feel there is more control in Princes of Florence - if you lose it's your own fault, while there is a greater degree of player interaction in Puerto Rico - the decisions of other players have a larger effect on one's success or failure.

I truly believe that Puerto Rico will become a classic game with staying power similar to such games as The Princes of Florence and Tigris and Euphrates; games that will regularly make it to the table even years after they've been released. It's challenging without being a puzzle, it's fun without being fluff, and it's just so darn satisfying to finally get your strategy up and running despite the continuous efforts of your opponents to thwart you. What more can you ask for?

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