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Puerto Rico 1897 is a revised version of the original 2002 game Puerto Rico. Designed by Andreas Seyfarth the original Puerto Rico was ranked number one on BGG for five years and still sits in the top 50 today. Puerto Rico 1897 includes the standard game plus 4 expansions and although I must admit to never playing the original, I’m plucky and did my research. While the mechanics of the game remain largely unchanged it has fresh new imagery, including depictions of actual buildings on the buildings tiles, but the biggest change is the shift in terminology.
If like me, the most history you’ve learnt since school is from a children’s TV show, then you’re probably as lost as I was, because horrible histories is yet to cover what happened to Puerto Rico in 1897. Luckily the game itself gives a little history lesson at the back of the rules booklet.
1897 was the year Puerto Rico broke away from Spanish colonialism, so within the game, what were previously known plantations, become estates, the colonists become workers and the role of mayor becomes the recruiter. The theme has shifted from Spanish colonists using the island for their own ends, to Puerto Rican natives enriching their own community.
Island paradise
Puerto Rico 1897 is an engine building, worker placement, euro style game for up to five players, you’ll be playing a farmer trying to build their empire by planting valuable crops in your estates and in turn purchasing buildings to not only help you transform said crops into shippable barrels of goods but to also give you other advantages within the game.
Everyone has an island board with farm spaces for your estates and a city for your buildings, there is also a central game board with a space for each type of building to be kept until it’s bought. You’ll find you have numerous piles of goods barrels, workers, coins and Victory points etc. surrounding the board so if you have any natty little counter holders, there has never been a better time to use them! The aim of Puerto Rico 1897 is to collect the most victory points, which are primarily received by shipping barrels of goods on cargo ships, but there are also victory points to be had for building properties amongst other things.
Each round sees players taking turns to select one of the roles available, these include, planter, recruiter, builder, craftsman, trader and captain. Each role has an action and an advantage, all players will be able to complete the action if they wish, but only the player who selected the role will get to use the advantage. For instance if a player chooses the builder, the advantage here is to pay one coin less than the value of a building, so everyone will have the chance to buy a building if their funds allow but only the player who chose the role will be allowed to pay one coin less. Every player in turn will then get a chance to select a role and the same rules apply, this continues until all players have picked a role. Then roles are returned to the table and the next player clockwise becomes the lead (lead player is signified by the governor card) so they can now get first dibs on the role they want to utilise. Gameplay continues like this until one of the end game conditions are met – more on that later.
Remember those estate plots and buildings I mentioned earlier? Well for them to yield results, they’ll need to be occupied by workers, whether it be a sugar mill to assist you in producing a sugar barrel or the small market which will give you an extra coin when selling a barrel of goods, all need a worker for them to… well… work! You’ll be able to acquire ‘workers’ when the recruiter role is active, but place them strategically as you won’t be able to move your workforce until the next recruiter phase and anything unmanned can’t be utilised.
The other four main roles let you do various things; the planter gives you an estate, which will be one of five different fields of produce; the craftsman lets players produce any barrels of goods that they can; the trader allows you to sell one barrel of goods to the trading house for coins. And the captain. The oh so troublesome captain, because making use of the captain at the right time is key.
The captain is the only role where the action is compulsory for every player and that action is to ship all the goods you can. And don’t forget shipping goods gets your victory points, all sounds good right?
Well. Maybe…
Unfortunately, there are only so many cargo ships and each one can only cater for one type of produce at a time meaning you could be left holding some stock. And it turns out after lugging all your hard earned goods aboard the ships, you can only manage to carry one type of produce now, and only one barrel of it at that!
To ship or not to ship that is the question
The role selecting mechanism is very clever, as you’ll need to choose wisely as what’s beneficial for you may also be beneficial for someone else, and you don’t want to also give them the upper hand. In fact if your eye really isn’t on the ball or barrel, your choice can even end up being detrimental for yourself! Then there's the fact that all resources are limited, there's only so many buildings, barrels and workers and while any shipped barrels do go back into the supply it still makes for tactical decision making. Also everything happens in turn order, so quite possibly something could run out before it gets to your opponent… or you.
As you’d expect the goods that are worth the most coins need the production buildings that cost the most, and the larger more expensive community buildings that have the better benefit also cost more too. There are so many ways you can build your winning strategy in this game - top tip, bear in mind that coins are not victory points…
The end of the game is triggered when one of three things occurs; there are no more workers to refill the work register; you run out of physical victory point tokens; one player fills their city spaces on their island board. Sometimes you may find yourself wanting to take the role you know will end up triggering game end, but you’re not quite ready yet?
The setup for the basic game varies slightly depending on how many players there are but for the most part it’s a case of larger quantity of players’ larger quantity of relevant pieces etc. Higher player count will also require ships that can transport more goods during the captain’s role. For a two player games there are a few more tweaks in gameplay too, like the number of buildings are reduced and each player chooses three roles within a round. The set up scales very well, and this helps the gameplay stay smooth and stops games dragging on.
When you’ve San Juan expansion, you’ve seen em all…
Well not really as all four expansions have something different to offer. I believe all four were previously available for the original Puerto Rico but with slightly different terminology so no doubt details have been changed to be more in line with this new theming.
The first expansion is ‘new buildings’ you’ll never guess what this introduces to the game?
Well yes, ahem… buildings… fourteen of them to be exact, with a real mix of new functions, most notably there are a few more that involve victory points (VP) like the church that allow you to gain extra VP when building certain other buildings and even one that lets you trade a VP back to reduce the cost of a building. Wow I just said buildings a lot! However some of the buildings (and again!) in this expansion fall a bit flat for me as they have functions that are somewhat similar to ones in the base game, but what this expansion does introduce is variability. Before you start the game, players in turn order will select which buildings to add to the central game board (following some rules) and of course inevitably some won’t make it, so your favourite might not even get played!
Expansion two is by far my favourite – ‘the citizens’. This not only introduces even more buildings, it also brings citizens. Citizens act exactly like workers but at the game end are worth one VP each, also when used to occupy some of the new buildings you access a different function. This expansion can also be combined with expansion one where players can pick and choose what to include.
‘The smuggler’ is a new role provided in expansion three. If you choose to be the smuggler you and you alone may pick from one of the four actions. Raid; empty a cargo ship and steal three barrels for yourself. Plunder; remove goods from the trading house and take 1 VP for each. Poach; reduce the number of workers available and keep some of them. Reverse; select any unused role card, if someone wants it, you’re rewarded with 3 coin from the bank, but if no one uses it by the end of the round, you may use it for yourself!
Four fantastic, if a little underhanded things you can do if you choose the smuggler, however once you have chosen it you may not choose that role again until somebody else has. I really like this expansion, however I feel when we’ve played it’s been massively underused by the other players… perhaps I just want to be a pirate!
The final expansion included is ‘the festival’, although probably my least favourite, it did get way more use than I expected. You’ll select an estate tile, a building tile and a combination of three barrels at random. The first player to have three of said estate gets three workers, the first player to match the combination of barrels, receives three coin and the first person to buy the building gets 3 VP. I think I felt this kind of took away from the main aim of the game and would be distracting, but actually it wasn’t too bad.
Learning and growing
As well as learning about Puerto Rico’s pivotal year I’m also still learning about some gaming terminology as compared to some I'm still wet behind the ears! Games like this, classed as ‘euros’ I’ve never really played before, as in my shed of a mind I categorise them as beige and bland. Well this euro - although it does have a beige box – has made me re-think my narrow-mindedness.
Sure theres a lot going on especially if you’re new to this genre, but Puerto Rico 1897 eases you in with great results. I believe originally there was confusion over some of the tiles and the rules in this version and while there is still the odd error for the most part everything is well laid out. The rule book is easy to understand and the building tiles now not only have symbols that help you remember which role phase they could be triggered on but also a (very) brief rundown of what the function of the building is.
Whilst currently the maximum player count I’ve played at is three, I’m eager to get a larger number of players to see how that shifts up the strategizing as resources will be even sparser. Yes the setup is a little fiddly as theres lots of pieces, but it’s well thought out and nothing is unnecessary.
All round a great game, and a great way to reintroduce a classic to gamers like me who haven’t had the opportunity to play it. Although there's lots going on, for me it never feels too overwhelming as the game gradually builds to the final. The play time is around an hour and a half with three players, but it feels much quicker, in fact the only thing to make it feel sluggish are indecisive players.
