game where the gods came to die

As part of our quest for total geekiness, we are currently playing Puerto Rico.  It’s pretty good so far.  If you have no interest in weird European board games you may like to look away now.

Things I like:

• An interesting turn mechanic, where each player in turn gets to pick one of a number of roles for that round of the game – this requires you to think ahead about what other people are going to do, and also means that in subsequent rounds there will be scope for balancing things up/sweet, sweet revenge.
• The double-layered strategy involved – you have to build farms to generate resources, but also need factories to process them before you can get any benefit from them (as well as trading, so I suppose it’s really triple-layered).  A lot of the game seems to be about balancing the way you invest your resources to maximise profits.
• Brightly coloured pieces and quality, heavy guage cardboard.
• Hilarious slave-related euphemisms… the little brown pieces which represent your labourers are called “colonists”.  Presumably they have “voluntarily” left their native land to “colonise” the island and work on sugar plantations for their Spanish “friends”.*

What I don’t like:

• Too many arbitrary cards.  You can build various special buildings which do all sorts of different things.  Some are great, some are not so great.  The game tries to balance things by providing a limited number of them in various categories, and by limiting each player to one of each type.  However, there is still scope for a particular card to fairly arbitrarily swing the game around in one player’s favour.  I generally prefer games where winning or losing is a more gradual and predictable process.
• Too much restriction on trade.  I’m a hoarder, and I like holding onto my pieces in a game and using them when I see fit – but this game basically forces you to use and lose your resources periodically and non-randomly (unlike, say, Catan), which makes it hard to plan ahead.  You are also very limited in your ability to trade with “the bank” as it were.  These aren’t flaws, just part of the style of the game.
• Limited direct conflict with other players.  Normal people would probably see this as a plus.

So in the end, I like this, but not as much as I like Settlers of Catan.  Overall, I think I have a strong preference for games where a player’s destiny is almost entirely in their own hands, with minimal luck added to spice things up.  I also like being able to fully control everything in my own hand, rather than semi-arbitrarily losing all my resources when someone else makes a certain decision as happens in this game.

* Historical aside: in reality, the Spanish first wiped out most of the native population, then started importing slaves from Africa.  I also came across this interesting historical anecdote:

Over in the western Porta del Sol, in a valley at the left end of Puerto Rico’s Central Mountain Range, flanked by peaks Canta Gallo, Gordo and Pichón, lies the lesser known town of Añasco. It is called the “Town Where the Gods Came to Die,” because here, in 1511, Taíno indians finally realized that the Spanish were not immortal as once thought, a revelation that sparked Puerto Rico’s first crushed revolution.

This they did by drowning (and immediately asking for forgiveness, lest the “god” awaken in furor) the unsuspecting Diego Salcedo, a Spanish soldier that had been a guest of Urayoán, The Elder, chief of Yagüeka (the region now covering Añasco and Mayagüez). After three days of dancing and much witnessing by several caciques of the decomposing mortal body by the river, the Taíno revolution, led by Borikén’s supreme chief, Agüeybaná, broke into full swing across the island. We all know who won that one…