Puerto Rico: My Favorite Game Mechanism

Jamey discusses his favorite mechanisms in Puerto Rico.

[KillJoy]

By far my favorite thing about Puerto Rico is that the unchosen roles from a round get a bonus doubloon applied to them for if they are activated in the next round.

[refreshdaemon]

One thing I like about role selection in Puerto Rico (and its successors) is that sometimes you want more than one thing and you can try to see what other people are up to so that you might be able to ride off their coattails when they select that role and instead select something that benefits you a bit more or will "combo" with the role you suspect another player will take. Yet, it's still a guessing game and another player might not do what you were hoping that they would, which might slow down your plans. This works best in games with open information like Puerto Rico since the more information you have about other players, the more you can try to guess what they're up to. Of course, open information also means that you can more easily pick roles that can sabotage other people's plans too, so there's a tradeoff in that. But that guessing game of trying to understand what other players are up to and either riding their strategy to be more efficient with your actions, minimize benefit to them, or interact with them is definitely a highlight of games like Puerto Rico.

[salsaking]

Great video Jamey! The 2nd mechanism of workers activating buildings is so good in PR. The tension of ensuring your workers are on the scoring buildings at game end balanced with potentially wasting the worker if game-end is not triggered is pure awesomeness.
My favorite role selection game is related to PR, but there is no turn order and plays in ten minutes (at least online) - Race for the Galaxy. Especially in 2-player games, those phase selections matter so much that it becomes micro-game in itself in addition to the engine-building aspect within Race. I've logged over 1K games now on BGA and I'm still discovering nuances that would improve performance. I would say that's pretty incredible.
Thanks for the video!

[signore]

Good new video, Jamey! Thanks for sharing! One addition: The victory points collected during the game are also hidden! :D Another thing I love about Puerto Rico is the fact that there are so many steps during a game where it is not your turn and still the other players are going to help you a lot due to their role selection and decisions! It's amazing that in this game the other actions of your opponents dramatically matter!

[tammo]

Puerto Rico is a fantastic game. Another interesting mechanic is that when a new round starts, the player who may choose first is called the governor. But when the next round starts, the hot seat also changes to the next player, so the player who was first the round before is now the last to choose a role! This is an extremely interesting game feature opening up a lot of tactics.

[splash]

Puerto Rico will always be one of my favorite games, for some of the same reason here. I also enjoy Race for the Galaxy for the same reason, though that one is slightly different as you could have everyone choosing the same action. And for something slightly similar I enjoy Twilight Imperium's Action selection too though that isn't quite the same.

[BillyIndiana]

We really love San Juan & still need to try Puerto Rico. We'll have to give it a shot online. Thanks for the video!

[pisecobabe]

We also enjoy Quadropolis, which has open information (the placement of buildings at the beginning of each round is randomized, but within that round all the information is openly available) and uses workers to activate certain buildings. In Quadropolis, you also are collecting energy as a resource and use that to activate other types of buildings, and you want to strike a balance between the two, because unused workers or energy at the end of the game are negative points.

[brendathorpe]

Great Video!!I love all of the things you talk about in the video but I'd say my favorite aspect of Puerto Rico is how it not only has role selection, but in how intertwined those roles are and how important the order of their choice can be. Your choice is not only bound in what helps you the most, but also in what hurts you the least. (Can I choose producer and not have all of my goods rot?). Having near perfect information allows one to extrapolate rather deeply and can make for some really juicy, difficult decisions.

I'd be tempted to choose Puerto Rico as my favorite Role Selection game. it was my first and it was my second gateway game into a deep love of Euro gaming. And even though Race for the Galaxy is probably my favorite game of all time, and refinement of what began with Puerto Rico, I think I'd choose Glory to Rome. Partly because you can customize how effective the actions can be for yourself and how role following isnt automatic and with cards having multiple potential states theres a lot of deep thinking about what to play and what to save so that you can optimize being able to follow actions.

I'd also like to add that in Puerto Rico, victory points are hidden information

[Superslemmet]

Puerto Rico is a really fun game, though it takes a few plays to get in to it. I agree the (almost) entirely open information is done in a really clever way. It affects your actions, but in a way that it constantly gives other players new opportunities and blocks certain paths, so the high interactivity leads to semi-randomness anyway.
Like, if you have lots of workers, I might try and snag the building that rewards that, just to deprive you of that building, but doing that will affect all other players (and you) too!
I might be certain someone else will initiate sell this round, and so I can pick some other action instead and so on.
Though I don't entirely follow how Wingspan would become more interactive by having open cards? I guess you could block your enemies easier by snagging the food they want? Hmmm... that might not be such a bad idea, since my main criticism against Wingspan is the low player interaction (and that the theme and mechanism don't fully jive, but that's a different topic!)

[pfefferle]

Marco Polo ist not 100% open information, as players keep their travel goal cards secret throughout the game. But close enough.

[StevenStJohn-kjeb]

I played San Juan first, then later tried Puerto Rico (and I also have the Puerto Rico app). I think I enjoy San Juan more. Puerto Rico is a bit of an ugly game on the table, and it's one of those games with lots of VP chips you have to carefully count out during set up when playing with less than 4p. So it's always felt a bit inelegant to me in a lot of ways. But I agree that the idea that you have to staff your building for it to be productive is very cool. Also, I think the system of getting new workers is interesting - I can't remember how that works exactly (the Mayor role?), but IIRC the number of workers on the boat varies in some way from round to round based on player actions. That's an interesting element. There's also an interesting mechanic where when you ship your goods, you must ship all goods of a type if you can, even if you don't want to. I kind of dislike that mechanic, and it seems non-thematic, but I also think the best Puerto Rico players are the ones who grok the rhythm of that action to penalize their opponents with it.

P.S. Favorite Complete Information games would be a good Sunday Sitdown. Though it would probably have to be "Complete or Almost Complete..." because there's really probably few that qualify for Complete. (Marco Polo has hidden city goal cards for each player. Plus any game with dice...)