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Main Catalogue | Board Games & Card Games | Rio Grande Games | Cuba

Cuba

Price: £49.99

Board Game; 2-5 Players; Ages 12+ by Rio Grande Games Cuba prior to the revolution: Under turbulent circumstances, the villages of the island strive for independent wealth and influence. Who can buy and sell his products and goods on the domestic market profitably or take in the most on the trading ships? Who can send the right delegate to parliament in order to influence the government legislative process, or erect distilleries, hotels and banks at the right moment to the benefit of his village? Whoever has accumulated the most victory points at the end of the game, wins. Players earn victory points by shipping merchandise from the harbor, but also by erecting and using buildings, and by abiding by the law. ++++++++++++++++++++ Counter magazine review ++++++++++++++++++++ 3-5 players, 75-125 minutes designed by Michael Rieneck and Stefan Stadler reviewed by Simon Weinberg One of several games receiving a lot of pre-Essen buzz was this Eggert Spiele game designed by the team that brought us the highly-rated Pillars of the Earth last year. Cuba is a non-linear `resource collection to victory points\' game like Pillars, but still well worth its salt - or is that rum? Cuba comes in a square box with the same dimensions as Eggert\'s Space Dealer, and inside, made to a really excellent standard, is an attractive board depicting a Cuban town, and a number of individual player boards, cards and wooden pieces, as well as a lot of Caylus-like tiles depicting buildings. The artwork throughout is nothing less than stunning. There really is a whole host of wooden pieces, including hexagonal cylinders of Sugar, Tobacco, and Citrus fruit, cubes of Stone, Wood, and Water; and cigar box-shaped wooden rectangles, as well as little red bottles of rum (no drink included). Each player receives a double-sided player board depicting their farming land: each land includes a warehouse that can store goods if activated, as well as 11 squares which may be used as building plots or may be farmed to yield the 7 different types of crops and raw materials mentioned above. In a typical Eggert touch, each player board is double sided: one board is the same for all players and the other side is different for each player providing some additional possible variations to the game which, admittedly, this reviewer has not felt the need to try out yet. Sturdy full-size playing cards with excellent portrait-type artwork depict 5 characters: a Worker, a Tradeswoman, an Architect, a Foreman, and the Mayor. Players all get the same 5 cards and each turn must play four cards out of the five and execute actions related to each role. During each of 6 `rounds\', each consisting of 4 turns around the table, players attempt to successfully play their cards in the best order to farm their plots, buy and sell crops and manufactured goods in the market, and build available buildings on top of fields with their raw materials. They may then use buildings they have built to earn money, manufacture rum or cigars from sugar or tobacco, convert these products to victory points, and various other possibilities. When they can, players may also try to contribute export crops or products to one of three ships available at harbor to gain victory points. Finally, at the end of each round players vote for various laws. These laws, which force a lot of player interaction, can influence victory points and therefore players must save votes and money to bribe officials, or prepare for the worst laws by saving money and crops to pay taxes and duties. Full marks for components and theme then, but before I proceed it might be worth highlighting the fact that, although the game involves the production of goods to ship for victory points, and also involves some selection of roles and buildings, it is not in my opinion ``Puerto Rico light\'\'. For me the game is sufficiently different to buy if you own PR. More on this in the concluding paragraphs.... Firstly let\'s go into the details of a round. Each round, players start with the five role cards and taking it in turns must play one card and execute the action of the role they have chosen. The possible roles are as follows: Worker: Playing this card allows the player to place his worker in a certain field or building in his plot, and harvest all rows and columns of fields that the worker can ``see\'\' from where he stands. Once placed, the worker cannot be moved and the same row and column will be used by the Foreman, who is used to activate buildings on your farming plot. So it is important to plan ahead. Once the nice wooden worker figure is placed, fields which are not already built over are harvested for Stone, Wood, and Water - which are used to build (pay for) buildings; and Citrus, Tobacco and Sugar which are used to fill ships and/or produce cigars and rum. Water plays a double role as with certain buildings it may generate victory points or pesos. All crops perish at the end of each round unless the warehouse is later activated by the Foreman. Tradeswoman: Upon playing this card the player may visit the market and sell or buy goods. The market is a set of five tracks located on the main game board for the 3 crops and 2 goods. Prices for each start out at 3 pesos; each crop or good sold to the market is added to the available market and lowers the price by one peso, allowing the first player that plays a tradeswoman to have a choice selection of the cheapest items, or the ability to screw his fellow shopper in a way that will be familiar if you have ever played Power grid, for example. The tradeswoman also has an alternative action: simply cover one of two spaces on the main board, and take any single crop or building material (but not manufactured good) for free from the general stock. Each of these options is available only once per round. Building material generally gets scarce as players build on top of their fields, and in our games this option was often popular and worth shooting for. Foreman: The foreman activates a chosen building tile on your land; or all buildings which are in the same row and column as your worker. (Note: the English rules are ambiguous here, but I can confirm that buildings in rows and columns are activated by the foreman). Activation allows the player to execute, in his chosen order, the actions available on the building tiles. Each of the 25 buildings is a cog in one of several (fairly obvious) engines which are designed to produce money, goods or victory points. For example, the player activates the Product house, and sells 1 tobacco and 1 citrus crop for 2 pesos each, that he has just bought at the market for 1 peso each. He than activates his cigar factory and uses two tobacco crops purchased on the market for a total of 4 pesos, plus one gleaned from his remaining tobacco field by the Worker, to produce 3 cigar boxes. He activates the Zigarren-Café to convert two cigar boxes to 4 victory points. Finally he activates the General Store to sell one cigar box for 6 pesos. He may alternatively wait to ship his remaining cigar boxes for victory points, but this way he has a net profit of 4 pesos and 4 VPs. Architect: The Architect allows you to buy one of the 25 building tiles and place it on one square of your land. By covering up a square, you lose the ability to produce the kind of crop or raw material it makes, and so you must choose your strategy and place carefully. Buildings cost between 2 and 5 cubes of raw materials, and the most you can earn per round from the worker is three cubes, (plus one more possible with the tradeswoman) so it is unlikely you will find yourself with more than four or five buildings to place over a complete game; however, buildings may only easily be used if appropriate goods are still available from your field, and strategies can be messed up if the building you were banking on is taken by someone else. So the rule is, don\'t forget to watch your fellow players and try to guess what buildings they will be after. Fortunately a number of different `engines\' are possible, or a player may go for a minimum-building approach, so all is never lost in this game by a bad start. An alternative action exists for the architect, like for the tradeswoman. This one earns 2 or 4 victory points, if they are available - a tempting alternative. Mayor: the final card allows a player to ship goods to one of the ships waiting in the harbour of Cuba. Each round 2 (first round only) or 3 ship cards, requiring a different mix of crops and finished goods, waits in the harbor next to a 1, 2 or 3 victory point indicator. One other ship waits at sea so that future demand can be seen well in advance, which is a good thing for planning. Players shipping to the ship which has been on the board longest win 3 victory points per crop; but at the end of each round the highest scoring ship sets sail, full or not, and the next highest ships move down one so that the payoff per demanded good is increased by one. Conceivably, a player may fill a new ship and gain up to 15 VPs in one turn - so planning a goods shipment is imperative and literally \'missing a boat\' because someone fills it before you do could lose you significant VPs. An alternative action for the mayor is to is to mark the appropriate space on the board and take 4 or 2 pesos - sometimes needed when you have not planned out your cash properly. Each role card has a number of votes on it, and each number is important for two reasons. Firstly, the highest card played in the fourth and last turn of the round determines who becomes the start player. In case of a tie, the highest player who played before the start player wins. Being first in a given round would give that player the opportunity to load goods on ships first, buy the cheapest goods from the market, etc - so it is well worth saving a good vote for the last card. Secondly, the card the player hasn\'t played at the end of the 4 rounds is declared and gives the player the indicated number of votes. The way the votes are distributed is very clever - the mayor has 5 votes, the architect 4, the foreman 3, the tradeswoman 2, and the worker 1 vote - how appropriate. The player will often find himself torn between trying to plan for law voting and wanting to use his major or architect card to follow his desired strategy. Fortunately, in Cuba corruption is allegedly rife - I somehow doubt that Mr. Castro will be inviting any Eggert representatives round for tea and cake in the near future - and so players desperate to stop a law being passed may simultaneously offer bribes which are added peso for vote to their total. All bribes are revealed simultaneously, and all bribes offered are lost whether or not the player wins the bid. The player with the most pesos plus votes is then allowed to decide which two out of four possible law cards, turned over at the beginning of each new round, is implemented. There are four types of laws - Taxes, Duty, Subsidy, and other Acts. Taxes require each player to pay between a few and many pesos to gain two victory points (VPs), Duty requires players to pay a crop to gain 2 VPs. If both duty and tax are paid, a player gets a bonus VP. Subsidy laws generally give players VPs for one kind of item such as water, number of buildings, fields, etc. - all very thematic! Other acts generally work against one kind of winning strategy and will probably force certain people to plan to win the vote to prevent themselves being penalised. For example, one act makes buildings two pesos more expensive to build, working against the player going for a heavily urbanised strategy. Once all six rounds have been played, which typically seems to take an hour and a half or so, the game ends. Players receive two bonus victory points per building built to tack onto their final score, and ties are decided on the basis of most pesos. For me Cuba offers a pleasurable medium-weight gaming experience, which certainly benefited from a second playing to get to grips with the mechanisms, possible strategies, and rules. While it is not super-original, it does mix some ideas and mechanisms up, throws the law votes into the pot, and successfully produces something new which works and is fun. It is more thematic than Puerto Rico, much more pretty, and arguably involves more player interaction than similar development games since, while players do not compete for roles, they compete instead for market goods, alternative actions, places in higher scoring ships, and buildings. The luck factor is neatly controlled: only the order in which law cards appear is random, and all law cards will show up in each game; ship cards are plentiful and all different but they can be seen and planned for a long time in advance. The only mystery in the game is how you opponent is going to play; but provided you are of the adventurous type, and try different strategies from time to time this game should have good longevity. All in all, a good game, well made, thematic and fun - certainly good enough to satisfy most gamers. It\'s made in an English version, and I recommend you buy it.

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Main Catalogue | Board Games & Card Games | Rio Grande Games | Cuba

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