Going loco down in Puerto Rico

Four of the Bracknell posse's totally made up and imaginary non members couldn't make tonights games fest and therefore we were reduced to the three stalwart regulars that continually make the effort, Paul, James and myself Chris.

Inspired by current events across the Atlantic where a group of small islands off the coast of the United States are having a referendum to decide whether they want to take the UK's place as the 51st state (Ooo, a little bit of politics), I put forward Puerto Rico for this weeks main game.

This game has sat serenely in my loft next to classics like El Grande and Tigris and Euphrates for years waiting for the right mix of players to appear. Buoyed by the success of El Grande's reappearance I felt it was time to give another old classic a dusting off.

One of the problems Puerto has is although game play is simple, options are multi-various in the same way that Agricola is and often a first play acts as a tutorial for any newbies. Considering the amount of time since either Paul or I had played it we were all practically fresh to the game. The start was understandably stop start as each action required a quick nose into the rules for clarification. After about three rounds this became less and less however any definite strategies were naturally absent.

I had concluded that the captain was a quick win for me as I was the only one producing goods early on. Clearly we were all struggling with the mechanics to form any consistent approach. Then, subtly, the balance of power shifted as James got his coffee roaster commissioned and Paul manned his sugar refinery. All of a sudden the pair of them were awash with cash and began snapping up the bonus buildings. I read somewhere that if you don't get one of these you stand little chance of winning, so with no small effort on my part I managed to secure the least profitable building, the city hall, and then made a mad trolley dash to claim as many violet buildings as possible before the colonists ran out.

Despite my incredible poor attempt at adding three numbers together the totals revealed a very close game.

Paul - 60
Chris - 58
James - 55

Puerto Rico, another classic which has stood the test of time. All parties agreed that we should play it again in two weeks time and totally disregard what our totally made up imaginary non members might say about that.

10.45 was looming large so we managed to shoe horn in a game of speed Roll Through the Ages which Paul quickly won as he was putting his coat on to leave.

Paul - 28
Chris -19
James - 19