New Year Catch Up Part Two - Board Games

For the first Saturday session of the year with my Hove friends we played Puerto Rico. This was the game that was ranked number one on Boardgamegeek for the first few years of the renewal of my enthusiasm for board games. Even now it is number three (behind Agricola and Twilight Struggle). I enjoy it very much but am rather baffled as to why it is rated quite this high.

Anyway Paultro is a fan and has invested in the deluxe version sporting little crates instead of cubes, prettier graphics, satisfyingly heavy card for the buildings etc and best of all neat little metal doubloons. Fittingly I think Paultro won this but a good time was had by all and the rest of us had quite close scores.

As a filler we had a few games of Guillotine which we all enjoy for its opportunities for cheerful backstabbing.

Saturday with the Goldstone Gamers

During scoring - Victory points revealed

Only three players on Saturday too, owing to a transport malfunction for our regular fourth. We went ahead with the original intended game anyway and it was the host's turn to provide the entertainment from his hidden store of still shrink-wrapped gems.
Puerto Rico is, I believe, still the number one ranked multi-player game on Boardgamegeek, despite its age (it dates from 2002) and the number of good games which have come along in the intervening years. It, therefore, seems so familiar that I was surprised to see that I had only one previous game logged, back in 2006. It was new to the owner (and eventual winner) paultro and his partner too so play was not entirely confident, flowing or demonstrating consistent strategies. The resulting scores were probably not very high either but they were close and the game was very enjoyable. The conclusion was that, while it was understandable that it was a highly ranked game, we felt that its number two spot (below two-player Twilight Struggle) on "the 'geek"was probably in need of re-assessment in the light of the many good games published since. No filler was played owing to the amount of discussion which took place over tea and excellent home-made cake after the main game. On the other hand I believe we have now solved most of the world's political, social, sporting and financial problems...