Puerto Rico - Robbo wins!

We played another game of Puerto Rico tonight. Same four of us who played it last time, but the game progressed quite differently to the first time. This time around, the game went for a shade over two hours (including a break in the middle), ending when Mark Robbo completed his building program with a second major building. He won, with a score of 38 pts, then came Paul (35), myself (31) and Nancy (26). Fun time by all. Rules continue to deal with contingencies as they arise without giving rise to argument.

The fact that the scores are much closer, and that the winner is only in the thirties this time, arose from the fact that no-one who had a major building (where large bonuses of victory points arise at game end) had colonists on them (required to activate their special bonuses). Mark won because he integrated his economy a bit better than anyone, and because no-one chose the role of 'Mayor' in the final turn (allowing all players the chance of placing colonists on their major buildings). Paul had his chance to, but didn't. He seemed to keep chosing the role of 'builder' during the game - a bit inflexible as a strategy once others realise it, I think. Nancy never seemed to get off the ground in adding value to her produce. Similarly with me, except I managed to produce a lot more stuff for overseas consumption generally than she did and scored slightly higher accordingly in the end.

I think we all played the game better than the first time, and probably got a bit more anticipatory joy out of the playing. It didn't seem so intuitive, but that's to be expected as we play with the possibilities within the rules over our next few contests.

We played a game of Farkel afterwards, to wind down a bit.