Puerto Rico 1897 Game

In 1897, Puerto Rico was beginning to find its place in the modern world and its economy depended on its skilled agricultural workers to thrive.  In this game, players compete to produce corn, fruit, sugar, tobacco, and coffee and sell them in the marketplace. The player who is strategic, skillful, and bold at leveraging their turns to sell the most crops for the largest profit can emerge with the wealth and prestige needed to win the game with the greatest number of victory points.

There are approximately fifteen rounds in this 2-5 player experience, which plays in 90-150 minutes, depending on player count.

Player Board Layout and Functions:

Players have their own island board with two main areas. The top area is the countryside where there are areas for 12 Estate Tiles. The bottom area is the area where production and commercial building tiles are placed. Production buildings are populated with workers who produce goods together with workers residing on the matching estate tile(s).Commercial buildings give discounts, choices and options every time a correlated action takes place. All building tiles also provide end-game victory points.  All tile types are purchased with coins when a specific role card is played.

Role Cards: 

In each round, players take turns choosing one role card. This card determines the actions available to the active player. All other players may choose to take the action defined on the chosen role card, but the active player has an additional advantage or action. For example, the Recruiter role provides opportunities to recruit workers to place on players’ island boards for production, with the active player receiving an extra worker. The Craftsman role gives players the chance to obtain goods according to their specific production abilities, with the active player receiving one extra good. When the Captain role is active, goods are loaded onto ships and give each player one victory point chip per good they can load. Selling goods is the only way to obtain victory points during the game and these are later added to end-game points for final scoring.

The game ends when there are not enough workers to recruit, any player has filled all their building spaces, or there are no more victory point chips. Players count their victory point chips earned from selling goods and all victory points from buildings on their boards, and whoever has the most points wins!

Puerto Rico has been a favorite with board gamers since its first version was released in 2002, and with a special new edition releasing in 2025, it promises to continue to be a well-loved game.