OUR REVIEW

All easy, Man!

Santiago de Cuba

A great game in a small Box

Already during SPIEL at Essen „Santiago de Cuba“ was collecting lots of premature praise – scout grades were all sitting in the top range and if you stopped at the booth you were unavoidably attracted by the optically overwhelming design, 100 percent in the style of big brother „Cuba“ and as usually perfectly capturing the flavor thanks to Michael Menzel! So the only question was, will the high attraction value be equaled by the fun when you play the game?

We have tried it …

Often lovingly (or derogatorily) called “Cuba light”, Santiago de Cuba takes us on a journey to the Caribbean, represented on the rather small, elongated board as a town quarter including a marina. On the road that we will travel along at a stately pace again and a again on a circular track lots of things are going on: Vendors like Pedro or José praise their wares with a loud voice, Conchita smiles engagingly and we cannot resist that smile and buy two crates of lemons from her .. And the best is: All these goods are given to us absolutely for free when we stop our car for a short break at that person’s position.

Get going!

„Easy“ is the motto in Santiago de Cuba, even the car adheres to the general atmosphere and moves only one single step forward to the next person. If I want to drive a greater distance, for instance in order to reach Pedro the receiver of stolen goods, who gives me any good I want, our driver gladly accepts some monetary assistance. For one peso per step we leave out the next stop and go directly to the one after it.

The inmate of the car, who was equipped accordingly by the characters at the stops, may place his marker on one of three possible buildings and use the special actions available there (well, that seems somewhat familiar from „Cuba“). As those buildings are randomly laid out at the start of the game for each new game, as are the positions of the characters at the roadside – there is enough change in the game and the actions are not always connected to the same characters in the same place.

And then there is Alonso, the lawyer, who enables me to permanently occupy and free building of my choice (this is possible up to three times in a game), which from now on always gives me a victory point, not only when another player enters my building. When I visit Alonso again later in the game, I can use a building normally and can additionally activate another one that I own without having my marker in this building. Thus Alonso the lawyer allows me the equivalent of a double turn – a contact that one should keep alive!

To mention the functions of all twelve available buildings would exceed the available space, therefore I restrict myself to some of them! Most of them result in earning money or awarding victory points, transform money into victory points or victory points into money or can be used to change your own goods into other goods to satisfy the demand in the harbor (which we will mention later, the harbor, that is). You can make cigars out of tobacco in the cigar factory or produce rum from sugar cane in the distillery; both goods can be easily sold to the Café which lets us have up to four victory points for it. Other buildings influence the demand for goods on the ship in the harbor (patience, I’m coming to the harbor soon!) or allow you, as does the Office, to deliver a ware to the ship out of turn, and to earn victory points with that, despite the car not being at the harbor.

The newspaper publisher uses the power of the media – probably badmouthing – which results in one of the Cubans closing down his stall until the car has passed it again next time. Buildings connected to this stall cannot be entered during that period, either.

And now, finally, to the harbor:

The harbor (at long last) is one other of the possible stops for our small car. In the harbor a ship is anchored in each round and waits for goods, their number is determined by dice roll at the start of each round. The colors of the dice denote the kind of goods that we should deliver in the harbor. For each ship there are always exactly four kinds of goods, when we deliver them we earn between two and four victory points per goods cube in relation to the current position of the blue „value of goods“ marker.

This marker moves up and down each time, when a player uses the Harbor Administration or when the car does not stop at the harbor. This makes the revenue per goods marker by one victory points. But you cannot reap more than four victory points. Should the marker move over that limit, the captain of the ship thinks the prices are too high and the ship simply leaves the harbor at short notice and maybe even without any goods.

If you direct the car to the harbor while the ship is still anchored there, you are the first to deliver one kind of goods before the delivery round is continued in turn – the number shown on the corresponding dice is reduced per goods cube by the respective number until it arrives at value Zero. Wood is functioning as a kind of joker for any kind of goods that you do not have available, but it only earns you one victory point, regardless of the position of the goods value marker. When all four dice show value Zero the delivery round ends and the ship sets sail loaded to full capacity. A new ship anchors in the harbor; this starts a new round which in turn starts with rolling the dice for the goods in demand. When the seventh ship has left the harbor the game ends and the winner of the game is the player with most victory points.

Resume

There are lots of „Cuba“ in „Santiago“, maybe too much! Despite Michael Rieneck relinquishing his congenial partner Stefan Stadler and acting in “reduced” capacity he has produced a felicitous composition out of standard mechanism which works brilliantly. Unfortunately – in comparison to Cuba – and despite the beauty of the components, the equipment was scaled down in Santiago. The screens are stable but too small to keep all goods and all the money secret in later stages of the game. With the exception of the wood block all other goods cubes are different only as regards to their color. Why a white cube turns red in a distillery is not immediately clear to families who are meant to be introduced to the essentially more challenging “Cuba” by Santiago; this point was solved vastly better with the more informative shapes of goods in Cuba or in “Im Schutze der Burg”, which was also published by Eggertspiele.

In all our test games it was not clearly discernibly who would be the winner – and the victory usually was won by a very narrow margin. This shows good fine-tuning on the one hand, which does not allow for a clear strategy to win, but on the other hand it leaves a slight impression of having been played. Despite a manifold choice of action the Cuban you really want to visit is usually far too far away for having the funds available to go there directly. Useful buildings are always connected to the Cuba who is away the most number of steps and if I can choose from three buildings the most lucrative ones are usually taken, so that I must make do with a seemingly weaker one. And that is not really satisfying in the long run.

But! Santiago de Cuba does in no way define itself as a strategy game. “A tactical tidbit for the whole family” is what the press release calls it and even if the family thus addressed will be a bit overwhelmed by the complex interrelations between Cubans, buildings and events in the harbor they can achieve the final goal: To make the best of the sometimes rather limited possibilities. And if that does not work? Well then, maybe, next time. Easy, Man!

Stefan Olschewski

Players: 2-4

Age: 10+

Time: 60+

Designer: Michael Rieneck

Artist: Michael Menzel

Price: ca. 25 Euro

Publisher: eggertspiele

Web: www.eggertspiele.de

Genre: Worker placement game

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en fr gr

In-game text: no

Comments:

Very beautiful design and components

Part of the Cuba range of games

Good for families with a bit of playing experience

Compares to:

Cuba

Other editions:

At Filosofia Editions, Gryphon Games, Kaissa Chess, Ludonova

My rating: 4

Stefan Olschewski:

Nicely composed total, but somehow a bit arbitrary and not strategic! Maybe a bit less would have been even more in this case!

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0