OUR REVIEW

Gamble in the Caribbean

PORT ROYAL

or how do I get the gamble into play

More than a year ago there the first Austrian Game Designer Competition was held. And there was a winner: Alexander Pfister did fiddle around with his idea for a card game until it was good enough for the competition and then this nice, fast gambling-type game did win the competition. In its first edition published as “Händler der Karibik” by the Austrian Games Museum, it created quite a stir at Essen 2013. Soon companies interested to do another edition were queuing up. Thus the game was published again by Pegasus in a bigger sized box and under the title of Port Royal.

Pegasus did put in some additional editorial time and has made a few small, more cosmetic changes, for instance, making the game playable for two to five players in this edition. I have played the game in its original and its re-published version several times and do still prefer a game with three or four players. Three players to always have someone to interfere in the game and four players so that I am never only a watcher in a turn. Five players left me with the impression that this is still a number of players that works nicely. We know many groups where more than four want to play.

Many of you will now ask: A card game with only 120 cards and a full amount of fun to play - how does that fit into such a small box? To explain this I need to tell you something about the topic and the game itself.

The topic - Merchants, pirates, other people frequenting the jetty, ships that want to sail into harbor … all this fits the game mechanics perfectly. Each player is a trader who trades in ships and hires persons of different vocations. Each player has his own jetty - his display of cards - where the people hired by him assist him in doing the best possible business. Now and again someone puts out a call for an expedition, for which captains, priests or settlers are in demand - well, an expedition into uncharted seas needs gut seamen. If you then encounter new shores those need to be settled. And if it happens to be inhabited by aborigines, you might want to convert them to the “true” faith. At least all this happened in the times of seafaring expeditions and travels.

Cards in the game make use of both sides. One side represents one gold coin, the other side shows ships, people and calls for expeditions. At the start of the game each player holds three cards for gold coins. The starting player opens the harbor and lets ships sail into harbor and people trundle in, all this by turning up cards from the draw pile and placing them on the table. At what time he closes the harbor, that is, stops to turn up cards, is left to his discretion. He can also be forced to close it, in the case of two rivaling ships, which means two ships of the same kind, wanting to get into the harbor. This creates havoc and all and sundry leave the harbor instantly. This gives the special allure for each thrilling turning up of cards.

No, it would not be easier to reveal cards only until the first ship turns up - because a player may in the second phase of this turn, when the harbor is closed, take a card from the harbor. If he picks a ship, he does business and gets gold by drawing the number of coins showing on the ship from the draw pile and putting them into his kitty without looking at them. There are ships offering one, two, three and sometimes even four gold coins! So of course you want to get more than one lousy coin and sometimes take the risk to reveal more cards. There are exactly five kinds of ship. When a player has just revealed a Pinasse with one gold he hopes for a Fleute with a minimum of two god. But what appears? A Pinasse with four gold! What a pity! The turn ends instantly and only if you have a Jester lurking on the jetty you may still enjoy a small profit.

As I have just mentioned, all in all there are five different types of ships. When the active player, the current harbor master, has permitted four or five different types to sail into harbor he may take two or three cards, respectively, from the display after closing the harbor. This enhances the gambling flair, which makes us play the game again and again.

When a player wants to take a card from the harbor that shows a person, this person must be hired. Hiring means you must pay a wage to this person. The bottom of the person cards states the necessary amount. There are people who can be hired for a song, that is, for three coins, but there are some who demand the outrageous remuneration of 9 coins. If you have the necessary amount of gold you simply discard it and the hired person - be it Mademoiselle or Jester or whoever else - is placed into your own jetty display.

From this point on you can use the ability of this person. Traders give you better prices for the ships, seamen and pirates can hinder some ships to enter the harbor, Mademoiselles cast such entreating glances at other people that they are willing to be hired for less money. Admirals demand a fee when the harbor surpasses a minimum frequency, governors have the right to take one additional card and jesters conjure money from an empty harbor. In addition to their abilities all persons carry a score value in relation to the wage they demand. Those points, in real the fame of a player, are the real purpose of the game. When a player has collected in his jetty 12 points or more, the round is completed and then the player with most points, that is, fame, wins. In case of a tie the tie is resolved by the remaining gold of the players involved, just as in real life.

There are also some really nasty cards. You can recognize them already by their names: Tax raise. When such a card gets displayed in the harbor, it is announced by the harbor master that each player who owns 12 gold or more must discard half of it. Often it is the case that players who have more persons in their jetty also have more gold. Thus those tax raise cards work as a kind of balancing mechanisms. Sometimes it happens that this is not the case and that the “weakest” player has amassed too much gold. Therefore those cards carry a second balancing mechanism: When tax has been paid you check which player has fewest fame (points) or the least opportunity to defeat shops (denoted by the number of sabers on seaman and pirate cards). This or all these players are given one gold coin from the stack.

And now for the calls for expeditions. When such a card is revealed it is placed next to the harbor and stays in place until a player can comply with the demand. To do so he must be the active player and and hold the necessary captains, settlers or priests in his jetty or be able to replace them with a Jack of all Trades. You discard the persons demanded by the expedition and take the card with the call for expedition into your jetty. This is a lucrative move, because the points of the persons you had to discard are doubled by the expedition card and you receive gold as a reward. Just like the discarded persons the expedition has no additional function in the game, it just adds fame.

So only the question remains, why this is so much fun? On the one hand it is the chance to acquire something useful during the turn of another player, because after the active player has taken his card or cards from the harbor, in turn every other player may take one card. Ships give you gold, persons you must pay for. As it is not your own harbor where you help yourself from, you must pay one gold to the active player for each person taken. And that’s where the cat is hidden in the bag.

Do I, as the active player, want to leave something for others to take? What if I just turn up what they need most? Should I then not better try to annul the harbor?

Do I want, as the non-active player, to hand over one gold to the active player? A ship with one gold is definitely not worth it? Should I take the one with 2 gold?

You are always caught between a rock and a hard place. You want more, but is more cards, more gold, more persons really good? Where is the optimum? Definitely in different spots in each game. Because each game is different and in each game you can play for other abilities, try other ways and means and strategies.

There is room for the game in nearly any bag and it offers entertainment for many more hours than a few rainy ones.

Monika Dillingerova

Players: 2-5

Age: 8+

Time: 30+

Designer: Alexander Pfister

Artist: Klemens Franz, Hans-Georg Schneider

Price: ca. 10 Euro

Publisher: Pegasus Spiele 2014

Web: www.pegasus.de

Genre: Set collecting, cards

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en es gr

In-game text: no

Comments:

High replay value

Simple rules

Easy to take along

Each game is different

Compares to:

Basically all sorts of set collecting games

Other editions:

Homoludicus, Spain; Kaissa, Greece, Mindok, Czech Republic, others are announced

My rating: 6

Monika Dillingerova:

This game entices with its low rules threshold and the high replay value, usually one wants to try other ways to play and strategies immediately.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0