Puerto Rico rules refresher

Read the refresher

You are chasing the most victory points, earned mainly by shipping goods to the old world and by the buildings standing in your city. You get there by choosing roles each round, because whichever role you pick, everyone takes that action, but only you get its privilege.

A quick word on setup. Starting cash is 2 doubloons with three players, 3 with four, and 4 with five, kept in the open on your windrose. The governor starts with an indigo plantation on his island; with three players the second player also takes indigo and the third takes corn, with four players the second takes indigo and the third and fourth take corn, and with five the second and third take indigo and the fourth and fifth take corn. Use six role cards with three players, that is no prospectors, seven with four players, and all eight with five. All eight quarries sit face up, and beside them a face-up row of plantation tiles, one more than the number of players. Use the three smallest cargo ships for three players, the middle three for four, and the largest three for five. The colonist ship starts with three, four, or five colonists by player count, and the colonist supply is 55, 75, or 95. The victory point chip pool is 75, 100, or 122 points.

Each round, the governor chooses a role card, takes any doubloons sitting on it, and performs the action first. Then everyone else performs that same action in clockwise order. Then the next player clockwise chooses from the remaining cards, and so on until every player has taken exactly one role. You must take a card on your turn, but you may decline to use the action or privilege, and the action is optional for everyone except the captain. At the end of the round, put one doubloon on each of the three unchosen cards, return the used cards, and pass the governor card to the left.

Now the roles. With the settler, each player takes one face-up plantation tile and places it on an empty island space. Only the settler may take a quarry instead, and only the owner of an occupied construction hut may do so otherwise. Afterwards the settler discards the untaken tiles face up and refills the row from the face-down stacks, drawing one more than the number of players. Once your twelve island spaces are full, you place nothing more.

With the mayor, the mayor first takes one colonist from the supply as his privilege, then players take colonists one at a time from the colonist ship, clockwise from the mayor, until it is empty. You may then rearrange all your colonists freely onto any empty circles on your tiles. A tile with at least one colonist is occupied, and only occupied tiles function. Surplus colonists sit in San Juan, but you may not leave a colonist in San Juan if you have an empty circle to fill. Colonists move only during the mayor phase. Last, the mayor refills the ship with one colonist for each empty circle on buildings across all player boards, ignoring empty circles on plantations and quarries, and always at least as many colonists as there are players.

With the builder, each player may build one building, paying the bank and placing it on an empty city space. Large buildings need two adjacent empty spaces, and you may shuffle existing buildings within your city to make room, but never remove one. The builder pays one doubloon less. Each occupied quarry you own reduces the cost by one more, but the discount from quarries is capped by which column the building sits in on the board, one for the cheapest column up to four for the most expensive. Cost can never go below zero. You may own only one copy of each building, and no one builds more than once per round.

With the craftsman, each player takes goods from the supply. Corn comes straight from occupied corn plantations. The other four goods need matching occupied plantations and enough occupied circles on the matching production building, and you produce the lower of the two. The craftsman then takes one extra good of a kind he produced. If the supply of that good is empty, you go without.

With the trader, each player may sell one good to the trading house for its price, from nothing for corn up to four doubloons for coffee, and the trader gets one extra doubloon. The trading house holds only four goods and only goods of different kinds, the office being the exception. The phase ends when everyone has had a turn or the house is full, and the trader then empties it only if it is full.

With the captain, loading is compulsory. On your turn you must load if you can, but only one kind of goods, and you must load as many of that kind as will fit, choosing the ship where you can place the most. Each cargo ship carries only one kind, and no kind may appear on two ships. Turns continue clockwise as long as anyone can still load. Every barrel loaded is one victory point, regardless of kind, and the captain gets one extra point once. Victory points stay face down and secret. When loading ends, each player keeps just one good on his windrose, plus whatever his warehouses protect, and returns the rest. The captain then empties every full ship.

The prospector has no action at all. Its taker simply takes one doubloon from the bank.

One general reminder about the violet buildings: they bend the normal rules, they only work while occupied, and they are never compulsory. The wharf in particular may be used only once per captain phase.

The game ends at the end of the round in which any of three things happens: at the end of a mayor phase there are not enough colonists to refill the ship, a player builds on his twelfth city space during a builder phase, or the last victory point chip is handed out during a captain phase. After that, keep tracking points on paper until the round finishes. Then add your chips, the printed victory points of all your buildings whether occupied or not, and the end-game bonuses of your large buildings, which only count if those buildings are occupied. Those five bonuses reward, in turn, your production buildings, your filled island spaces, your colonists, your accumulated victory point chips, and your violet buildings. Most points wins. If players tie, the winner is the one with the most doubloons and goods combined, counting each good as one doubloon.

A turn, played out

Four players, and you take the captain. You hold 3 corn, 2 indigo and 1 sugar. One ship carries sugar with 1 space left, another carries indigo with 3 spaces left, and the third is empty. The player to your left holds 2 coffee and 1 indigo. The other two hold only tobacco, and nobody has a warehouse. You must load, but only one kind. Sugar would score 1 and indigo 2. Corn sits on no ship, so it may claim the empty one, and all 3 fit. You load the corn: 3 victory points, plus 1 for being captain, taken face down. To your left, the coffee has nowhere to go, because every ship now has its kind and coffee may not join another. So the indigo is compulsory: 1 barrel onto the indigo ship, 1 point. Neither tobacco player can load. It comes back to you, because someone can still load. Your 2 indigo fill the indigo ship's last 2 spaces: 2 points, and no second captain bonus. On your next turn your sugar fills the sugar ship for 1 more. Now nobody can load, so loading ends. The player to your left keeps 1 coffee and returns the other. Each tobacco player keeps a single barrel and returns the rest. The full sugar and indigo ships are emptied. The corn ship, with 3 barrels aboard, is not full, so it stays and waits for more corn.