Port Royal 1655-1692
- Board's Eye View
- 6 hours ago
- 4 min read
No, this isn't another version of Alexander Pfister's Port Royal (Pegasus Spiele). It has a similar title because it too is set in the city of Port Royal on the island of Jamaica, and like the various versions of Alexander Pfister's game it has a historical buccaneering setting. As the title suggests, Port Royal 1655-1692, from Norwegian publishers Two Starving Gnolls is focused on the rise and fall of the city in the second half of the 17th Century. It traces England's development of the island over three 'epochs' until it was hit by a devastating earthquake in 1692.
Played on a board representing the island, Port Royal 1655-1692 is a 2-4 player, card-driven game with multi-use cards. These differ slightly for each 'epoch' but each has an asset point value through which it can function as currency. The majority of the cards can be played to the board as Plantations or Buildings but you usually have to pay the cost of placing out a Plantation or Building card; so you are discarding cards as payment to build, and likewise to place your ownership cubes on previously placed cards. When scored at the end of each epoch, it's primarily the cubes on cards that will give you victory points. Some Buildings give you an additional benefit when they are built and some give an ability, either ongoing and automatic or as an alternative action on your turn. Cards can alternatively be played as Events for the effect they set out.
The 'pay to play' building mechanic gives Port Royal 1655-1692 a distinctive arc. Players all start off with a hand of just four cards and you'll need to burn at least one to place a Building or Plantation onto the board. You take a single action on your turn and then draw two cards at the end of your turn from which you choose one. You can tho' just use your turn to draw a card, and you may need to do that early on in the game in order to build a hand that's large enough to work with. Watch out tho' because some Events can allow other players to raid your hand...
There's more. You can place cubes out on the city's fortifications and these come into their own when the number of Buildings in the city is one more than the number of players. When this threshold has been met, the Attack cards represent pirate raids. Their strength is public knowledge but only the player drawing the card knows the consequences of the Attack succeeding or being defeated by the city's defences. Players can spend asset points to place out more cubes onto forts, and there's scope here for bluff and misdirection - for example, encouraging opponents to throw resources into defence unnecessarily or discouraging strong defence with the gleeful knowledge that that will mean their Plantations will be destroyed.
As the board fills, the second epoch cards come out. These introduce additional elements, including Shares to help you muscle in on existing Buildings, and Letters of Marque that score you points for placing out cubes that represent raids on the ships of foreign powers. Players can also place out cubes to run for Governor; worth victory points and giving the successful player certain special powers in the third epoch. This aspect of the game invites a degree of negotiation and horse trading, including directly trading victory points for votes. Not so much in a two-player game but this definitely adds a frisson of excitement if you're playing with a full complement of four players.
By the third epoch there will be little or no space left for new Buildings, and when the board is full new Buildings can only be constructed by first demolishing an existing Building. Again, you'll need to pay the asset price of both demolition and the new Building, and players who have cubes removed in this way are compensated with a victory point and a card.
Throughout the game, players have the option of playing Tension cards as Events rather than for their asset points but that becomes mandatory in the the third epoch, where Tension cards must be played to the board immediately they are drawn. They fuction as a game timer because the game ends immediately when a 10th Tension card is played to the board. This mechanic affords players a degree of control over game length; if you're comfortably in the lead in the earlier epochs you may well want to play Tension cards to the board in order to accelerate the game end before rival players have the chance to catch up with you.
Shown here on Board's Eye View is a prototype of Port Royal 1655-1692. We've enjoyed the game's incremental approach as they build from a usually measured start to increasingly cutthroat competition. We're eagerly looking forward to seeing how the published version looks and plays when it appears next year.
