In which MetalJim reviews a newish board game…

Is your gaming group tired of Caylus?  Have you exhausted all of the possible strategies in Puerto Rico?  If you have no idea what I am talking about, then you should probably stop reading this article right now…

Cuba [BGG link] is a new take on one of those heavy German boardgames where you have lots of different kinds of wooden cubes that represent different “goods”, and little cardboard coins for “money”, and you somehow auction/ jockey for special building tiles that allow you to manage business “transactions” that produce more goods and money, until you eventually start turning those goods into “victory points” that make you win the game.

Cuba is a $60 game at full retail.  It’s more like $38 if you know where to shop online.  Obviously, this is not an impulse purchase.  For the money, you get lots and lots of wooden bits.  You get wooden cubes in three colors, wooden barrels in 3 different colors, cute little wooden rum bottles, various wooden meeples, other counters, heavy duty cardboard player boards, building tiles, some high quality cards, and a full color game board.  As you would expect from a German game of this class, the components are all very solid.

The theme in Cuba has something to do with building up plantations, constructing buildings, shipping goods, and bribing government officials in the early 1950s in Cuba.  Commodities include tobacco, sugar, and citrus.  You can build factories that produce rum and cigars.  The air is rife with corruption.  Of course, this is still a German game, so don’t get too attached to the theme.  This is all about the complex interplay of abstract gameplay systems and mechanics.

Despite some handy reference cards, Cuba is a game that seems a little daunting at first glance.  You have a lot of different resources to keep track of.  Even in the first main turn sequence of the game, you can buy virtually any “building” tile that might exist in the stock.  Even though it’s not hard to figure out what a particular building does, there are about 25 possible tiles, and it is difficult to comprehend everything at once, or to see how certain building tiles might work together to form part of an effective strategy.  Plan on a good 20–30 minutes of rules coverage at the beginning of your first session with the game.

In Cuba, each of the game’s six turns begins with 4 “action” rounds.  During your turn, you play one of the “character” cards out of your hand (everyone has the same five cards).  A “worker” lets you produce select resources from your plantation.  A “foreman” lets you activate some of the buildings that you have already constructed.  A “tradeswoman” allows you to buy and sell certain commodities on the open market.  The “architect” lets you build new buildings.  The “mayor” allows you to put goods onto the ships in the harbor.

Timing of actions can be important.  If you and another player are both shopping for the same building, then you will want to play your architect sooner rather than later.  There are a limited number of spaces on the boats where you can load your goods.  The available stockpile of goods to buy in the market may shift as the game goes along.  If you want to have an advantageous turn order, you have to save the character card with the highest “vote” number (the mayor is the highest) for use during the fourth action phase.

Whichever character card that you DON’T use will end up going to parliament.  If you control the government, you get to decide what tax laws and subsidies will affect all players for the next complete turn.  Paying taxes and duties in the legal manner gives a nice boost to victory points.  There’s a simple “closed fist” auction where you get to bribe your way to the top.  There’s no prize for second place here, and no coalition building.  Either you control the government or you don’t.  Having this control doesn’t make you win the game, but it can be used to leverage an advantage, and to make sure that you are able to pay the duties that other players cannot.

Despite the daunting rules burden as you sit down to play, Cuba gets easier as you go along.  You will be testing out some sort of “strategy” by the end of the first game.  You might focus on controlling the rum production, and trying to maximize your shipping points.  I did quite well by taking victory points wherever I could get them, including making sure to pay my taxes whenever possible.  In my five player game, I was also able to build up a large reserve of cash.  One of the laws that got passed gave a huge victory point bonus just for having lots of cash.  During the last 2 rounds of the game, I bribed my way to the top of the government to keep this “subsidy” on the books, while keeping other taxes high enough so that no one could catch me in terms of money.

After one play, Cuba seems like a “fun” version of a German-style economic simulation.  The game has its own supply-and-demand dynamics.  You may have your own “solitaire” plantation board, but you have to pay careful attention to what the other players are building, and how these resources will likely be spent in the turns to come.  It’s always good to know who has rum, and who can produce rum, if there’s a ship pulling into port that’s looking to load some rum.  And so on.

So, is Cuba really a worthy successor to Puerto Rico?  Obviously, it is too early to tell.  After one five player game (which turned out to be a crushing 10 point victory for me), it seems like the game does have some replayability, and some real possibilities that multiple paths to victory might exist.  Playing time might be 30 minutes per player, with a real possibility that 4 experienced players could run this in the 90–120 minute range.

Cuba is a better-LOOKING game than Puerto Rico.  It has more THEME than Puerto Rico.  Like Puerto Rico, it has a slightly complex pre-game setup, arranging wooden barrels and so forth.  Cuba certainly takes up a lot more space on your table than Puerto Rico ever did.  Cuba would seem to lack Puerto Rico’s unique “cause and effect” mechanics whereby character role selection would cause subtle shifts in the game dynamic that would ripple down from one turn to the next.

Cuba won’t REPLACE Puerto Rico in your collection.  However, if you and your friends think Puerto Rico really is the best German boardgame ever, but you don’t play it any more because you have worn out the strategies, then you certainly owe it to yourself to give Cuba a try.

In summary, Cuba may not be a perfect “10”, but it is very likely the best Puerto Rico style “heavy” German game that you will play this year.  If this is the kind of game that your local boardgaming circle happens to like, then you should definitely give it a try.  Try not to be too intimidated by the rules, pick a strategy, and swing for the fences.  Also, be sure to pay your taxes.  You’ll be glad you did.