xxxx xxxx

Cuba
Authors: Michael Rieneck & Stefan Stadler
Publisher: eggertspiele / Hutter Trade
Year: 2007


review by

x
Cuba - before the revolution, the rules explicitly state. Whether this setting is an advantage or not to us players remains unclear, but at least it offers the opportunity to bribe and buy votes in the parliament each round; and that they were corrupt at that time is a fact but on the other hand, corruption is of all times and dispositions.
A moody game board with an imaginary city plan in warm yellowish tints lies before us, the impressive in ivory colours set parliament building is prominently present; the atmosphere is rightly set!

xx
x
The route of our daily stroll around the city serves as scoring track; in the harbour ships wait for their cargo to be loaded. At the market the cane sugar, tobacco and citrus - all referred to as ‘resources’ - are displayed; also the famous cigars will have to find their way to the customers, as goes for the dragged drums filled with local rum.
The building materials are placed next to the game board: wood, brick and, eh, water? Also on and next to the board the building tiles are put that the players may choose to build during the game. In six rounds players try to handle all these commodities on their private plantation boards, together with a set of character cards identical to all players, to collect the most points with it.
x
xx
x
Each player has his own plantation board depicting various fields that bring in the building materials and resources once activated with a worker. A walled warehouse with a farmyard offers space for the harvest; at game start players already may take two building materials and two resources of their choice and put it in their farmyard.
A starting player is determined; how, the rules do not say, so we may use our own imagination and sharpness, for instance: the last player who smoked a cigar (we don’t smoke), has been on holiday to Cuba (nobody), or had a conversation with Fidel at the phone. In our gaming group, the player who hears voices in his head came close enough to the last condition to qualify for starting player (me)...
x
x
Each round has five phases. In the first phase four new bills are announced by turning over the corresponding cards; at the end of the round two of these are passed into a law. This varies from tax laws: pay with pesos and turn them into victory points, to regulation of the market: removing or adding resources at the local market.
Well, nice to know the new bills, but not important, at least not for the moment. The second phase has to be handled first, and this phase is the longest and most important phase of the game: each player in turn plays one of his character cards, and performs the corresponding action.
x
He can play the worker, who, if we want it, brings the mechanism that the plantation fields are into motion, and harvests. A player may (re)position) his worker on any field of the plantation, including any building, and harvest everything (all building materials but not more than two resources) the worker can ‘see’ along the column and row he stands on. The harvest is put on the farmyard and is available for any further proccessing on following actions.

x
x
x Playing the mayor card enables a player to supply one of the ships with resources and wares and score the accompanying points for it. Playing the tradeswoman allows a player to buy or sell resources and the wares tobacco and rum. With the architect a player may put a building on his plantation by paying the resources for that building, having to consider where to put it as it nullifies one of the resources or building materials. These buildings, when activated by the foreman, may convert resources or materials into points or wares, or other things that deal with shipping, or convert them into money. Because money, it remains a scarce good, and this game is no exception to this fact.
x
x x x
x
Playing the foreman card activates all buildings the worker token can ‘see’; the token may not be repositioned on the plantation when playing this card so both characters will have to be taken into account when placing the worker. With the activation of a building the special ability of that building is executed. Even the warehouse is a building that needs to be activated from time to time, as at the end of a round all resources outside the warehouse are wasted. Wares and building materials in the farmyard are always safe. x
x
x The mayor is responsible for the shipping of the resources and wares: playing this card allows a player to supply any one ship in the harbour; these ships have a varying composition of items, and occupy spaces in the harbour that earn 1 to 3 points per shipped item. But full is full (oh, I just have to read this brilliant insight once again!), so a player needs to keep an eye on the other players: can they also ship, and with what? The ships come on cards that each round move to a higher scoring position; the ship at the highest position is removed. Refilling comes from a blind stack, but each new card from this stack is considered near the coast and is turned face up before entering the harbour.
Some characters allow an alternative action: a non shipping mayor may take four (the first player) or two pesos (the second) from the bank to replenish his shrinking money supply somewhat. And when a player does not want to use the architect for erecting a building, he may choose to use it for bare points.
This sums up all the character cards, but: a player may only play four of the five! The fourth played card is used to determine the new starting player, and the unplayed fifth card is used in the next phase as votes in the parliament. Additional votes may be bought with money in a blind bid for 1 peso per vote; when the representatives come that cheap, then we do not want to know what the prices are for services in the strip clubs in Havana, rightfully excluded from the game!
x
The player with the most votes now chooses two bills that are passed into laws and take immediate effect: each player looks if he qualifies for any of the laws to increase hisscore. After this all players take back their character cards into their hands, various markers are removed from the board, the ships are moved, resources from barnyards are wasted, and a new round starts. After the sixth round, the player who managed to collect the most points has won.
x
x
x
Because everything is handled in phases, the game is very easy to play. At first glance a player could be overwhelmed by the amount of components, especially of the buildings and its possibilities, but subsequently everything is served in ready to eat lumps.
x
Each player has some business to do at his plantation, but all players play the worker as one of the first cards in order to get the to be processed items for the current round. This sequence only has slight variations. The interaction among the players is minimal, and is confined to the bidding in the parliament phase; each player more or less plays his own game. The harbour, even with five players, is not crowded enough to bring extra excitement or pressure and to involve the ships on position ‘1’; all wait until a ship is at least on position ‘2’ but preferably ‘3’ to get the most points for it. The building that enables a player to ship 1 or 2 items without playing the mayor is a popular investment.
x

It is odd though, that there are buildings that transfer tobacco into cigars, and cane sugar into rum, but this additional step and effort (build the building, activate it, transform the items, ship) is not rewarded and reflected in the points; they still earn the same points as the ‘basic’ resources that can be processed right away.

x
Each building has its own nice capabilities and some have a limited connection, but once a player has built several buildings, he can only use a couple of them effectively. The law cards unfortunately have little variation and lack some ingenuity: when a tax bill shows that each player has to pay four or even five pesos (the other possibilities being one, two or three pesos) in return for 2 points, in most cases the bill will not make it into a law as áll players rather prefer to use their precious money more efficiently elsewhere.
x

‘Puerto Rico’ is around the corner, and ‘Caylus’ next door; ‘Cuba’ is going with the trend and certainly not innovative as such - but nice to play it still is, despite the aforementioned remarks. ‘Cuba’ is the first large fully professional produced game from Eggertspiele: production, artwork, all comes together in this game. Hopefully they will keep this new standard, because the result is impressive!

x
x
The game board shows a first preprinted column of buildings; this leads to confusion as it suggests only these buildings are available at game start before any other can be built; but in a second print the publisher promised this will be corrected.
The character cards ‘worker’ and ‘foreman’ show us real diamonds in the rough where the ladies may pick their favorite: with our without waxed breast!
x
The musing glance of the architect with beautiful light shining through the blinds from behind is very effective. It is amazing to see how Michael Menzel (honorary member of the fanclub ‘We Mention His Name In Almost Every Review’) succeeded in suggesting the analog brush (with a Wacom and Photoshop): only in a magnification the computer line can be distinguished.

With ‘Pillars of the Earth’ a new trend was set by drawing only the part of a frame on the game board, marking where to put cards, thereby virtually enlarging the game board. After this we saw it in ‘Shogun’, and now we see it again in ‘Cuba’. And well, nice, a large game board, but what do we actually need it for, the peevish among us will moan; but some things have no use and still are nice that they exist - we do not play games out of efficiency, but we do like to play and have fun behind an over the top size game board!
x
We as aficionados are more than challenged to buy this game, provoked by so much beauty. Overproduced, my naughty bottom! Atmosphere is what we want, and lots of it!

In the meantime Eggertspiele is, apart from the gamer in pursue for more information on ‘Cuba’, also causing a lot of additional work for the American intelligence with so many new hits with this lemma on the internet! Finally, and for some more work for intelligence and to draw some secret attention: ‘Cuba’ might not be the bomb, but it sure is a nice hand grenade!
© 2007 Richard van Vugt
x
Cuba, Michael Rieneck & Stefan Stadler, Eggertspiele, 2007 - 2 to 5 players, 12 years and up, 75-120 minutes


'Orgullecida' Compay Segundo - Yo Vengo Aquí, 1996
x
x
x