Santiago de Cuba

In Santiago de Cuba the players represent rule-bending trade brokers, wheeling and dealing their way around the city in order to cash in at the docks: there, ships await with demand for Cuba’s produce (fruit, sugar, tobacco, rum, cigars). Fill the orders to score points – when the seventh ship sails away, most points wins!

The small-ish board allows for a randomized set-up: characters are placed along the road in town and buildings along the outside of the board. Players begin with a little cash, a couple of points and one each of the basic goods – fruit, sugar and tobacco. Everyone keeps their stuff hidden behind their own player screen. At the start of the round coloured dice are rolled to determine which goods the ship sitting in the docks is demanding, then play begins.

Flying somewhat in the face of traditional business conventions, the players’ industrialists travel together in a small car along the road. On your turn you can move the car to the next location for free, or pay cash to move it further along the road. Wherever you stop, two things happen. First, you take the benefit of the character in the location you stopped at. This might be further supplies of goods, a bit of cash, some cargo (these function as jokers at the docks, where they can be sold as any good), a couple of points, a minor theft from your opponents (they must give you a point, a coin or one good) or even the temporary absence of another character somewhere along the route.

Having taken that action, you now look at the coloured flower on the character card – each one relates to a trio of buildings along the edge of the board. If it isn’t occupied by another player, you can now activate one of these buildings too. Like the characters they are pretty straightforward: trading resources, picking up cash, changing the value of goods about to be sold at the docks, or even vanquishing demand on a particular good by turning the matching coloured die to zero. This last option might sound like a poor choice for a trader, but if the ship is demanding cigars and you know the other players have some hidden behind their screens, there is a cold, capitalist logic to it.

At the end of the road is a space for the docks. If someone chooses to stop here, all players have the opportunity to sell goods to the waiting ship – but crucially, one type of good at a time, in turn order. Going back to our imaginary cigar scenario above, if you know everyone has cigars but only you have tobacco, the logical thing to do would be sell cigars first… (imagine an evilly grinning emoticon here). If the ship’s demands are fully met, it sets sail and a new round begins with a new ship arriving. If the ship is still waiting for goods then this round continues, with the car returning to the start of the road – as it does if it whizzes past the docks entirely. In either scenario, whatever goods the ship is waiting on now increase in value – meaning more potential points for the lucky (or canny) player who sells there next time…