Age of Steam – Puerto Rico

One-player Scenario for Age of Steam
Designed by Ted Alspach
Published by Bezier Games (2007)


This is a review of the Puerto Rico game and not of Age of Steam. It assumes that those reading the review are familiar with the Age of Steam game. For those unfamiliar with it, you might like to look at Tom Vasel’s excellent review of the game: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/30362.

In Puerto Rico your train network needs to secretly deliver weapons (black cubes) and the capital while publicly only delivering livestock (red cubes).


Game Components

The game is simply two pieces of thin, Legal-size board, back-printed. The Puerto Rico map is on one side of the board and the Jamaica map is on the other side. Both games have the rules printed around the edge of the map.


The maps are colourful and well printed but the board is quite thin. As Puerto Rico is for one player and the other game is for two players this is not really a problem. If it is a concern, placing the map under Perspex should fix the problem.

Puerto Rico has one city which accepts red and black cubes. There are eleven towns on the map.


The Rules of the Game

The changes to the standard Age of Steam rules are quite minimal and very easy to assimilate.

Only red and black cubes are used. Every town on the board starts with two cubes.


During each turn you can select either the Engineer or Locomotive action by paying $5. If you do not choose one of those actions you pay nothing.

Only the red cubes (food) score income.

There is no goods growth.

At the end of the 10th turn you score as normal but reduce your income by $10 for each black cube still on the board.


Playing The Game

The game takes around the 20 minute mark to play. It feels fast and is quite interesting.


Because there are 11 cities you need to set yourself up to use a 6-link route by the end of the game. As only the delivery of red cubes increase your income some serious thought has to be put into how to best manage the resources in the game. Ultimately you do want to get all of the black cubes to San Juan but the order in which you deliver is quite important.

During the set up you choose the level of difficulty for the game. There are several levels: Novicio, Estudiante, Versado, Maestro, Conquistador and Dios. With each increase in difficulty there is a larger number of black cubes and a smaller number of red cubes placed on the board. This is a nice feature as it allows you to build into the game the degree of ‘toughness’ that will make it sufficiently challenging for your taste.

As all cubes are placed on the board during set up there is some small luck factor involved. For example, it is probably better to have black cubes close to San Juan and the red cubes further away so as to allow you to maximise your income increases.




Some Final Thoughts, Man!

I am impressed with Ted’s other solitaire scenario, Barbados. I am even more impressed with Ted, as a designer, after having played Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a totally different game from Barbados with different victory conditions. You have to process the data in a different way.

I think that Puerto Rico is a more calculating game than Barbados, simply because all of the information is on the board in front of you at the very start of the game and it is up to you to make of it what you will.

In Barbados there is a random element due to goods production and goods growth.

Puerto Rico is a fine game and worth playing. It doesn’t take long.


“Dead Men Tell No Tales!”