Or rather it is not a review of the game itself, or of the artwork, but of the quality of the packaging, components, insert and presentation because, by god, these elements deserve a review of their own! With the exception of one small flaw they provide a shining example of how a game should be packaged and presented. All other boardgame designers take heed.
If you want a review of the game itself, please check out the incomparable Mr Vasel's opinion here. I merely quote one paragraph.
Tom Vasel wrote:
Components: The box looks like a treasure chest, which is a good analogy of what is inside. A well designed plastic insert holds the plastic ships and the piles of double-sided tokens easily. Each token has a different colored background and shape, and the coins look really good. The dice are wooden (maybe too light?), but the highlight of the game is the gorgeous board and even better-looking cards. Each card is a full piece of art with clear symbols to let you know what they do. The art is cartoonish but very well designed, and you can even line up all eleven cards in a beautiful panorama (if you have space and are bored). The game is a visual delight and should appeal to kids and adults alike.
As it arrives: The game box arrives tightly shrinkwrapped with the top of the box sitting a good half inch higher than it would normally be. This extra half inch is because the insert is designed to hold the game neatly once punched, so the unpunched sprues sit on top of the insert and raise the box lid. Jamaica is not the first game to be presented like this, but this does give an indication of the attention to detail inside.
The tokens are attached to the sprues slightly more robustly than I prefer (I would rather they were attached so lightly that a few fall out as you pick them up), so a little care must be taken when punching them out. This may be because the are in reasonably heavy duty card.
Beneath the sprues are 4 gloriously-coloured, folded rulesheets (English, French, German and Italian) which are printed on high-quality, glossy paper and open out to the size of a broadsheet newspaper. These give a little bit of pirate history and backstory, show the components and set-up and the rules in a quirky flow-chart dressed up as a map. The 3 rulesheets you don't need will fit neatly under the insert.
Beneath this is the board which is brightly printed, thick, flat and has a beautiful dubloon motif on the reverse.
Below this is the insert, of which more later, containing the remaining components.
Remaining components Image by Easterly1
These comprise 6 brightly-coloured and surprisingly weighty resin ships, 3 large wooden dice, a shrinkwrapped pack of pirate action cards and 12 small treasure cards.
The ships are beautiful, but they are also the subject of my one gripe - resin is brittle and housing 6 brittle ships in a ziploc bag in a large compartment is a recipe for disaster. 2 of mine were broken on arrival and needed regluing. This was a shameful oversight considering the insert actually has individual shaped holes for each ship which are used once everything is unpacked and which would have provided more than adequate protection. Alternatively, the designers could have followed the example of Lord of the Rings which packages similar resin figures in a polystyrene case for transport.
Interestingly (to me at any rate), Jamaica continues Rum & Pirates conceit that Fuchsia is a piratey colour.
The pirate cards are strong, brightly coloured (with artwork to match the actions) and an unusual wide landscape shape with nicely rounded edges.
The treasure cards continue the colours and artwork, although they are a more conventional shape and about the size of a Ticket to Ride card.
The dice are, well, dice. They are light but if one has to quibble at the heft of the dice one is really struggling for criticisms.
Finally we come to the insert, and this really does deserve a drum roll and a picture......
Look at the top of the picture first. The top third of the insert holds the Gunpowder tokens, the Dubloons and the Food tokens. See how each compartment is sized to be full, but not overflowing. What you can't see in this image (but you can in the one further up) is that each compartment has a rounded bottom rather than a square one, so even the last few tokens can easily be swept out of each one with a couple of fingers. No more emptying components into piles on the table! When we play, the box sits by the board and all the tokens are in easy reach. To add to that, the board sits tightly on top of the compartments and the box lid tightly on top of that, there is no requirement for ziploc bags to stop tokens mixing in transit.
In the middle of the insert you see the dice holder (note the big depressions on either side to give even the chubbiest fingers easy purchase on the dice) and the slot for the 6 'holds' (once they are punched out). The remaining holders are for the ships.
Now move down to the lower half of the image. Here you can see that the holds sit above two further compartments.
The first compartment is the perfect size to take the pirate cards. When removed these reveal another, smaller compartment for the treasure cards. Note how the same, single finger hole allows easy removal of first the holds, then the pirate cards, then the treasure cards.
The second compartment contains the compass (indicates who is captain each turn) and below that a smaller compartment for the treasure tokens.
Again, all of this is fitted so perfectly that every item is easy to put in place, easy to remove and yet held in place when the lid is closed.
Conclusions:
1. I have ranted on far too long about the construction of the contents of a board game for anybody's sanity.
2. This is (almost) the acme of how a game should be presented, a masterpiece of design. If all my games were presented like this I could do away with my stack of ziploc bags and elastic bands. Kudos and congratulations to the designers and artists who put this all together.
3. The game doesn't play too badly either.
Last edited on 2008-10-31 18:32:15 CST (Total Number of Edits: 1)
Posted Wed Mar 26, 2008 11:14 pm
