[Board/Tactical Game]: Puerto Rico Expansion, reviewed by ShannonA (3/4)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10655.phtml

Shannon Appelcline's Summary:

A good supplement for Puerto Rico, though sadly only available through purchases at certain conventions.

Go to the full review for more information.

Post originally by Chris Taylor at 2004-09-08 10:00:02
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I disagree with the complaint about the distribution method. It's too small of an expansion for them to create a product that goes through the standard distribution channel. They frankly couldn't charge enough to make the majority of distributors and retailers stock this if it was a typical paid expansion. (Or if they did, the margins would be extremely thin.)

It _is_ available off to the web for anyone who can't make it to one of the cons. Having it available at a con is like extra whip cream on a sundae -- nice, but not required. And the gaming community is a small one, but pretty nice overall and well connected through the web. I'd guess that if someone can't make a con, if they really wanted this, they could find someone to pick up a copy for them.

I understand your position, Shannon, but I look at this from the other way. They didn't have to do it this way, but it's a bonus that they did.

(ObDisclaimer: I don't own Puerto Rico yet, but I did get a copy of the expansion from the local Strategicon for a friend without him asking.)

Post originally by Shannon Appelcline at 2004-09-08 11:45:02
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I knew I'd get some disagreement on my complaints about distribution.

As for the claims that they couldn't charge enough:

Last year RGG put out Carcassonne: King & Scout, which was a 12 tile expansion for Carcassonne, definitely smaller than the Puerto Rico Expansion. It went through normal retail chains for $5.

This year Days of Wonder is putting out the Mystery Train Expansion for Ticket to Ride, an 8-10 card expansion. They're making it available through: a convention, local retailers, a gaming magazine, and their web site for the cost of postage.

I think either choice was much more fair to their customers. Likewise, RGG could have choosen to make it available to online retailers (as Days of Wonder did with some of their M'44 promos) or through purchases at their web site directly. Instead they choose to support "convention retailers", which was a demographic that's going to cut out most of their customers & fans.

I mean, if they really wanted to support convention retailers, they could have said, "If you want the first release of the PRE in 2004, you must buy at a convention, but we'll have it available at our web site in late 2004 if you can't make it to a convention.", and then all the early adopters would have gone to conventions, but everyone could have still gotten the product.

Shannon

Post originally by James Stuart at 2004-09-08 12:45:59
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I feel like that there is a variety of worth to the buildings in the expansion, but more of the buildings are viable in the PR expansion than the original. (You can also see the same advancing maturity in San Juan, in which virtually all of the buildings are viable).

Yet, some do stand out: the Forest House is the most blatantly over and underpowered building in the game: alone, it's fairly worthless (since it requires two settler phases to provide any benefit, compared to the one for the construction hut, and given that forests are only really worthwhile in combination with quarries, it puts more pressure to settler more, while the construction hut provides the benefit of alleviating the need to settler for quarries). All these disadvantages compared to a building that is generally considered on the low end of possible builds! (at least in the non 5-player version)

Yet, a forest house with a hacienda is absolutely devastating: you can very quickly, through picking the settler phase nearly every turn, reach a situation where every 2VP building and below is free, and even the big buildings cost 1-4. Every time I've managed to pick this up online, the game has been almost brutally easy. If these two buildings do exist, it's almost a necessity for other players to pick them defensively.

The union hall is also dubious, as you point out: it's another building where players have to pick it up defensively if a player is successfully crafting a strategy towards it.

Alexfrog also thinks the church is too powerful, but I'm not quite convinced yet.

Post originally by Matthew Gabbert at 2004-09-08 15:19:04
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I can't understand why they wouldn't make this available through direct sales from their web site. I mean, I'd be happy to pay them $5-10 for it, but it's hardly worth a 400+ mile drive to the nearest con. Oh well.

-- Matthew Gabbert

Post originally by Ben Lehman at 2004-09-08 17:39:54
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I actually found the Forest House quite powerful. The thing about it is that you have to seriously invest in the Forest House as your primary means for doing *anything* in the game -- totally ignoring large other aspects. That said, I was consistently winning for a while with Forest House leading into Cloister for the endgame.

Post originally by SteveD at 2004-09-08 19:48:56
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Thanks for excluding your international market, Rio Grande. Jerks.

Post originally by SteveD at 2004-09-08 20:32:52
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I know the Office isn't much good outside of three players. What else?

Steve

Post originally by Shannon Appelcline at 2004-09-08 21:04:03
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I've seen a lot of people complain about the University as too costly as well.

Post originally by Cordo at 2004-09-08 22:35:31
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As a gamer who lives in Japan, I absolutely agree with Shannon's points and was vigourously nodding my head. It's nearly impossible for me to acquire the expansion and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth towards RGG.