Farming

In Puerto Rico assume the roles of colonial governors on the island of Puerto Rico. The aim of the game is to amass victory points by shipping goods to the Europe or by constructing buildings.

Each player uses a separate small board with spaces for city buildings, plantations, and resources. Shared between the players are three ships, a trading house, and a supply of resources and doubloons.

The resource cycle of the game is that players grow crops which they exchange for points or doubloons. Doubloons can then be used to buy buildings, which allow players to produce more crops or give them other abilities. Buildings and plantations do not work unless they are manned by colonists.

During each round, players take turns selecting a role card from those on the table (such as "Trader" or "Builder"). When a role is chosen, every player gets to take the action appropriate to that role. The player that selected the role also receives a small privilege for doing so - for example, choosing the "Builder" role allows all players to construct a building, but the player who chose the role may do so at a discount on that turn. Unused roles gain a doubloon bonus at the end of each turn, so the next player who chooses that role gets to keep any doubloon bonus associated with it. This encourages players to make use of all the roles throughout a typical course of a game.

Puerto Rico uses a variable phase order mechanic, where a "governor" token is passed clockwise to the next player at the conclusion of a turn. The player with the token begins the round by choosing a role and taking the first action.

Players earn victory points for owning buildings, for shipping goods, and for manned "large buildings." Each player's accumulated shipping chips are kept face down and come in denominations of one or five. This prevents other players from being able to determine the exact score of another player. Goods and doubloons are placed in clear view of other players and the totals of each can always be requested by a player. As the game enters its later stages, the unknown quantity of shipping tokens and its denominations require players to consider their options before choosing a role that can end the game.

The gameboard of Finca shows the mediterranean island of Mallorca. Players try to crop and deliver the fruits of Mallorca (such as oranges, lemons, almonds, grapes etc.) by means of moving workers on a traditional windmill. Object of the game is to distribute your crop as effectively as possible in order to deliver faster than your opponents.

From the Box: Mallorca, Island of the Wind. A place of golden beaches and a light-blue sea. The almond harvest is at hand, in addition, juicy oranges, lemons, and figs are ready to be picked and taken to the market. Olive trees bewitch the country with their curled branches and sumptuous vineyards invite passers-by to walk among their warm earth. In the midst of this landscape, your centuries-old natural stone farmhouse provides a home and supports your large windmill: your FINCA.
Listen to the wind, which propels your windmill! Then take in the course of the yearly harvest the sweetest and most valuable fruits from the land. Load them on your old donkey cart and travel around the island, selling them everywhere. If you manage this quickly, you will soon be the richest farmer on the island.

Recommendations:

2011 Hungarian Boardgame Prize Winner
2011 Ludoteca Ideale (Italy)
Nominee "Spiel des Jahres 2009"
4th place "Deutscher Spielepreis 2009"
Nominee "Graf Ludo 2009"
Adult Game of the year 2010 (Finland)

Publisher's description:

Frank the farmer is proud of the delicious apples, pears, cherries and plums that grow in his garden. It's fruit crop day and Frank is in a really good mood. But what's this...?

Six ravens are sitting in the trees eating his fruits. "Watch out! I will get you!", he shouts. Will Frank be able to catch the naughty ravens before they steal all his fruits?

The Cinque Terre are five coastal villages in the Liguria region of Italy known for their beauty, culture, food, and proximity to one another. Produce carts are commonly found in each village marketplace.

In Cinque Terre, a game of strategy, players compete to sell the most valuable produce in the five villages. Players act as farmers and operate a cart in which they will harvest produce and deliver them to the five villages to sell. Additionally, players will compete for Produce Order cards, which reward Lira points for selling desirable produce in specific villages. Players track sold produce in each village using their Fulfillment Cards. The winner is the player who gains the most Lire by selling valuable produce, gaining popularity in the villages, and fulfilling Produce Orders.

Game Set Up and Play

During setup in Cinque Terre, colored dice are randomly pulled from a cloth bag and rolled to establish the prices each village will pay for select produce. Each player also begins play with a private order only she can fulfill. Five public orders are turned up that all players can work on, though only the first player to fulfill each public order will score points for it. The Most Popular Vendor cards (1 for each village) are placed face up along one side of the board. The first player to fill an entire row with produce cubes for a particular village earns the Most Popular Vendor card for that village, which provides bonus points. Four Produce cards are turned face up and each player receives 4 to begin with along with a Fulfillment board and Produce Truck in their color.

On your turn, you can perform 3 actions in any order or combination you choose:

Take a Produce Card - either a faceup card or one from the deck.
Move your Produce Cart up four spaces clockwise around the board.
Harvest produce from the location your cart is currently at. Each produce cube you wish to harvest requires a matching card. Two identical cards can be used in place of any one other card. Your cart can hold up to 4 produce cubes at a time.
Deliver produce to a village. Unload the produce cubes you wish to deliver and place them in the appropriate spaces for that village on your fulfillment card.

At the end of your turn, if you complete a public order or achieve Most Popular Vendor, take the appropriate card, scoring the points indicated. You can only complete one public order per turn. When you complete a public order, you must draw a new card from the Order Deck. If you would like to keep that card as a private order, add it to your hand and draw another and place it face up to replace the public order just completed. If you do not wish to keep the card you drew as a private order, place it face up instead. Any private orders not fultilled by game end count as negative points against you.

Players take turns taking their 3 actions until one player has completed 5 public orders (Most Popular Vendor Cards also count as public orders for determining game end), then everyone gets one more turn, including the player who caused the game to end.

In Viticulture, the players find themselves in the roles of people in rustic, pre-modern Tuscany who have inherited meager vineyards. They have a few plots of land, an old crushpad, a tiny cellar, and three workers. They each have a dream of being the first to call their winery a true success.

The players are in the position of determining how they want to allocate their workers throughout the year. Every season is different on a vineyard, so the workers have different tasks they can take care of in the summer and winter. There's competition over those tasks, and often the first worker to get to the job has an advantage over subsequent workers.

Fortunately for the players, people love to visit wineries, and it just so happens that many of those visitors are willing to help out around the vineyard when they visit as long as you assign a worker to take care of them. Their visits (in the form of cards) are brief but can be very helpful.

Using those workers and visitors, players can expand their vineyards by building structures and planting vines (vine cards) and filling wine orders (wine order cards), players work towards the goal of running the most successful winery in Tuscany.