Rum, cigars and selling policies. Overview of the game Cuba

 Many draw parallels between "Cuba" and such games as "Puerto Rico" or "Struggle for the Galaxy". Indeed, the driving force of these games is the choice of character cards (roles, phases - the essence does not change from this). Let me remind you that in the basic "Cuba" players have five characters at their disposal: a worker (extraction of resources and products), trade (buying/selling goods), architect (construction of buildings), foreman (activation of buildings) and mayor (export of goods for victory points ). In each round, each player plays four characters from this list, and the remaining character after 4 rounds goes off to engage in politics, buy votes with the player's money and seek leadership in those same votes to be able to dispose of the four bills and decide which laws will be accepted by the government. , And which are rejected.

 Addition "El President" adds one round of moves in each round. In addition to 4 of the 5 characters, each player must sooner or later use one of the available Cuban cards, taking it from the field for himself and performing a unique card action. At the beginning of the round, each Cuban is in a separate place on the field. A certain action of the president is tied to each such place. By taking the Cuban's card, the player crosses out one of the president's possible actions from the list in this way. At the end of the character phase, the presidential car drives along the boulevard and stops near the last card of the Cuban (the others have already been sorted by the players). After that, the president's action is performed, related to the place on the field where the card of the remaining unwanted Cuban is located.

 Cubans: dancer (player becomes the first player in the next round), musician (player receives 2 coins), day laborer (allows to immediately move the player's products from the yard to the warehouse), port master (replaces ships in the port), lawyer (activates one building per coin), revolutionary (the player receives a victory point).

 Actions of the President:

1. In the next round, two characters will go to the parliament.
2. All bills are accepted, the phase of buying votes and voting is skipped.
3. In the next round, it is allowed to move the worker figure before using the foreman.
4. For a coin, each player can rebuild an already existing building into another, spending only the difference in resources.
5. The leader loses 2 victory points.
6. Each player takes a token of any product from the market.

 In addition to all of the above, the El Presidente expansion includes several tokens for new buildings, ship maps, and bills. Among the latter, I would like to draw attention to a very strong law that should pull up the laggards. As long as this law is in effect, players will receive additional points at the end of each round. Everyone will receive the number of points equal to their current place on the victory points line: the leader will move up by 1 point, the third player - by 3... This method of pulling out the laggards was used back in Snow Tails. Thanks to this law and the fifth action of the president, the counting of points in the last game in "Cuba" revealed a striking equality: three out of four players scored the same number of points and the winner had to be determined by the amount of cash left at the disposal.

 In general, "Cuba" with the addition, despite a slightly higher difficulty, is somewhat more loyal to lagging players. Still, this game is not suitable for family leisure: too many rules, too much planning. However, if you sit down to the game to shake your brains, and not just to relax, if you are worried about the upcoming mental duel, where the main weapon will be a mixture of hard calculation, logic and cunning, then "Cuba" will not leave you indifferent.