Port Royal
Port Royal is a classic Push your Luck game where you play as a merchant on a harbor and try to gather the most victory points by collecting coins and completing other goals. The game is 2 to 5 players and has 120 cards in the deck. It has a unique design of the deck with a coin at the back of every card. And the front of the cards has ships, traders, captains, sailors, jesters, admirals, and governors, etc.
Draw as many cards as long as you don’t bust your luck by drawing two ships of the same color, as this will result in loss of all previously gained benefits, Although if you have the power to repel the ship which caused the bust you can sail through the deck for more profits and victory points. There are tax cards, expeditions, person cards that allow you to earn more victory points, and much more.
The game is designed by Alexander Pfister and the artwork is done by Klemens Franz. The harbor and Sea Marchant theme combined with push your luck, set collection, and card drafting mechanisms are weaved beautifully to give you the feel of trading and piracy of nautical environments.
Setup
For 2 to 4 players remove the expedition cards and play with the rest of the deck. This 120 card deck is the draw pile and the place next to is the harbor row from which all deals will happen.
On a turn, the player draws the cards from the deck to the harbor faced- up until the player wishes to stop or the bust condition is triggered, then the player may trade and take cards from the harbor by paying its cost to the discard pile. These can be people of different roles who give you abilities to increase your profits as well as victory points. and make you competent to push your luck further in the game.
Gameplay
During this active player phase, other players may also gain cards from the harbor by paying a token cost to the active player for the deals. Turn by turn each player takes the role of active merchant and takes actions to increase the odds of victory and decrease the odds of other players’ victory. The first player to win 12 victory points wins the game. In 5 player mode, at least one expedition is necessary to win the game.
The game shines as a 1 hour Sea theme trading. The game is really interesting during its drawing phase due to push your luck mechanism and also during all the dealing actions which really brings out the merchant within you. No wonder the game has won the game designer award2013, by Austrian Game Designers Competition under the title Händler der Karibik. Port Royal can be easily taught to new players and the game picks up the fun factor right from the beginning. It can be taken anywhere as the game has only a deck of 120 cards as its component. Surely grab your copy and enjoy being in the world of Port Royal.