Review: Cartagena

Cartagena (said: car-ta-HAIN-ya) is advertised as a “prison break” game where you’re trying to get a band of pirates down a tunnel and into their awaiting sloop. That initial theme serves as a jumping off point for the artwork (which utilizes a lot of skulls and guns and other creepy pirate paraphernalia), but when you get right down to it, the game is really just an abstract goal of getting your pieces from point A to point B. But that doesn’t hurt the game a bit. In fact, I think it helps because the game doesn’t get so bogged down in sticking to a “theme” (like Monsters Menace America) that it tries to make more of itself than it really is. In fact the simple design of Cartagena gives it a certain timeless quality where you could see yourself playing this exact same version with your grandkids forty years down the line.

I’ve read reviews that call Cartagena “Candyland for adults,” and I think that’s an accurate, if overly simplistic description. It’s similar in that you draw cards then move your pieces down a path and whoever reaches the end first wins. But this game goes beyond merely flipping a card and moving, flipping a card and moving. Players control six pieces (pirates) and have the choice on each turn of moving forward or backward—three moves per turn. To move forward, you have to play a card from your hand and move to the next available space with that picture (skull, ruby, knife, key, bottle, gun). If the closest applicable space already has a pirate (yours or somebody else’s) on it, then you move to the next available space with that picture. In theory, if all ruby spaces between you and the sloop are filled, you could play a ruby and move your pirate all the way to the end of the tunnel.

You start the game with only four cards, which is obviously not enough to get all your pirates down the tunnel. You pick up new cards by moving a piece backwards to the closest space that has one or two pirates already on it. If there is one pirate on that space, you pick up one card. If there are two pirates, you pick up two cards.

Those are the only rules. Very simple and easy to explain while still lending itself to plenty of strategy as you “make chains” and “break chains” with your pirates, allowing your pieces to jump farther down the board without allowing your opponents to take the same advantage. Another little twist for this game is that the “board” is actually comprised of six sections of tunnel that you assemble randomly at the beginning of each game, making the layout different every time.

Since I was introduced to the world of German Style Board Games, I’ve come to realize that, for serious gamers, the word “luck” is definitely a four-letter word. The less a game depends on any “luck factor” the more integrity it apparently has. In Cartagena the two luck factors are that you don’t know what cards your opponents have and you don’t know what cards are next in the draw pile. So even though there is still a good deal of strategy going on, the actual decision of whether to draw or move is more dependent on luck than skill. For those strategy diehards, there is a second way of playing that lends itself to being more “skill based” than “luck based.” In the “Tortuga version” of Cartagena all cards are face up. You can see what your opponents have and they can see what you have. In addition, the first five cards of the draw pile are also face up. Much more strategy comes into play because you can see exactly which chains your opponents can exploit and make a much more educated decision about where to move and what to draw.

While I’ve never personally attempted the Tortuga version, I’ve read several reviews that say it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It takes what should be a fun and simple game that employs just the right amount of strategy, and tries and turn it into something it’s not. In the end, everybody’s turn ends up taking twice as long as they agonize over every single move and every single decision. The game ends up turning into a slow boring march rather than a fun sprint through the tunnel. So I say stick to the basic rules. There is still plenty of strategy involved and it keeps the game fast paced and fun, which, if you’ll remember, was the whole point of this anyway.

VITALS: This is a 2-5 player game which I’ve found can last anywhere from 10-45 minutes depending on how long people agonize over their moves. The age on the box says 8 and up, which seems a pretty good assessment. Perhaps a precocious six-year-old could play it provided an adult helped walk them through their decision making process.

OVERALL FUN FACTOR: Classic and timeless board game fun. Since it’s not based on some trivial novelty, the “novelty” of it never wears off, which means if you like it the first time you, you’ll like it for the rest of your life. 8 out of 10.

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