Cartagena (board game)
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| Designer(s) | Leo Colovini |
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| Publisher(s) | Corfix Identity Games International B.V. Nordic Games Oya Rio Grande Games Tilsit Venice Connection Venice Connection Winning Moves |
| Players | 2 to 5 |
| Age range | 13 to adult |
| Setup time | 5 minutes |
| Playing time | 45 minutes |
| Random chance | Medium |
| Skill(s) required | Planning |
Cartagena is a critically acclaimed German-style board game released in 2000, that takes as its theme the legendary 1672 pirate-led jailbreak from the dreaded fortress of Cartagena. The game supposedly became popular in the pirate coves of the Caribbean.
With its very simple concept, this game of strategy gives each player a group of six pirates and the objective is to have all six escape through the tortuous underground passage that connects the fortress to the port, where a sloop is waiting for them.
The first player to move all of his or her pirates from the Cartagena prison to the sloop is the winner.
The game board and its pieces were designed by Leo Colovini and drawn by artists Christoph Clasen, Claus Stephan, Didier Guiserix, Martin Hoffmann, and Studio Tapiro. The board itself is made up of six double-sided sections, each of which has a different permutation of the same six pictures: daggers, pirate hats, pistols, bottles of rum, skulls, and skeleton keys. These six sections can be combined in any order, to make thousands of different games (although nowhere near as many as the 7206 combinations theoretically possible).
Each player is dealt six cards out of a set of 102: 17 cards for each of the six pictures. Each also begins the game with six pirates, represented by solid-coloured, wooden figures. Colour choices include brown, red, yellow, and blue.
The player who looks most like a pirate goes first, with gameplay proceeding in a clockwise direction.
During one's turn, a player can make between one and three moves. Each move sees one of the player's pirate going either forward or backward. Pirates are moved forward by playing the cards in their hand. New cards can only be obtained by moving backward.
To move forward, the player selects a pirate. plays a card, and moves that pirate forward to the next unoccupied square with the same picture as the card. If there are no unoccupied spaces ahead, the pirate moves to the sloop.
To move backward, the player selects a pirate and moves it back to the closest square with one or two pirates. If that square has one pirate, the player draws one card; if it has two pirates, the player draws two. Pirates cannot be moved all the way back to Cartagena.
The game can be played in two variants: Jamaica, in which the deck is hidden and players cannot see each other's cards, and Tortuga, in which the cards are visible. The game plays quite differently in the two versions.
Jamaica games tend to be fast-paced (30–45 minutes), and involve both skill and luck. Tortuga games involve much less luck; the game is simple enough that the winner is usually the player who can perform the deepest analysis.
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Wikipedia