The Cuban Facile Crisis

Today's game was in memory of Joe’s skeletal and rather stinky cat, Otto, who this week finally went to the great cat basket in the sky. Or, in this case, outside the back door. Otto was around twenty years old by the time he died, and Joe regaled us of Otto’s mysterious life, such as the month he went missing, only to reappear one day smelling of old woman’s perfume.

To celebrate Otto’s passing, we decided to play a brand new game which is far too complicated to be called “fun” but what the Hell. There were four of us: myself (Andrew), Joe, Steve and Adam and the game was called Cuba. To be exact – Cuba: El Presidente, since we played it with the extension pack.

Joe talked us through the rules, most of which resembled rules from other games. It was pretty confusing, with a smorgasbord of cardboard pieces and board-areas to comprehend, and it took us an hour before we were ready to start. The first round was marked by Steve’s usual confusion over the rules, as he misunderstood the need to keep certain goods in his warehouse or lose them. This left him with no goods and only one peso to his name going into round two.

But his woes didn’t last long. In such a complicated game there are always ways to score points, and mid-game it was Adam in the lead with Steve and Joe vying for second with me in last. My mistake was to buy the casino – a building that offered the chance to exchange money for victory points. I think I was a bit swayed by Adam’s success with pubs in our last game of St Petersburg, but in this game, there always seemed to be a better way of getting points so my casino turned out to not be such a great move after all.

The game is cruel, especially in the final stages when you realise that an extra coin or one more resource would get you extra points. But by then, it’s all futile. It seems that there’s no point in buying buildings in the latter stages of the game, since they won’t have time to pay for themselves. And bidding for votes in the last round seems to be a double-edged sword, which could hurt you as much as your opponent. In other words, a really rubbish sword. One that you wouldn’t want in the house, let alone use as a last resort when trying to catch up with Adam.

By the end, we’d played long past eleven o’clock and it was with some relief that the last round came to an close. We couldn’t catch Adam, who was able to extend his lead in the final stage. I caught up with Joe in the final round, with Steve coming in second.

Adam 63
Steve 57
Andrew 54
Joe 54

I enjoyed Cuba, despite it's rather convoluted rules and not-too-clear rule book. It was always pretty close. It's one of those games where you win by doing what your opponents aren't doing. I also think that getting some sort of idea about when to be starting player is important. I can't tell if it's deep, or just really nit-picky.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	14	64.5	4.61
Adam	13	60	4.62
Andrew	15	52	3.47
Joe	8	28	3.5
Dan	2	8	4
Sally	1	4.5	4.5
Steve	1	4.5	4.5
Jonny	1	2.5	2.5

Photo credits: Joe