Cuba Libra Social Club

On a cold and decidedly un-Cuban evening, four of us congregated at Sam’s to address the minor issue of the Cuban Revolution. Joe was Castro, and even came equipped with cigar. I was the Syndicate, and I came bearing the less-thematically appropriate Thai Chili crisps. Stuart represented the government while Sam was another revolutionary faction, the Directorate.

Since it was new to Joe and I, there was a rules explanation at the start and frequent accessing the rule book in the first hour or so. Not knowing how to approach this, I decided to consolidate in the North-west. This lead to me being stuck in the north-west for the early part of the game. Joe moved up quickly from the south and Sam took over or neutralised central provinces. Stuart’s government was getting a bit of a beating.

With all this insurgency and counter-insurgency, I was surprised to see an event card called “US Speaking Tour,” since I imagined a rather genteel trip across America’s university circuit.

The game progressed with Stuart sweeping and assaulting in the cities. “Shit, Joe,” said Sam, “we need to make ourselves scarce.” “Scarce? I just put all my pieces on the board.”

Stuart was now in a winning position and was hoping that the second propaganda card would come out soon. By now, Matanzas had become the hub of all activity with Joe infiltrating and, later, weakening the police presence there while my limited guerrilla forces were mostly spent there, trying to keep it out of revolutionary hands.

After about an hour and a half, we broke for a cigar break. Smoking is bad, unless it suits the theme of the board game you’re playing (is what those health warnings should really say.)

This was followed up by cheese and biscuits with pickles. And soon after this, Stuart assaulted Joe in Santiago.

A propaganda card is turned over, but Stuart is no longer in a winning position. Sam could manage it this turn, but Stuart stops him. Joe and Sam swap red wines.

After this, my notes get a bit sparse. I move out of Matanzas, giving it to Joe, but weakening Sam in Santa Clara. There’s another propaganda card. No one wins, but I now have seven casinos and twenty-seven resources.

Joe seems to be running out of steam. He points at some islands along the coast and asks if they are nice places to live, clearly with an early retirement in mind. Taking drastic action, we slim down the deck by seven cards, effectively turning our Full Game into a Short Game. As we did, we see that the fourth and final propaganda card was the second to last card in the deck. It would’ve been an epic.

Amazingly, after that and a little reshuffling, the propaganda card is revealed next! I build a casino and get lots of resources to claim a win. How nice for me.

And so, with that over we all felt we had enough time for a final little fun game: Letter Tycoon. This is a game of making words to earn money so you can buy letters (only from the word you just made, though) which then earn you money when other players use them in their words.

The starting player token was, for some reason, a zeppelin. This reminded Joe of a dream where he’d cut off his penis with a Stanley knife.

My cards strangely replicating Joe's dream

That memorable image aside, the game was a clever word game, with the usual Scrabble-style agonising about having the wrong hand of letters. When the game ended, Joe revealed his hand containing about four ‘E’s. So that’s where they all went.

Sam 38
Joe 36
Andrew 34
Stuart 33

And with that, we were done. Thanks for hosting, Sam, and thanks to all for another great evening.