Jamaica Board Game How to Play & Review

Jamaica is a Hand Management, Racing game.

Title: Jamaica

Year Published: 2007

Designer: Malcolm Braff, Bruno Cathala, Sébastien Pauchon

Publisher: Gameworks

Players: 2-6

Game Time: ~60 mins

Set-up Time: ~2 mins

Ages: 8+

Theme: Pirates

Mechanic: Racing, Hand Management

How to win: Have the most Doubloons at the end of the race.

Game Description

Jamaica, 1675.

After a long career in piracy, Captain Henry Morgan skillfully gets appointed to be Governor of Jamaica, with the explicit order to cleanse the Caribbean of pirates and buccaneers! Instead, he invites all of his former “colleagues” to join him in his retirement, to enjoy the fruits of their looting with impunity. Each year, in remembrance of the “good old days,” Morgan organises the Great Challenge, a race around the island, and at its end, the Captain with the most gold is declared Grand Winner.

Jamaica Set Up

This is fairly quick and is done over a couple of steps…

Randomly (and secretly) select 9 of the 12 treasure cards. Shuffle them and put them in the middle of the board. Put the combat die on the Fortress. Add a treasure token on each Pirate Lair around the outside of the board… (They look like Skull caves around the board)

Captains sail their ship to the starting space on the board. They shuffle their deck, placing it above or below their hold. Each Captain adds 3 treasures and 3 food into two separate holds on their ship.

Select a random starting Captain, and give them the start player Compass and Dice. Then each Captain draws 3 cards and you’re ready to set sail.

Jamaica Game Play

Each round starts with the current Captain rolling the dice. They are placed on either space in the middle of the board. The order of the dice matter as one (Placed to the left) refers to the day part of your card. The other one (on the right) represents the evening.

These are the values you’ll use for these cards.

Then, each Captain chooses a card from their hand after having inspected the dice. They then place that card face down on top of their discard pile.

Once everyone has done this, the Captain flips over their card. They resolve the morning action, and then the evening action using the relevant die. Then in clockwise order, all Captains resolve both sides of their cards.

Movement

Move X in that direction, ships can go backwards as well as forwards depending on the arrow. Then resolve any combat, and then pay the cost of the space the ship landed on. (More on those in a bit)

Load

Add X of that item to an EMPTY HOLD on the ship. A hold containing resources of a DIFFERENT type can be discarded to make room.

If a Ship ends its movement in a space with another ship, they fight. The active player is designated as the attacker.

The active Pirate spends X gunpowder tokens and adds that amount to a die roll for their attack strength. So if you spend 4 tokens and roll a 4, your total is 8.

Then, the defender does the same with the highest total between the 2 Captains winning the combat.

Nothing happens in a tie but if the Star/Explosion icon is rolled they automatically win, even if it’s rolled when attacking the defender doesn’t get to defend, they lost already!

The winner can either steal the contents of a single hold from the other ship, steal a treasure card or give a cursed treasure card they own to that Captain. Unlucky!

Treasure Cards

How do you get these Treasure cards? Well, if there is a treasure token on your space the token is removed from the game and you draw a treasure card. You can have any number of treasure cards placed next to your holds.

Some spaces have a cost that needs to be paid so this is paid now…

The Pirate Lairs, (the ones that start the game with Treasure tokens on) are free. Pirates won’t charge other Pirates for docking here.

Ports have no such leniency and are not free, you need to pay the number of Doubloons on the Golden Needle of that Port to stay here.

If a Ship ends out at Sea the hard-working Pirates need to be fed so it costs 1 food per square showing on a sea space.

If you can’t pay these costs, pay as much as you can then move back to a space where you can pay the full amount.

Once everyone has resolved their cards, everyone draws a new card from their deck and the responsibility of being Captain passes to the left.

Game End

When a Captain reaches Port Royal they end their turn, even if they have the evening action left to take on this turn they forfeit it. You won the race, relax, and take the evening off.

But, the other Captains continue as normal and then complete the final scoring when everyone has taken their turn. Time to tally up the scores.

The white number on the space your ship ended on is worth that many Doubloons. So don’t lag behind, you’ll look weak and it will cost you Doubloons getting everyone drunk to forget your disgrace once you’re back in the pub.

Your treasure cards are worth a number of doubloons printed on the card, Cursed treasure reduces your final total by that many doubloons, obviously, it’s cursed and has a value far beyond zero.

The Captain with the most doubloons wins, in the case of a tie the Captain furthest ahead when the race ended wins

Round-Up

It’s a very simple, very fun game.

It has a BIT of take that, but nothing too bad and besides, it’s fighting Pirate ships and that’s never bad 🙂

You only ever have 3 cards in your hand but you actually always have enough choice of that to play. If you had more cards you’d almost always make the perfect move and it would be boring a bit.

With 3 cards there are some turns where you either don’t move or move backwards or find it hard to not land in spaces you don’t want to land on.

The art is great, the components are nice and all in all, it’s a decent game for all levels of gamers.

Jamaica Rating

A very fun and simple game.

I give it 8/10

Jamaica First Impressions December 2015

Race around Jamaica looting random places… …and each other!

Firstly, the insert is great and everything holds everything else in place… almost. The tokens mix together if the box is tipped up… But the bonus that gives is more than lost by the awful rulebook which folds out like a treasure Map which is fun, but also folds out like a Treasure map which is annoying! You have to undo the whole thing to look up one little rule…

But, thankfully the game is fun and pretty simple so you don’t need it too often but on the first play, we needed it enough that it was a hassle.

I wonder after one play if you can get lucky drawing the cards. You have one of each combination, (maybe more or less I haven’t checked) but that double move card is pretty strong and I drew it twice in the game. It let me move 4+5 in the last round and move from 3rd to end the game with holds full of Gold for the win.

But anyway, it’s fun, strategic enough to matter, light enough to not care and quite pretty.

A good game.

Jesta ThaRogue