Flashback Friday - Cartagena
Love it or hate it? Do you still play it?
This pirate themed racing game was once the go-to filler game at every game day.
Designed by Leo Colovini, and published in 2000, it was a Spiel des Jahres Recommendation in 2001. Cartagena's theme is the 1672 pirate-led jailbreak from the dreaded fortress of Cartagena. It came with a little story about it, so you got a little history lesson with the your game. It also included two variations, Jamaica and Tortuga, which play really quite differntly from each other
In 2006 a sequel - Cartagena II was released.
The current Cartagena 2nd edition, released in 2017, includes the original game, the sequel includes, and several variants including a "black magic varient".
Is this game still on your shelf? Which version do you prefer? Tells us what you think.
I like Colovini's stuff that I've played- it's really bare essence kind of thing, you know, fully distilled. Really simple games, but there's always something interesting there. Explain in 2 minutes, start playing, and then get kind of engrossed in it as you realise there's obviously got to be a bit of a trick to doing well, but, you can't quite see it, or it's going to depend on what the other players are doing. This one, you've got to have a keen eye for timing things right, or you just get stranded. And if you think about it, what he's done here is basically make Candyland into a real game with a minor tweak. It's a neat little engineering solution if nothing else.
The new edition is kind of like choose your own game - there's all sorts of variables - I think you can play Cartagena, Cartagena 2, a combination of bits of those, where you have to get on a boat but there are limited spots, a version where you play it backwards (as in, you pull the pirates forward to pick up cards (i think) ) and it also has these extra rules which give each suit a special ability. They work pretty well and give it a bit of spice. Basically you have to declare you are using the special ability with a card instead of using it for movement. They are also vaguely thematic (at least in comparison with the main game). So like, if you use the gun symbol special ability you get to rob an opponent of a card. There are treasures to go on the treasure spaces that you can dig up (extra cards, mainly, but also a snake that bites you and you have to go back to the last available rum spot for a drink to calm your nerves). So they're kind of fun, and whenever we play the game we pretty much always use that ruleset.
Something else to point out as that the publisher (or Colovini, I don't know) kind of Fargo'd the whole "famous jailbreak" thing - nothing like it ever happened, as far as I've been able to make out.
I wonder if part of the problem is they didn’t stay true to the clean simplicity of the original game, and muddied it up with all the variants they added in.
ubarose wrote: I am a bit surprised at how few responses we have to this weeks FBF. Perhaps this is a indication that Cartagena didn’t have the staying power of some of the other games that we have featured.
I've never even heard if it until now.
Literally.
No recommendations, no whispers about it while playing Jamaica/Pirates of the Spanish Main/etc.
Nothing.
I don't think of myself as insular when it comes to games, and like to think of myself as fairly well informed, moreso than even many informed users at ToS.