Guatemala Café (21 April 2007)

For a change of pace Lance taught us his new game Guatemala Café. In this game you are buying coffee sheds, workers and ships and laying roads from the coffee sheds to the ships. The resources to buy are laid out in a grid with a path around the outside. A "Coffee buyer" walks around this path, and you can only access the resources on the row or column he is adjacent to.

The only way to get money in this game is to trigger a scoring in one of the brands of coffee instead of buying (this gives you $8). The brand that is scored is also determined by the where the "Coffee buyer" is on his track

Everyone who has workers and a shed of this brand score a point per worker. If they are connected to a ship of this brand as well that score is doubled (trippled for 2 ships and quadrupled for 3 ships).

This game is more devious than I've made it sound as Lance demonstrated at one point by taking advantage of my peniless state to force me to do a scoring in a brand that he had and the rest of us didn't!

As money is very tight throughout the game it is good to build one or perferably two medium sized plantations early (to score with) and worry about ship and road building later (which will bring big scores).

Lance 42
Ian   24
JohnB 19
Anne  11