Puerto Rico for 2

... the game that is. I Love Puerto Rico but my usual number of players for games is two. So J and I created a 2 player modification that I think works pretty well. (If you haven't played Puerto Rico, this post will largely be lost on you.)

Puerto Rico is by design a 3-5 player game. One of the things that made this modification relatively easy is that the set-up for play is different for each of the 3, 4, or 5 player options allowed for in the rules. So following the continuems in the rules we came up with the following set-up changes for 2 players:

Everyone starts with 1 doubloon.

The first player starts with an indigo plantation, the second player starts with corn.

Start with 45 victory chips in the supply.

Start with 3 face up plantation tiles.

Use the same roles as for 3 players (everyone but the prospectors).

Start with 2 colonists on the colonist ship and 45 colonists in the supply pile. (35 seemed like too few, we were always running out of colonists before things got interesting.

The final modification was stolen from San Juan (the card game designed by the same author based on the board game). Because you can't really take any of the fole cards out of the game and their play is crucial to flow. Order of play for a round is as follows:

The governor begins, selects a role and everyone plays as usual. The other person selects a role and everyone plays as usual. Then the governor selects a second role for this turn and everyone plays as usual. Then the round ends.

If using the expansion buildings, specifically the library, Allow the library to double only 1 privaledge per round. So the governor in a two-player game who has an occupied library must decide which of the two role's the governor will select this round will have a double privledge from the library.

Enjoy!