Guatemala Café Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Object of the Game
• Game Materials
• Set-up
• Course of the Game
• a) Building Plantations
  • The Costs
  • Placement on the Plantation Board
  • Completion of "Building Plantations"
• b) Scoring Coffee
  • From the Scoring to the Next Turn
• Blockade
• End of the Game
• Credits
  • A Thank You from the Designers

Object of the Game

Players try to gain as many victory points as possible by cultivating and expanding coffee plantations. They succeed if they proceed strategically, handle money cleverly and manage finally to ship the coffee from the harbor.

Game Materials

• 20 ownership tiles (5 in each color)
• 4 victory point indicators
• 1 Buyer figure (grey)
• 50 roads (grey)
• 35 coffee sacks (beige)
• 35 labels for the coffee sacks
• 45 coins, in the form of 1, 3, and 5 centavos
• 45 female workers (9 for each type of coffee)
• 15 storage sheds (3 for each type of coffee)
• 15 ships (3 for each type of coffee)
• 1 bag for small parts*
• 1 gameboard "production area" (one side with a pre-determined starting set-up, one side without)
• 1 gameboard "plantations" (one side used for 3 and 4 players, the other for 2 players)
• 4 small cards to cover the building sites of the sheds (in the game for 3 players)
• 1 instruction sheet

*The coffee beans are not suitable for consumption.

Set-up

1. Before the first game, label each coffee sack; there are 7 sacks for each type of coffee.

2. Put both gameboards in the middle of the table, one next to the other. If you prefer a game with less of a luck factor, you might want to play on the side with the predetermined starting set-up. If you prefer a more varied game, however, you might want to choose the side without a pre-determined starting set-up. Turn the plantation board to the side that corresponds to the number of players involved.

3. In the game for three players, the left path is not available. To accommodate this, the small cards cover the appropriate building sites of the sheds. You may continue using the entire production area.

4. Give each player 5 ownership tiles of his color and a total money value of 15 centavos.

Additionally, give each player a victory point indicator of the color of his ownership tiles; the indicator is placed on the zero field of the victory point track on the plantation board.

5a) Production area board without a pre-determined starting set-up:

Place one coffee sack on each marked space so that each type is represented with its color once.

The remaining coffee sacks are shuffled and distributed randomly and unseen, in the following way:

• Put 1 sack on the final marked space of the production area board.
• Put 5 sacks into the bag unseen.
• Distribute the remaining 24 sacks out to the players in equal shares. You may look at your coffee sacks but should keep them hidden from the other players.

Now place all female workers, ships and sheds on one space at random.

5b) Production area board with a pre-determined starting set-up:

Put all coffee sacks, female workers, sheds and ships on the production area board according to the starting set-up. As for the remaining 29 coffee sacks, proceed in the same way as described above under 5a).

6. Set aside the roads and the money stock on the table within reach.

7. If the players don't agree on who goes first, you can, for instance, mix the victory point indicators in the bag and choose one unseen. The owner of the indicator chosen starts on the production area board after his right-hand neighbor has placed the Buyer anywhere on the perimeter track.

Course of the Game

Players take turns in succession in a clockwise fashion. On your turn you move the Buyer 1 to 3 spaces on the perimeter track in a clockwise direction. If you pay 2 centavos, you may move 4 spaces. How far you move the Buyer depends on what you want to purchase or do in that area. You can:

a) buy pieces for building plantations and use them on the plantation board

or

b) replenish your own money stock and score on the victory point track for types of coffee you have already grown.

During the game, you may find it necessary or sensible to keep your Buyer in a row without buying a piece or scoring. In this case, your turn ends, and it is the next player's turn. Normally, however, each player will make every effort to either build plantations or purchase a type of coffee and increase his budget on every turn.

a) Building Plantations

The Costs

On your turn, you may choose any 1 to 3 sheds, workers, ships or, later on, roads from the row in which the Buyer stands. It doesn't matter whether you take pieces of the same or different types. You may take only those pieces that you can immediately pay for. (You are not allowed to store pieces.) How much you pay depends on where you use them on the plantation board.

In the 3- to 4-player game, this board is divided into 3 price areas:

costs per	storage shed	worker
grey area	2 centavos	1 centavo
green area	4 centavos	2 centavos
yellow area	6 centavos	3 centavos

Note: In the 2-player game, the prices for the sheds are different. The building sites are marked with the prices.

Example for 3–4 players: The player with the yellow ownership tiles has placed a brown storage shed, one brown worker in the green area and another brown worker in the yellow area. He has to give 9 centavos to the money stock (4 for the shed, 3 for the worker in the yellow area, and 2 for the worker in the green area).

The price for a ship depends on the cheapest unoccupied dock in the harbor. A maximum of 3 ships may lie in a harbor. The first one always costs 2 centavos, the second one 3 and the last one 4 centavos.

• The roads are always for free.
• The amount you have to pay always goes back into the general money stock. From there, you can add on to your personal stock if you sell coffee.
• Players may not lend or give away their centavos!

Note: In the 2-player game exists only one harbor with docks for 6 ships. Like in the 3-4 player game, the cheapest docks are filled first.

Placement on the Plantation Board

There are 5 different types of coffee, each having 9 workers, 3 sheds and 3 ships assigned to it. If you want to grow a type of coffee so that it is the most profitable, you always need one storage shed and at least one worker of the same color. With each additional worker, your plantation grows and, consequently, the possibility to score higher.

You may grow each type of coffee only once.

Storage Sheds may be positioned only on the appropriate building sites of the plantation board. You put one of your ownership tiles underneath the shed in order to mark the ownership of the plantation as yours.

Female Workers always must be connected horizontally or vertically with the shed or with another worker of the same plantation.

1. Only one worker may be positioned on the same space.

2. Workers must not be positioned on the building sites of sheds.

3. You are allowed to place workers only, in hope of placing the proper shed later. In this case, you mark a worker with your ownership tile. If the appropriate shed is added later, the ownership tile is just moved underneath the shed.

4. You are not allowed to connect one of your own plantations of a specific color with the same color of another player's plantation. It must always be clear what plantation a worker belongs to. Plantations of different colors are allowed to border plantations of other colors.

5. Paths or roads are not plantation borders.

In order to multiply your victory points, you have to connect your storage sheds by roads to a ship of the same color. To do so, you choose a harbor that is connected with your plantation by a pre-printed path, and always put your ship on the cheapest unoccupied dock.

3- and 4-player game:

Roads are placed in any way along the pre-printed paths on the plantation board. A shed is considered connected to the harbor if completely covered paths run from the shed entrance to that harbor in which you have put a ship of the shed's color. In this case, all plantation owners involved can multiply their victory points in the coffee scoring. For the scoring, it is unimportant which player has placed which roads or ships.

NOTE: The number of roads in the game has been purposely limited so that there are not enough to cover all paths on the plantation board.

2-player game:

The paths are not used. The players may choose their roads in any way along the borderlines of the spaces. In the two-player game, roads may adjoin already existing roads anytime. This way, it is quite possible that roads have several branch-offs.

Completion of "Building Plantations"

Immediately after placing pieces on the plantation board, all empty spaces of the production area board are filled with roads from the stock.

After that, it's the next player's turn.

b) Scoring Coffee

1. After moving the Buyer, you take a coffee sack from the adjacent row and put it on the last unoccupied space of the victory point track at the perimeter of the plantation board. After that, you immediately get 8 centavos from the general stock.

You may also take a coffee sack of a color in which you own no plantations. (This may occur if, for instance, you badly need money and can't place the Buyer in such a way that you would have access to the coffee type of the proper color.)

2. After that, the type of coffee in the same color as the chosen coffee sack is scored. Each player who owns a plantation of the appropriate color gets victory points according to the following rules.

• A shed with workers gives you 1 point per worker. (A shed or a worker alone doesn't get you any points.)
• If the shed is connected to a harbor that contains a ship of the color being scored, the points are doubled.
• Only the number of ships, not their position, influences the scoring.
• If 2 ships of the color being scored are in the harbor, the points are tripled.
• With 3 ships, the points are quadrupled.

Example: White (coffee type) is scored: Blue gets 6 points: the white ship doubles the points of the workers. (The white ship is removed from the game after the scoring.)

3. The players move their victory point indicators on the victory point track according to their points.

4. With each scoring, the victory point indicators and the coffee sacks approach each other since each new coffee sack is placed on the final unoccupied space of the victory point track so that a row of coffee sacks is formed.

5. You score as long as you find a row with a coffee sack after moving the Buyer, but it may happen that you have no coffee sacks left to replace it. In that case, you've got to take one coffee sack from the bag at random.

From the Scoring to the Next Turn

1. Ships that have not been scored remain in the game.

2. If only one ship has been scored, it is removed from the game.

3. If two or more ships have been scored, only the cheapest ship of the scored color puts out to sea and is removed from the game. Additional ships of the same color and ships of other colors remain in the harbor.

4. Within a harbor, the ships now move forward to the most inexpensive unoccupied docks so that newly purchased ships always have to take the more expensive unoccupied docks.

5. The player who initiated the scoring puts a new coffee sack from his own stock on the now unoccupied space of the production area board. This ends his turn, and the game continues with the next player.

Blockade

1. Each time before the victory points are counted, the players, starting with the player left of the one who initiated the scoring, are asked in clockwise fashion whether they want to block (prevent) the scoring. A blockade might make sense if someone thinks the current player might score too high. If a player wants to prevent the scoring, he replaces the coffee sack on that space with a sack of the same color from his stock. The current player still gets his money but the entire scoring for this turn is canceled. However, the current player may build plantations instead without moving the Buyer again.

2. The coffee sack from a scoring that has been blocked is still put on the final unoccupied space of the victory point track.

3. Nobody is allowed to block his own scoring!

End of the Game

The game ends when a player's victory point marker reaches or passes the last coffee sack that has been placed. The winner is the player who is ahead on the victory point track. In case of a tie, the winning player is the one with the most money.

HAVE FUN!

Credits

Designer: Inka und Markus Brand

Graphics & Layout: Matthias Catrein

English Translation by Sybille Aminzadah & Bruce Whitehill, "Word for Wort"

© eggertspiele oHG, Hamburg, 2007

A Thank You from the Designers

We thank our playtesters... Gert & Jessica Beer, Matthias Spahn & Cordula Theunissen, Catrin & Christopher Johns, Torben Skodzik & Tanja Schmalzridt, Julia & Michael Gerhards, Ines & Vivian Janeck, Thilo Knoblich & Susanne Wecken, Erik & Nina Schoppmann, as well as Klaus Mülder. A special thank-you goes to our children Lukas and Emely, for the patience and time they gave us as Guatemala Café was being developed. Thanks also to Anne, Walter and Christel, who know what for.

In addition, we thank the for their tireless work and the arrangement of the authors' competition at which we earned second place in 2006 with Guatemala Café.

And last but not least, our sincere thanks of course go to Peter Eggert and his team.