Game Daze Park Place Manager Recommendation, March 2011
Drew -
You stand in the shadows of the dock as the cargo boat comes into port. You have the money in the bag next to you, ready to make a deal for the goods you need, but a movement catches your eye. The limousine pulling into the lot indicates that your crime family isn’t the ONLY one ready to put it’s funds on the line; you have competition. This is Cargo Noir.
In Cargo Noir, you play one of 5 crime families vying be the richest of the cartels. The board is actually made up of several segments that can be arranged in various ways to show various ports (New York to Madrid) with slots to place tokens ranging from 1 to 5 spaces, depending on the number of players. These slots start filled and are refilled every time they are emptied.
The tokens you are trying to win represent the things you are smuggling; everything from Art to Ivory to Weapons. Each family starts with 3 boats that represent the number of actions you have each turn. On your turn, you do all the actions indicated by the boats you have on the board, trade in tiles for the various items you can attain, and then put your boats out in preparation to do actions next turn. The game lasts 10 to 11 turns, depending on the number of players.
Each boat can be placed in one of several places, or three types. First if the Casino, at which a boat nets you two coins; second, the black market of Macao, where a boat allows you to gain a token at random or trade a token for one of the ones in the black market, and the various ports, where, if you have the only boat at the port, you can get all the goods at that port. Boats are placed at the Black Market and Casino for free, but a boat placed at a port is placed with several coins. If someone comes along and places more coins than you have, then you can either put more coins out to outbid him, or leave, taking your coins with you.
The good you collect will be turned in for the items needed to win. A series of the same good nets you a lot of dough to buy stuff with, several goods of completely different types nets a bit less. In either case, you only have so much warehouse space, so you have to spend your tokens, or lose them. Several of the basic items not only give you points, but also give you more boats (and more actions), more warehouse space, or a cartel, which allows you to take 2 coins when you back out of a bid. The other items, from yachts to owning a country, give you various amounts of points. Whoever had the most points in the last round, wins.