Cartagena (board game)

Cartagena is a race themed board game designed by Leo Colovini, first published in 2000 and released by several publishers including Rio Grande Games, Tilsit Editions, and Winning Moves Germany. Two to five players each control a band of six pirates who must escape the fortress prison of Cartagena in the year 1672 by moving through an underground passage to a waiting ship. The board is a winding path of spaces, each marked with one of six pictures such as a dagger, a pirate hat, a pistol, a bottle of rum, a skull, or a skeleton key, and players advance their pirates by playing matching picture cards from their hand onto the next unoccupied space showing that same picture further along the path. A pirate can instead be moved backward to let its owner draw replacement cards, trading position for a fuller hand, and each turn allows between one and three separate pirate moves. The first player to bring all six of their pirates off the passage and onto the escape ship wins the game. Two published variants, Jamaica and Tortuga, change whether the draw deck is hidden or visible to all players, altering how far in advance opponents can plan their own escapes.