Caravelas - The Portuguese Discoveries

The game theme is the Portuguese Discoveries in the 15th and 16th century, and their contribution to Portuguese wealth, symbolized in the Jer-nimos Monastery. It is an historic fact that the spices trade, brought by the Caravelles, had to pay a tax of 5% in Lisbon, and this tax was used to pay for the monastery construction.

The goal is to achieve the highest possible number of victory points (VPs). The game ends when the last piece of Jeronimos is bought by any player.

The boardgame is the world map with 32 ports / destinations marked around the world (Americas, Africa, Asia and Indic Islands). In 8 of them you can collect the respective merchandise from that port. The board has also marked the real sea currents that the Caravelles followed at the time. It is surprising that often the fastest way is not the shortest, and the game reveals that perfectly.

Each player has a card representing 3 ships, and indicating the player's ability to travel (translated into 9 navigation discs) and the cargo capacity (translated into 6 different merchandise spaces).

The players place their wood ship piece in the board in Lisbon and start navigating. If they follow the sea currents marked in the board, they can do it "free of charge" and endlessly. But they wouldn't go very far. Every time a player wants to go in a different direction than the one indicated by the sea current, he has to use a navigation disc from his player card. When all the navigation discs are used, the player turn stops. So, in each turn, a player can go against the currents at most 9 times, thus determining how far he can go.

During navigation, players arrive in ports. If they are the first to get there, that is, if they are the ones that discover that local, they can place their colored marker in that port and register the number of VPs marked for that port. If the port is a "trade port" (there are 8), the player can also collect the respective merchandise and place it in his player card.