Portobello Market

Customer Reviews

A good simple game to whet your appetite Review by Jasmine

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Portobello Market is a very interesting game that seems to exist somewhere in the middle between casual and core, Euro and abstract, and other nearly impossible and intangible ranges. However, if you try out the game you will see what I mean. It is not quite this and not quite that.

In Portobello Market, you get a certain number of actions to place stalls and customers. Choosing where to place the stalls require a good amount of planning ahead as the main driving force of the game is how and when to score your points. Depending on how you place your stalls, you can control the flow of the game by forcing other players to different areas of the board.

As the game plays very quickly, choosing when to score your points is also important, as you will want to retain your extra actions for as long as you can. Though Portobello Market is a simple game on the surface (easy to learn and play), within the short timespan of a single game, players are faced with many difficult choices and decisions, not unlike other Euro games.

I do recommend this game to most groups, but mostly to those who play with a more casual group. This game would make a great secondary gateway game, one that will take those already interested in boardgames a step closer to even more core games like Puerto Rico. (Posted on 12/9/09)

A fast, but surprisingly deep game Review by Murray

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If you are looking for a quick game to fill in 30 minutes, but still want to feel like you've played an actual "full" game, then look no further than Portobello Market! Despite the simple rules (only four pages total!), the game is surprisingly deep and complex as you often have many choices to make. Due to how quickly the game wraps up, these choices are important and will always make the difference in winning and losing. Every turn counts!

In the game, you get three action tokens: a 2 action, 3 action, and 4 action. On your turn you may turn over one of these action tokens and take the prescribed number of actions. Actions include placing a single market stall or drawing and placing a customer. Once you use all three action tokens, you can turn them all face up and use them again.

The spaces where you can set up a stall has a range of value from 1-3 and you can only set up stalls in order. That is, you cannot just place stalls on the highest value space, but start placing on one end of the lane and then place others next to it. Some lanes have higher values in the middle while others have them on the edges. You can only place stalls where the Bobby token is at currently, but you may move the Bobby as often as you like during your turn. However, moving the Bobby will often cost you victory points and sometimes give those points to another player.

Placing a customer at both ends of a filled lane will score that lane. You get the points indicated by the stall space multiplied by the customer bonus. There are three different coloured customers and they combine to give different bonuses.

Instead of flipping over an action token, on your turn you may take your face up 2 action or 4 action and place it in a district space on the board and score points equal to the number of your stalls in that space multiplied by the number of actions you would have gotten. You end your turn and lose your action token, but get a replacement one that usually offers less actions than you had before.

The game ends when someone places their last market stall. Considering that you can potentially place 9 market stalls every three turns, games often wrap up in less than 15 turns. This means that every move is important and you cannot waste a turn. Playing at a furious speed, it is possible to finish games faster than an average card game. However, as each turn counts, players often take a long time thinking, which is why this game is often listed with a 45 minute play time though games could easily last a third of that.

Portobello Market is light, but with potential for lots of strategy and tactics depending on how you play it. It plays fast enough to warrant a try. I personally enjoy the game a lot and would recommend it to people who often crave a solid gaming session but lack the time to do so. (Posted on 12/7/09)