Leo Colivini’s Cartagena is a brief, to-the-point racing game, so this will be a brief, to-the-point review. I like this game. It’s simple, unique, and just tactical enough to be engaging. Its rules explanation is accomplished on a single page (though the recent 2017 edition comes with several options and variants we won’t be getting into), and its set up, though modular, is quick and painless. Cartagena is a game that is easy to teach, easy to play, but somehow (for me, at least) not easy to dismiss. Cartagena has only the slightest veneer of a theme. Each player controls a squad of pirates trying to be the first to escape to safety following a jailbreak from the titular prison (which the game overview humorously pretends is based on real events). Really though, this is almost purely an abstract. It is played on a linear board covered with vaguely pirate-y symbols such as lanterns and pistols. Players take turns playing cards with the same vaguely pirate-y symbols on them, allowing them to advance one of their pirates to the next matching symbol available on the board — not entirely unlike the ubiquitous children’s game Candy Land. If a player doesn’t want to play a card, they may instead choose to move any of their pirates backward to the first space with one or two other pirates on it, which allows them to draw one or two additional cards. These are the only two actions available to the players, though they are allowed up…