I don't write about games all that much, but I play them frequently. Lately, I've been playing more frequently than normal. Additionally, I've been more into looking at what games are out there. I'm not referring to video games, either. For that, I've most just been playing some Xbox games (Pirates!, Dark Alliance (yeah, it's old, but it's co-op), and such) and PC games (Neverwinter Nights).

Tonight, I just got back from playing San Juan for the first time. It's basically a port of Puerto Rico from a board game to a card game. I really enjoyed playing it (and this had little to do with the fact that I won two out of three of the games).

It's published by Rio Grande Games (Puerto Rico, Carcassonne, Niagara, Medici, and dozens of other games) and designed by Andreas Seyfarth (Puerto Rico, Zorro, Manhattan, and some others). Being a card game, there isn't much in the box. It contains a deck of cards, some role pieces, and a few resource price pieces. In addition, it comes with a pencil and a score pad that is a nice addition, although not required for play.

The cards are everything. They are buildings you can build, money you can spend (1 card per cost), and the resources you build. This replaces many different items in the full board game. There are two types of buildings: production buildings and the so-called "violet" buildings that either give special abilities or extra victory points.

The goal is to have the most victory points at the end of the game. The game ends when the first person reaches 12 buildings. Usually buildings are built every round and you start with one which means the game is often as short as 11 rounds.

We found the game went quicker each of the three plays. Also, curiously, both the highest and lowest scores kept going down each game.

We all found "The Library" card to be very powerful and useful for us. We normally followed fairly similar strategies, where possible. You can't always do exactly what you want to, though, because there are a limited number of each type of card and it's possible to keep cards out of other peoples hands if you really want to.

So, overall, I really enjoyed playing the game and I'm going to try to figure out how Laurie and I can get it soon as it's a 2-4 person game -- and small to carry around.

Additional reviews can be found over at BoardGameGeek as well as reviews of the other games I mentioned.

Posted by Shane on September 18, 2005 1:22 AM | Permalink