Players: 2-4
Time: 30-60 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)

This game was simultaneously produced by Alea as #5 of their Small Box series.

The Components

San Juan comes with:

• 110 cards
• 6 placards
• 5 trading house tiles
• 1 scoring pad & pencil
• 1 rulebook

Cards: The cards, which are the heart of the game, are printed on relatively heavy untextured cardstock with rounded corners. They’re full color and each card depicts, quite clearly: name, cost, special powers, and victory point value. The special powers helpfully describe not just what the card does but also in which phase of the game it's used.

In addition, each card is printed against a special color background which clarifies its use: silver, dark brown, light brown, white, or blue for production buildings, violet for everything else. Finally there’s some color line art taking up maybe 40% of the card, which I generally find attractive and evocative.

The cards are generally well designed; during gameplay, they do a lot to make the game easier to play.

Placards: These are cardboard tiles with nice sepia toning. There’s one card for the governor (first player), then one for each of the five possible roles in the game. Each role clearly lists its action and privilege, while the governor has a helpful list of things to do at the start of each round.

Trading House Tiles: These are produced just like the placards, on cardboard with sepia toning, except they’re about a third of the width. Each tile lists out the five production goods by color (blue indigo, white sugar, light brown tobacco, dark brown coffee, and silver silver) and shows a value for each of those goods (from 1 to 3). As soon as you know the relative values of the five goods (which you will within your first game), the tiles are easy to use.

Scoring Pad & Pencil: At first I thought it silly that the game included these, but I have to admit I’ve since found it very convenient for San Juan to be the one card game which I don't have to search out blank paper and a writing implement for.

The scoring sheet runs down the five phases of scoring, making it very easy to keep track of everything. There’s probably enough score sheets for a couple of hundred games here, since Alea helpfully printed four score sheets to a page.

The pencil is, well, a pencil.

Rulebook: The rule book is up to Alea’s normal standards, which is to say very high. Like other Alea games, the rules have a section of main text and a summary side bar. It’s all very clear, and illustrated as required. There’s also a great glossary at the end which explains all the cards one by one. My first couple of games I was uncertain about a few of the interactions of cards, and was very pleased that when I looked them up, each of the questions was answered in the glossary.

Box & Tray: The box is a small bookshelf box. It contains a nicely designed tray in it that has individual slots for each component, including the pencil. Because of the very well designed tray you can easily toss this game in a bag and take it with you, without fear of things going all over.

Overall, the physical quality of the components of San Juan are fairly average. However, a lot of work has gone into making those components very easy to use--from the well written rulebook to the well-designed cards. Thus, I give the game an above average "4" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The goal of San Juan is to build a better city of San Juan than your opponents, through better and more impressive buildings. You'll have to earn money along the way, through prospecting, producing, trading, and councilling.

The Cards: Since the play of San Juan centers around the cards, it's worth talking about them a moment more. There's only one type of card, and that's a building. Each building has: a name, a cost, a special power, and a victory point value.

The cost is between 1 and 6, with 1 being the least and 6 being the most. As you'd expect the 1 cards do the least, while the 6 do the most.

The special power is usually a way to adjust the rules during a specific phase of the game. More on that as we move on.

The value is a number of victory points that the building earns you at the end of the game, most typically a value from 1-3 (basically, the card cost divided by two, rounded up), though there are some buildings that digress from this rule, including all of the 6 cost building.

Here's the other important thing to know about the cards in San Juan: cards are used for everything. As you already know, cards are the buildings that you erect; they also represent money, which you get from various activities, and which you spend to build. They're also goods, which are placed under your production buildings. This will all become more obvious as the phases are explained.

Setup: Each player is given 1 Indigo Plant, face up in his play area, then is dealt four face-down cards to form his initial hand.

Order of Play: The game is played in rounds. Each round a new first player is choosen and given the governor placard. The other five placards (builder, producer, trader, councillor, prospector) are placed in the middle of the table.

Then the players, in order, starting with the first player, each choose one of the roles that hasn't been selected yet in that round. Each role comes with an action, which every player gets to take as well as a privilege, which makes the action better for the selecting player. The selecting player takes the privileged action, then every other player takes the action in clockwise order.

Buildings which generally affect the game include: Library (5), which doubles the effect of every privilege you take.

Beyond that, everything depends on the exact role taken ...

The Builder Phase: The action in the building phase is that each player gets to build 1 building; the privilege is that the Builder gets a 1 discount on whatever he builds.

To build, a player plays a building from his hand, then discards (face-down) from his hand a number of cards equal to the cost of the building (meaning that he uses those cards as money rather than buildings).

Each building built has some special power. The production buildings are all parts of the Producer/Trader cycle, while the violet buildings each have a special effect that gives the player a bonus in some phase of the game (or else gives him extra victory points at the end).

Buildings which affect the Builder Phase include: Smithy (1), which reduces costs of production buildings by 1, Quarry (4), which reduces costs of violet buildings by 1, Poor House (2), which gives you an extra card after you build if you only have 0 or 1 cards left, Black Market (2), which lets you pay for buildings partially with goods rather than money from your hand, Crane (2) which lets you replace old buildings with new ones, also reducing the cost, and Carpenter (3), which lets you draw an extra card after building a violet building.

The Producer Phase: The action in the producer phase is that each player gets to produce 1 good; the privilege is that the Producer gets to produce a second good.

To produce a good a player takes one card from the draw pile and places it face-down under one of his production buildings that doesn't currently hold a good (presumably the building that produces the most valuable goods, which are, in decreasing order: silver, coffee, tobacco, sugar, and indigo).

Each good has a value that from 1-3 that will be revealed specifically during a trader phase.

Buildings which affect the Producer Phase include: Well (2), which lets you draw a card to your hand whenever you produce at least two goods, and Aqueduct (3), which lets you produce 1 extra good.

The Trader Phase: The action in the trader phase is that each player gets to sell 1 good; the privilege is that the Trader gets to sell a second good.

To sell a good the Trader first flips the topTrading Huose Tiles. This reveals the value of each good type. Indigo is always 1, sugar is 1 or 2, coffee is 1 or 2, tobacco is 2 or 3, and silver is 2 or 3. A player discards a sold good good by removing it from the production building, then collects the appropriate payment by drawing that many cards from the draw pile into his hand.

Buildings which affect the Trader Phase include: Trading Post (2), which lets you sell 1 additional good, Market Stand (2), which lets you draw a card if you sell at least two goods, and Market Hall (4), which lets you draw a card if you sell at least one good.

The Councillor Phase: The action in the councillor phase is to draw two cards and keep one of them; the privilege is to draw three extra cards (but still only keep one). It's not immediately obvious from the name, but the councillor is sort of an architect. He helps you find good buildings to build.

Buildings which affect the Councillor Phase include: Archive (1), which lets you add all your cards to your hand before you discard the required number, and which I've never seen built in a game, and the Prefecture, which lets you keep 2 cards rather than 1.

The Prospector Phase: There is no action for the Prospector; the privilege is to draw 1 card.

Building which affect the Prospector Phase include: Gold Mine (1), which lets you flip 4 cards face-up from the draw pile whenever anyone Prospects, and keep one of them if they have four different values.

Ending the Round: The round ends when each player has taken a role. The Governor is then passed clockwise. Each player may place a card under their Chapel (a building) if they have one, then each player must discard any cards he has over 7.

Buildings which affect the End Phase include: Chapel (3), which allows you to store cards as victory points, and Tower (3), which lets you keep 12 cards rather than 7.

Ending the Game: The game goes until someone has built 12 buildings. That builder phase is completed, then the game ends. Each player now adds up their victory points.

First, they count the values of their buildings. As already noted production buildings and most violet buildings have values from 1-3 depending on cost. There are also three buildings which have no special powers but just are worth victory points. These Monuments are: Statue (3), Victory Column (4), and Hero (5).

Anyone who built a Chapel can now count the cards under their Chapel; they're 1 point each.

Certain 6 value buildings now give bonus points: the Guild Hall (6) gives you a bonus for each production building; the City Hall (6) gives you a bonus for each violet building; and the Trimphal Arch (6) gives you a bonus for each Monument.

Everyone subtotals their points, then anyone with a Palace (6) gets bonus points depending on their subtotal.

The person with the most points wins. (It's all very simple, because it's laid out so clearly on the score sheets.)

Relationships to Other Games

San Juan (2004) is the card game of Puerto Rico (2002). It shares with Puerto Rico a basic theme and a basic mechanic. The theme is, of course, the idea of building the city of San Juan (though there are only a few buildings in common), while the mechanic is the idea of choosing roles that all players benefit from.

Beyond that, the two games are quite different. Both games combine aspects of strategic and tactics, but San Juan is much lighter and much quicker.

San Juan is also #5 in the Alea small-box series. These strategic and innovative games are the little brothers of the Alea large-box series only in that they're cheaper and have less components. Wyatt Earp (#1) is the only other one in print in the United States.

The Game Design

San Juan is a fairly simple card game that still has a lot of tactical appeal. Here's some of the best points:

Good Strategy, Excellent Tactics: The strategy of the game is very good. You can try and develop synergistic buildings that will together well (though also see my notes on strategy below). The tactics are even better; every round you have very important tactical choices to make on which role to choose, both to benefit yourself and hurt your opponents. This is where the game really shines; if you like games that make you think, San Juan will stand out.

Original Design: The design of using the cards to represent everything is fairly original, making the game play unlike most others. It also helps moderate the randomness (see below).

Randomness Well Moderated: The fact that cards in your can be buildings or cash does a lot to smooth out any randomness in the game. Effectively you're constantly getting to choose from between 2 and 7 cards when picking something to build. In addition, the Councillor role helps even more; if you're ever really hurting for a specific building type you can take the councillor to get to pick between 5 different cards.

Well Balanced: The variety of different buildings seem fairly well balanced. I see the occasional complaint (like my comment on the Archive never being used; as well the Guild Hall and the Library being prime suspects for overpowering to many), but I think in actuality the cards are pretty close.

Here's one comment on the design that's neither good nor bad:

Game Value Differs with Number of Players: Personally, I think the game plays best with three players. Two is still quite good, and most of my own games are with that number, but it's a little lower-energy than a three player game, which really seems to open up the tactics. Conversely, four players seems a bit awkward. At the start of a four-player game the last person tends to get a fairly useless role in the first couple of rounds. Conversely, at the end of the game you seem to be shuffling the deck constantly.I think the game works at all levels, but: 3 > 2 > 4. (And well I'm talking about numbers, it's a darned shame this game doesn't support 5 or 6, though I've already seen some rules for the same on the net; the gameplay is generally fast enough that it would work well at those numbers.)

Here's my one complaint about the game:

Strategy Largely Foreordained: Often, it seems like your strategy in the game is foreordained once you get your first hand or two full of cards. What you get then and what you build wil typically decide how you must play the rest of the game strategically. (Or, as some gamers put it, "the game plays itself" to a certain extent.)

Overall, San Juan is an enjoyable, replayable game that's very elegant and support high levels of tactical thought. I give it a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

San Juan is a really nice hybrid. It's a short, filler game that still requires a high level of thought, some strategy, and lots of tactics. It shares some of the original game design of Puerto Rico and introduces some new ideas of its own as well. I'd recommend it to just about any serious gamer, particularly if they're looking for a 2 or 3 player game.

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