Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 30-45 minutes
Complexity: 2 (of 10)
Saint Petersburg was simultaneously produced in Germany by Hans im Gluck.
The Components
Saint Petersburg comes with:
- 1 game board
- 120 cards
- 12 wood pieces
- 60 ruble notes
1 rulebook
Gameboard: A four-panel, full-color gameboard that's linen-textured. This is really just an abstract board meant to hold all the different cards. There's a 2x8 grid used for card sales as well as spaces for 4 draw piles and 1 discard pile. Finally, a score track runs along the edges, numbered 0-99.
There's been a bit of usability work done on this board: a grid is included to show aristocrat scoring (though it's unfortunately unlabeled) and there's also a bit of info on each draw pile to remind you what gets done in each phase.
Overall, the board is attractive and high quality, but doesn't necessarily cohere well, since it's largely a collection of spaces to put cards.
Cards: These cards are all half-height, printed on sturdy linen-textured cardstock. They appear to be printed 5-color: the standard 4-colors used for printing plus a metallic gold ink. The result is attractive. There's also nice colored line art drawing by a good artist who unfortunately isn't credited in the rulebook.
The first 116 cards are broken into four broad types: workers, buildings, aristocrats, and trading cards. Each one is clearly marked by its own color (green, blue, and orange for first three, while the trading cards can be any of the three previous colors). Each card also includes clear icons which show what the card does (a cost, an income value, and a victory point value). A couple of cards have additional powers which are represented iconically; they're pretty easy to figure out after the first game.
The last 4 cards are simply used to determine starting players at the start of the game. Each one shows the icon for one of the four card types (a chair, an onion dome, a bust, and a square, as it happens).
Overall, the cards are highly attractive and easy to use.
Wood Markers: There are two strangely shaped wood figures in each of the player colors (blue, yellow, green, and red), one to mark the score track and another to identify the player, the latter being a really nice choice, as I've played too many games where I end up having to ask, "Who's playing red?" The are also four wood figures for the four types of cards, which are initially allocated by the aforementioned starting player cards, and used to note who starts each phase.
Overall, the wooden pieces are nice and good quality.
Rubles: These 60 notes show rubles in a variety of values (1, 2, 5, 10, 20). It's a good spread of notes. They're printed in a variety of colors for the different denominations are are a somewhat stiff medium-weight paperstock. They're bright, colorful, and sturdy, overall one of my favorite currencies in a game.
Rulebook: An 8-page rulebook, printed full-color. It's got tons of illustrations and examples and is easy to read and easy to reference. There's also "tips and tactics" at the end of the rules, which is always a nice touch.
Box & Tray: The box is a sturdy, medium-sized box. It has a very nice tray in it with slots for each of the four types of cards, as well as the money and the wood bits. It makes it easy to get the game started, and also seems slightly resistant to being turned on its side (always a plus for a "bookshelf" game like this).
Overall, the components of Saint Petersburg are all very high-quality and attractive. I do wish the board itself was a bit more beautiful, but given how abstract it really is, that might be impossible. I still give the game a full "5" out of "5" for Style.
The Game Play
The object of Saint Petersburg is to score fairly abstract "victory points" through the purchase of buildings, aristocrats, and "trade cards".
Setup: The board is laid out on the table and each player is given 25 rubles.
The "starting player cards" are shuffled, and the four of them are distributed, so that each player gets 1 or 2. After revealing them, each player then takes the wooden starting player marker(s) corresponding to the card(s) he received.
The four decks of cards (workers, buildings, aristocrats, and trades) are then shuffled, and from 4-8 workers (depending on the number of players) are laid out on the upper card row of the board.
About the Rows: There are two card rows on the board, each of which has 8 spaces. In actuality, there will only be a maximum of 8 cards on the board at any time; the upper row just marks new cards while the lower row marks old cards, but you can't have two cards in the same column, ever.
About the Cards: As already noted, there are four general types of cards in the game: workers, buildings, aristocrats, and trade cards. They each tend to have certain different functions in the game.
Workers. These guys are cheap (3-8 rubles) and all generate income (3 each).
Buildings. There's a wide variety of costs on these (1-23 rubles). Most of them generate victory points (1-7), though a few have some special powers.
Aristocrats. These vary in cost from 4-18. The lower cost ones generate only gold (such as the Author who generates 1 ruble) while the highest cost ones generate gold and victory (such as the Mistress of Ceremonies, who generates 6 gold and 3 victory).
Trade Cards. These special cards are upgrades to the other types of cards. Each is green, blue, or orange, depending on which type of cards it upgrades. The workers are very specific, such as the Fur Shop, which is an upgrade of the Fur Trader, and increases the value from 3 rubles to 3 rubles and 3 victory. The building upgrades tend to allow buildings to generate rubles as well as victory. The aristocrat upgrades sometimes generate gold and sometimes victory, but are most valuable for the fact that they're new aristocrat types (which is used for scoring, later).
Order of Play: The game is divided into rounds, and each round of play includes four phases, which correspond to the four types of cards. They're played in order:
- Worker Phase
- Building Phase
- Aristocrat Phase
- Trading Card Phase
Starting a Phase: Each phase starts with any empty columns on the board being filled with cards of the appropriate phase. These always go in the top row. The first round of the game is the only exception, where only 4-8 workers go down, which means that the board may not be filled.
Then play begins with whichever player holds the starting player marker for that phase.
Actions in a Phase: Players take actions in sequence during a phase of play. On each of their turns, players may choose to take one of the following actions:
- Buy a Card
- Take a Card
- Play a Card
- Pass
Buy a Card: Each card has a cost, from 1-23 rubes. To buy one the player must pay the appropriate price. There are a few ways to make this cheaper, though never less than 1 ruble.
Old Buildings. Any card purchased from the lower row is 1 ruble cheaper.
Multiples. A purchase is 1 ruble cheaper for each card of the exact same type you've already played.
Upgrades. Upgrades (from the trade card deck) replace a card of the same color (and for the workers, the same type) that you already have in play. The cost is the cost shown on the upgrade minus the cost of the card being replaced.
Take a Card: Instead of buying a card, you may take it into your hand. You have a max hand size of 3 (4 with the special Warehouse building) and may not take a card into your hand if you are already at this limit.
Play a Card: You can play a card from your hand by paying the purchase price. It's discounted due to multiples or upgrades, though you lose any discount for old buildings because you took the card into your hand.
Pass: Alternatively, you can pass. When everyone has passed in a row the current phase ends.
Ending a Phase: At the end of a phase, all of the cards of that color produce. So, for example, at the end of a worker phase, all the green cards produce money & victory points, as appropriate. Players collect their rubles and mark their victory points on the scoring track. There is no production at the end of the trade phase.
Afterward the next phase begins, with the appropriate types of cards being added to any empty spaces on the top row.
Ending a Round: A full round ends when all 4 phases are played through. (The rules say this will happen 7-10 times; my general experience is less.)
If any of the decks of cards were emptied, the game ends.
Otherwise, all the cards in the bottom row are discarded, and all the cards in the top row are moved to the bottom row (meaning that they'll be slightly cheaper next round, and discarded after that).
Finally, the start player markers circulate around the table, so that new players will have the option to buy the first items of each group in the next round.
A new round begins with a new worker phase.
Ending the Game: By the end of the game the player will have accumulated some victory points due primarily to buildings, but also due to workers or aristocrats who were worth victory points. In addition, some players will have accumulated points through a Pub, which is a special building that lets them trade rubles for victory.
Each player now gets additional victory points based on the number of different aristocrats they have, from 1 for 1, to 55 for 10+.
Each player gets 1 point for every 10 full rubles he has.
Each player loses 5 points for each card in his hand.
The player with the highest victory point total wins.
Playing the Game
Saint Petersburg is one of those games where it's not immediately obvious how it plays from a description of the rules. However, the ways to play the game are very set, and so it's easy to explain how it works.
The game starts off with workers, and each player buys 2 of them; they'll generate income in future turns. Afterward buildings come up, and most people don't want those, as rubles are much more valuable than victory early in the game.
However, one of the central conflicts in the game is that often even when you don't want to buy an item, you'll sometimes want to clear a column for the next card type to go down in the next phase, so that you'll be able to buy one. Thus, some people will either buy the cheap & useful buildings, or else take some into their hands for later use. This creates a cascade effect: each time a player takes a card, the next player around the table realizes that he'll now get a card of the next type if he takes one of the current cards.
Aristocrats are usually what people are gunning for, as they generate income in-game and are worth big victory points at the end of the game. By the time the aristocrat phase comes around, enough spaces have often been freed so that each player gets one.
In the early parts of the game, there's a big emphasis on getting money, so that you have more resources for later in the game. But, at a certain point in the game, there's a tipping point where you realize that money is growing less useful and you need to start picking up more victory points instead.
Usually, the player who measures this tipping point best wins (or, alternatively, it's the player who has gotten lucky and picked a couple more aristocrats than the rest of his opponents due to good card draws).
Relationships to Other Games
Saint Petersburg is what I generally call a logistics game, which means that it's a game about spending money to make money (and hopefully making a profit in the process). Some auction games fit into this category, such as Reiner Knizia's Modern Art. Another recent logistics game is Power Grid, another of the hit games from 2004. Personally, I'm always mildly leery of logistics games, because the math is so unadulterated in the cost-benefit assessments that there's a large amount of possibility for minimaxing. Saint Petersburg may have just enough hidden information (mainly about when the game ends) to keep this under control, but I'm not entirely convinced.
To a certain extent, I suppose you could see Saint Petersburg as an auction game too, in the same manner as games like Faidutti & Cathala's Queen's Necklace. Instead of prices getting reduced (or increased), you're bidding with your time. What's your first most important purchase? Your second? It's like an NFL draft.
Saint Petersburg vaguely reminds me of two other popular games:
Like San Juan it's a card game of building cities. Saint Petersburg is more staid and more strategic while San Juan is more chaotic and in my opinion more enjoyable. They're both very different games, and having one shouldn't stop you from getting the other.
Like Lost Cities, Saint Petersburg is a very simple system that plays very smoothly and thus has a strange addictive quality to it. Beyond this similarity in feel, the games are entirely different, however.
The Game Design
Ultimately, Saint Petersburg is a fairly simple game. Here's what it has going for it:
Clean, Fast: The game plays very cleanly and smoothly; it's easy to get into and it's easy to play.
Interesting Hand Management: The hand management of the game, deciding when to take things into your hand of 3 and when to play them, is a well-done orthagonal area of strategy for the game that's not immediately obvious on a first play.
Here's what I don't like about it:
Set Strategy: The strategy in the game is very set, with there often being a clear best answer (which is sometimes a problem in logistics games). Just hearing players explain strategy to a new player says it all: you'll want to buy workers on the first two turns, and definitely don't buy any buildings until turn three. Be aware that there will be a glut of workers on round 3, so make sure you plan for it ....
False Strategy: I also think there's a fair amount of false strategy in this game, meaning the implication that there is real strategy, but without any actual follow-through. The biggest problem is the implication that purchasing buildings and aristocrats are both valid strategies, when in actuality it's very hard to win on a building strategy. (I think this is due to the aristocrats being overvalued at the end of the game.)
Minimal Strategic Decisions: Finally, to top off my listing of problems with the Saint Petersburg strategy, I think the number of strategic decisions are actually quite minimal. There's only one important strategic choice: when to stop worrying about money and start worrying about victory points. Minor strategic decisions are more often determined by necessity, luck, or the set strategy mentioned above.
High Luck: Finally, a lot of the game is determined by the luck of the draw, and who happens to get first shot at what cards. This would be fine in many games, but Saint Petersburg sells itself as a fairly deep, strategic game, and the luck factor really works against it.
Overall, to use general terms, I'd say Saint Petersburg plays itself; that's really a short-hand way of saying that the strategy is set and the tactical decisions are obvious, with a clear best case most of the time. As a result, I rarely feel like I've actually played a game of Saint Petersburg, but rather moved through it on auto-pilot. On the other hand, Saint Petersburg is clean and fast,and has a somewhat addictive quality to it. But, that's not enough to make it an exceptional game. I rate Saint Petersburg an average "3" out of "5" for Substance: average, but not particularly note-worthy.
Conclusion
For reasons that I utterly fail to understand Saint Petersburg has gotten a fair amount of renown since its release. I've played it through a dozen times, from two to four players, and found that the game just got increasingly dull & staid. It's smooth to play, and easy to replay and replay, and that may be enough for some players, but because of its lack of strategic depth it's just an average game, albeit one with very good production values.
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