San Juan - Waste of time, waste of money?

I've played about 20 games of it on BSW (and it was Seth who taught it to me, so I know he's played it quite a bit too).

It is a nice little game, certainly worth playing (nobody is arguing that), but the price is just insane.

Uno has just as many cards of equal quality as SJ and it is $4 at any department store. The much smaller print run of SJ can't justify that big a price difference.

I've been deliberating buying SJ since it came out, and I think Seth has grounded me in reality. I'll get with Ticket to Ride or Hansa.

Ticket to Ride is $10 more than SJ at fairplaygames and it includes 144 cards, 225 plastic molded trains, a large board, and other bits.

Jason

Allow me to show how green I am... What is BSW?

I like San Juan well enough. I don't think it should be compared to Puerto Rico, because it's a totally different game. San Juan is a light card game that fits perfectly in the 3 or 4 players / 45 minutes niche. There's quite a bit of luck in the game and very little player interaction, but that doesn't bother me in a 45 minutes game.

Is it too expensive? If you just look at the material in the box: yes. However, I do think it has a better fun to money ration than say, Uno, and that is what is important to me. Then again, someone else in my group bought this game, so I don't have to worry about it anyway (at least not in this case).

- René Wiersma

I just played my first game of San Juan, and my impression after one playing is pretty favorable. I thought the game has a lot of cute things going on. Particularly clever is the use of cards for everything -- currency, commodities, and buildings. This led to some very difficult and agonizing choices for me in terms of what to keep and what to discard.

There's certainly a luck of the draw effect, and I found that it lacked some of the elements that made Puerto Rico interesting -- the tension associated with getting "closed out" of things is gone, and with it most of the elements that made Puerto Rico so interactive. But I don't know if it's fair to compare this to PR, since that is not what it's trying to be. As a standalone game, I think it's quite good.

Our game featured 2 newbies and 2 guys who had played two or three games, and the scores were all within 5 points. The same thing happened in my first few playings of New England, and it always worries me when a game's scoring is really close; I am concerned that the scoring system may not actually be measuring anything other than random fluctations. Clearly more playings will tell.

Of the two new games I've played recently, this and Hansa, I definitely find Hansa more immediately interesting, but I think San Juan has some cute things going for it and I look forward to playing again.

As for the price, I wouldn't mind paying about $20 for the game. $25 is pushing it a bit, but you also have to look beyond the components a bit -- this is the "successor" to PR, and if they want to charge more for that pedigree, well, they don't seem to be having a hard time getting it.

I'm very surprised the company took back the game simply because you didn't enjoy it. That's a rare occurence, I would think -- definitely keep doing business with them, they're a keeper!

-Jeff

I've recently started playing San Juan with a friend (2 player), with the occassional 3 plaer game and I find it enjoyable. Its not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it is enjoyable.

Sure, there's the pain of not drawing the right cards and so on, but I've started to get the most fun out of working what is the best strategy given where I am in the game.

For example, if I'm struggling for good cards, GRAB THE COUNCILLOR one or more times, preferably grabbing the Prefecture if possible.

If you're being outproduced by better production buildings, can you counter with marketplace or aqueduct with more production, or switch over to a prefecture or prospecting approach to the game (particularly with a low number of players wher eyou can rely on others doing your crafting and trading)?

No, this isn't full-proof and has to be done in the context of the other players, but its the adaptable that will win more games.

I also find an interesting tension as some players build more [smaller VP] buildings, putting pressure on an earlier game close as others have been more slective in their buildings. Leads to some interesting dynamics when this happens ...