San Juan is the card game version of Puerto Rico, one of the most popular resource management board games available. Players who have played Puerto Rico will find San Juan familiar, though specific changes in the card game have altered the strategy remarkably. It is a mid-level strategy game that is fun and tast to play and definitely on my recommended list.

Appearance: San Juan comes in a rectangular box the size of a hard cover book. Overall, artwork is along the same lines as Puerto Rico – functional with basic, ‘cartoon’ like images. Nothing spectacular here, but they exactly what they are required to do – provide easy reading and information. Card stock is good and can certainly last a number of plays. A nice touch is the scoring pad and pencil that allows you to quickly ‘do the maths’ at the end of the game without referring to the rules once more.

Rules / Ease of Learning: Rules for San Juan are easy to learn and the rulebook is well laid out. Components of the game consist of a single deck of cards that comprise two type of cards (violet cards that are ‘special’ buildings and ‘production’ buildings), trade cards and the various ‘role’ cards. Players of Puerto Rico will be very familiar with the role cards.

Each role card has an action and a privilege. The privilege is provided to the player who chooses the role while all other players may take the action. The cards and actions associated with each role are:

* Governor - whose card indicates whose turn it is to begin choosing roles.
* Producer – produce one good on a production building.
* Builder – build one building.
* Trader – sell one good
* Prospector – no action.
* Councilor – draw two cards, choose one


The various privileges associated with each role in San Juan are:

* Governor - none
* Producer – produce one additional good on a production building.
* Builder – build one building at 1 less cost
* Trader – sell one additional good
* Prospector – draw one card
* Councilor – draw three additional cards (you still only choose one card though)

Set-up consists of shuffling and placing the trade cards (which indicate how much each good sells for on that round) and distributing 4 initial cards fro the deck to each player. Each player also receives one free Indigo production card as their first building.

Each round consists of each player picking a specific role card (in a 2 player game, the Governor gets to pick twice) and all players taking the action indicated on the card. As such, it is quite possible for specific roles not to be ‘used’ at all in a turn. At the end of the round, the Governor role card is passed to the player on the left. Goods produced are all indicated through the use of face-down cards and all cards discarded are discarded face-down. Cost of building cards are indicated on the card and are ‘paid’ through the discarding of cards in hand. As such, a large ‘churn’ rate occurs for cards throughout the game.

In San Juan, the game is completed when 12 buildings are completed by any player directly after completion of the building phase. Victory conditions in San Juan are by victory points (which are indicated on the bottom of each card. Specific violet (special) buildings can provide additional points at the end game.

Actual Gameplay: Actual gampelay flows from turn to turn very fast, leading to a minimum of downtime. As a card game, it’s easy to bring along and scales very well from two to four players . A variety of strategies open-up the more you play as you understand the choices available that firstly, best benefit you and secondly, least benefit other players.

As the major mechanic in the game is card drawing and discarding, an element of ‘luck’ comes into play but through the use of violet building abilities and overall strategic planning, it is possible to reduce the luck factor. Furthermore, roles like Councilor help players to choose which cards to pick that will best benefit them.

Players with more experience with San Juan have a definite advantage – both in understanding what violet cards provide additional advantages later on, as well as overall strategy in this card game. An example would be the ‘Councilor’ card. Being only able to keep 1 card seems to provide little overall advantage to the ‘role’ picker, but with the right building in play, you can keep an additional card. This suddenly makes the role and the card much more interesting – a nice little tactic that new players would not know to exploit if they received the card earlier on. Another good example are the repeats in ‘monument’ cards, thus letting an experienced player know that the have more than 1 chance of getting those monuments out.

Conclusion: San Juan is definitely a great card game that expands from 2 to 4 players well. It’s a mid-level strategy game that is not too difficult, but has enough subtleties that you would not automatically introduce it as a gateway game. The box and cards is slightly too large for easy portability (unlike say Citadels) but is still portable in a school bag. Overall, San Juan is a definite addition to any board game collection and a game will hit the table repeatedly.