St. Petersburg is a 2- to 4-player game that is set in the Russia of Czar Peter the Great. The theme loosely represents the establishment of the new city of St. Petersburg. Players aim to build prestigious buildings and attract influential nobles to their causes, and must in the process enlist the services of various tradesmen to provide the economic resources for their endeavors.

Personalities and buildings are represented by four decks of cards (green for tradesmen, blue for buildings, orange for nobles, and multicolored for cards that provide often-valuable upgrades to the three basic types.) Players obtain cards through a drafting process (like the draft for a professional sports league.) Each player in turn may take an available card; the game board displays the available cards, and has room for eight cards. Each turn involves four phases, for tradesmen, buildings, nobles and upgrades in that order. At the beginning of each phase, additional cards are laid out on the board to bring the total number available up to eight (there is an exception for the 2- and 3-player games, where only 4 or 6 tradesmen, respectively, are laid out in the very first phase of the game.) Thus, the number of new cards made available depends on the number of cards bought in the previous phase.

In each phase, play moves around the table, with each player taking an action or passing until all four players have passed in sequence (a player who passes may take an action later as long as the phase has not ended.) The most common action is to take a card from the board, pay the cost to build it, and place in face up in front of you. A second action is available if you can't afford the cost, or don't wish to pay it right away: you can take a card for free and place it in your hand, but your hand limit is three cards and you suffer a stiff penalty for any card left in your hand at the end of the game. The third action is to lay a card from your hand face up in front of you, paying the cost (and making more room in your hand for additional cards.)

Unpurchased cards remain on the board for two full rounds before they are moved to the discard pile, and a player may buy any available card, even in a phase other than the natural phase of that card, but this represents a loss of efficiency, because green cards only "pay off" at the end of the green card phase, blue cards at the end of the blue card phase, and orange cards at the end of the orange card phase. Green cards (tradesmen) pay off primarily in money (and are thus critical early on because money is extremely tight.) Blue cards (buildings) pay off primarily in victory points; while they can yield many points if played early, they can also consume much of your cash. Orange cards (nobles) pay a mixture of money and victory points, and also provide an end-game victory point bonus depending on the number of different nobles a player builds based on triangular numbers (up to 55 victory points for 10 or more different nobles.) Upgrades can be extremely valuable, but you can only buy them if you have money left after the first three phases, and there is no pay-off after the fourth phase.

St. Petersburg is a game where the luck of the draw is important, as you'd expect where cards are involved, but the challenge (like in Ra) is in adapting your strategy to the order in which cards come up. It can be a big advantage if an adequate supply of the right cards comes up when you have the cash to buy them. On the other hand, you can influence the number of new cards available in each phase by influencing the number of cards purchased in the previous phase. Players can also affect the length of the game (buying green cards will tend to speed the game up by adding cash, while buying blue cards will tend to slow the game down by draining cash from the game.) The noble-card strategy works best if you can play that tenth different noble just as the game ends; a shorter or longer game gives an edge to buildings, so a tussle can develop as each player seeks to end the game at an advantageous time.

I learned quite a few new games last week, but St. Petersburg is the one I wanted to play over and over. I found myself lying in bed before I went to sleep thinking about alternative strategies and tactics. It's an unusual acquisition game in that it does not use auctions; auctions are a useful and common game-balancing tool, so I'm especially impressed when a game works well without them.

Eric's rating after 6 games of St. Petersburg: 9.