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sean johnson
United States
avon
Indiana
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I think the longer you follow along with our project to play through all of our games, the more that you will see we really like playing card games together. I like games that have a mix of strategy and luck. My wife likes games that are more tactical than strategic. For that reason, card games seem or board games with a big card element seem to be a good fit for us. Whenever there is a recommendation thread on this site about good card games, St. Petersburg seems to always come up. This summer an online retailer had a buy 2 get one free sale. We bought a gift for someone and they also had a game my dad wanted to get. This gave us two games, so we got one for free and we went with St. Petersburg. So were the recommendations right for this one?
Game Overview
St. Petersburg technically has a board, but the board is just there to keep score and hold cards. In St. Peterburg there are three types of cards. Workers primarily provide the players with money, buildings primarily provide the players with points, and aristocrats can don both (though tend to lean towards money). There is a fourth group of cards that are upgrades and these more powerful cards replace cards a player already has in play. Each game round has four phases where cards from these various stacks will be added to the middle pool of cards. So, for example, on the worker phase, new workers are added. At the end of these phases the appropriate card type scores. Once again as an example at the end of the building card phase a player will receive points for all of the buildings they have in play. The game continues until one of the stacks of cards runs out. There is then end game scoring based on how many unique aristocrat cards a player has. The more they have the more points they score.
The Game We Played
After the first turn or so, my wife was making more money than I was, thanks to upgrading a shipbuilder to a wharf on turn one. However, I was collecting more points and started to create a gap. I was never able to catch up with her economy though, and when she got the building that gave her one coin for each aristocrat the gap widened even more. In the later turns, she was able to buy more buildings and the margin narrowed to two points. She had two more aristocrats than I did, and in the last couple of turns I was unable to catch up there. This meant that when we did the end game scoring with the aristocrats she easily passed me for the win.
Our Thoughts
My Rating: 3 (it's ok)
My Thoughts: The game is ok, I do not dislike it but there are other games I would much rather play. I do kind of dislike how important aristocrats are. It really seems that if someone gets ahead on having more unique aristocrats they will win, as the points from buildings during the game are not enough to overcome the aristocrat end game scoring. I am not an expert on the game, so I might be wrong but that is my impression. In the games of St. Petersburg we have played, who ever has the most aristocrats wins.
Her Rating: 3.5 (it's ok)
Her Thoughts: I do not dislike it, but there are other games we have that I would rather play so I am willing to trade this one.
Verdict
Combined Rating: 6.5
While we are not opposed to St. Petersburg, it is really an example of having too many games. There are other regularly going to be other games we reach for over St. Petersburg, so giving that reality there is little reason for us to keep it.
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