San Juan (2004)

A card game based on Puerto Rico. The pack of 110 cards consists of production buildings (indigo, sugar, tobacco, coffee, and silver) and "violet" buildings that grant special powers or extra victory points. Cards from the hand can be either built or used as money to build something else. Cards from the deck are used to represent goods produced by the production buildings, in which case they are left face-down. A seven-card hand limit is enforced once per round.

In each round or governorship, each player in turn selects from one of the available roles, triggering an event that usually affects all players, such as producing goods or building. The person who picks the role gets a privilege, such as producing more goods or building more cheaply.

Though similar in concept to Puerto Rico, the game has many different mechanics. In particular, there are no colonists and no shipping of goods; goods production and trading are normally limited to one card per phase; and trades cannot be blocked.

Victory points are gained exclusively by building, and the game ends as soon as one player has put up 12 buildings.

Sequel to:

• Puerto Rico

This game is #5 in the Alea small box series.

Awards

• 2004 Spiel des Jahres Recommendation.
• 2004 Nederlandse Spellenprijs Nominee.
• 2004 Japan Boardgame Prize Winner, The Best Japanese Game.

Online Play

• BrettspielWelt (real-time)
• http://www.compoundeye.net/jsanjuan/ (Strong Computer AI)

Microbadges

Components:

• 110 Cards:
  • 42 Production Cards
  • 68 Violet Buildings Cards
• 1 Governor Placard
• 5 Role Placards (Builder, Producer, Trader, Councillor, Prospector)
• 5 Trading House Tiles
• 1 Scoring Pad
• 1 Pencil
• 1 Rule Booklet