science of board games

I really just need to update this more often, so here's something.

We picked up San Juan, the card game version of Puerto Rico, a few weeks ago. We've been playing a lot two-player games, and a few four-player games of it.

There are two primary differences between it and Puerto Rico: San Juan takes much less time to set up, and it uses the same cards to indicate buildings, resources, and money. Due to this, there is no Captain phase, and hence no shipping: the only way to get victory points is through cards.

The game has slightly less strategy as a result, but it definitely still has at least two or three different ways to rack up victory points. There are buildings that, for example, make production buildings much cheaper to build, and another building that makes them worth additional victory points. Combined with the fact that you can build many of the same kinds of cheap production buildings, you can easily get 3 or 4 victory points for free (or maybe for the price of one card) every time the builder is called. This also works for the purple (special) buildings, but a little less so, since there aren't as many really cheap buildings, and you can't play the same one twice.

Monuments seem worthless at first, since they just give you a 1-for-1 trade on cards for victory points. However, one of the purple buildings gives you an incredible amount of victory points for building multiple monuments. This makes them a highly lucrative strategy if these cards fall your way.

Another tool for your San Juan toolbox works well with three or more players: many of the really good purple buildings that multiply your victory points are also fairly rare: there are usually three of them in the deck. If you already have one in your hand (or have built one), and have a Chapel card, you can "bury" the valuable building underneath your Chapel, earning you a victory point and preventing the card from reentering the game. This doesn't work quite as well in two-player games, because the other person is more likely to get another one anyways.

We're still playing this game regularly (it's a lot of fun!), and we'll keep you posted.