San Juan Sunday

Gillian and I pulled out San Juan by Rio Grande for a Sunday-night game. San Juan (published in 2004) is a card adaptation of another Rio Grande game, Puerto Rico, which was published in 2002 and is the top-ranked game at BoardGameGeek. I bought San Juan in February 2007 (at Amazon, for $28.60). Gillian and I were taking a cruise in March, and I wanted to get a quick, easy and portable game that we could play in the airport, on the plane and/or on the ship.

The game is all of those things and is often recommended as a "girlfriend" game -- having a minimal amount of conflict. In fact it's sometimes criticized as being multiplayer solitaire. Unfortunately, while that makes it a good girlfriend game (and Gillian considers it one of her favorites), I find it a little boring. We've only played it about a half dozen times since the cruise (mostly with just the two of us, but once with Al and Linda). This was the first time we'd played it since last August.

The rules are online, for anyone who wants to check it out. There's also a free online Java version that allows you to play against up to three AI (computer) opponents.

Certain card combinations can generate big victory points in San Juan, and one of my favorites is to combine the Smithy, that reduces the building cost of production buildings, with the Guild Hall, that gives extra victory points for each production building. That's the combo that I was able to build tonight, giving me 12 bonus points and a total of 34. Gillian's favorite strategy is to build the Chapel, which can also produce a number of bonus points. She wasn't able to get it built in time, however, so she finished with 25 points.