22 Nov 2020. San Juan is a sister game to Race for the Galaxy. Different designers, but both were inspired by Puerto Rico. San Juan is the official card game version of Puerto Rico and is more similar to it. It is not as complex as Race for the Galaxy. The most important thing these two games have in common is that cards are buildings you can construct (or planets you can settle), and at the same time also the currency you have to spend to construct (or settle) them. Despite some similarities, owning them both is not redundant. They are different enough and I enjoy them both in different ways.
During the COVID-19 Movement Control Order I don't go out much to play new games, so I have been bringing out old games. This is a good thing. I do have many old games that I like, and many of them are often neglected because we gamers are always attracted by the new and shiny. It feels great to revisit my older games. It's like catching up with old friends. The photo above is the 2-player setup for San Juan.
Having the library in the early game is good. If you have the library, as the active player picking an action, you get double the privilege. E.g. a $2 discount for constructing buildings (as opposed to $1), selling 2 extra goods instead of just 1. If you build a library early, you will be benefiting from it very frequently throughout the whole game. The library activates for all action types you pick, unlike most other buildings which are only useful for specific action types.
Eventually I gave up on the library, because it was expensive to build. If I had decided to build it, it would have taken a few turns. I decided to forgo this opportunity because I didn't want to slow my tempo in the early game.
I have produced one coffee at my coffee plantation (face-down card on top of it). I built this coffee plantation in the early game. Later I built a silver smelter too. My strategy was to produce and sell high-value goods. I had a market built, which allowed me to sell at higher prices.
My wife Michelle built a library early in the game, which got me a little worried. It is a powerful building. She built the quarry too, making all violet buildings cheaper by $1. She only needed to spend $2 for the $5 Hero statue! When she picked the Builder action, she would get a $2 discount because of the library. The quarry gave an additional $1 discount. The library and quarry combo is strong.
Jambo is a 2-player card game about traders in pre-colonisation Africa. You make money by buying and selling goods. The challenge is in managing the varying goods combinations you get the opportunity to buy and sell. Suppliers only sell in specific combinations, and buyers only buy in specific combinations. You juggle the differences. Both players start with $20 in capital, and aim to reach $60.
There are six types of goods. The currency is gold nuggets.
We both started with one large stall which could accommodate 6 goods. There are small stalls in the draw deck. If you happen to draw them, you can play them, at a cost. The small stalls fit only 3 goods. Michelle was not so lucky with the small stalls and never drew any. I drew one early and played it, and after that I kept drawing more. I didn't really need more. That said, Michelle managed to beat me in one game despite never building any small stall. Small stalls are handy, but not absolutely necessary.
The game has cards with many different abilities. This is a text-heavy game. Some cards help you. Some cards hurt your opponent. Some are tools which you can play in front of you and use every turn. Jambo is fast-playing and works well as a spouse game.
We did Ticket To Ride: Japan again - Michelle, younger daughter Chen Rui and I. This time I couldn't catch up with them on competing to build the shinkansen. See that track at the bottom right. Michelle (red) was leading, closely followed by Chen Rui (blue), and I (green) was last. Right from the start they were aggressive in building the shinkansen network. The shinkansen trains were used up quickly.
This time I aggressively drew tickets. All these tickets tucked under the board were my completed tickets. I won by a large margin. I was lucky in being able to get many long-distance tickets. I loved getting tickets with major cities like Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya and Hiroshima, because they were all already connected to the shinkansen network. One particular ticket required getting to Narita airport, so I needed to use my own (green) train to get there (photo above).
Chen Rui (blue) also needed to get to Narita. Thankfully for her there was another route she could take, from Utsunomiya. Since we did a 3-player game, only one of the two routes between Tokyo and Narita was available, and I had claimed that. Our shinkansen network started in the south and extended to Tokyo. At Tokyo it split into two, one branch heading west to Nagano, and the other continuing north and eventually terminating at Sendai. At that point we ran out of shinkansen trains, and shinkansen routes would need to be claimed using player colour trains.
Michelle (red) drew many Tokyo metropolitan area tickets, which I think is a bad thing. These are often short distance tickets which don't score many points. Also it is easy to get blocked in the metropolitan area. Doesn't sound like a good deal at all. However not all tickets involving a Tokyo underground station are restricted within this Tokyo underground map. In some cases the other destination is another city on the main map.
No comments:
Post a Comment