Reviews of San Juan

San Juan is a lightweight card game, and that’s the main reason my boyfriend and I took it along for some extended travel, we wanted to take a game that was flexible in case we found other gamers along the way.

With a deck of 110 cards, six cardboard role cards, and a small stack of trading value cards, the game is small and light enough for us to stuff it into a ziplock bag.

Players take on the varied roles of builder, producer, trader, councilor, and prospector and each gets special advantages: the builder may build for one card less than the normal point value; the producer may produce an extra good, etc.

I like that San Juan is varied by both luck and strategy, and that it’s short enough to play when you’re tired, and not too aggressive between players.

We played the game a couple times before we departed, and liked it. On the trip, we played San Juan many times—not just in the rain, but many evenings whether in the tent or in a zimmer frei or hotel.

We’ve now been back now for about 5 weeks, and returned home to our collection of around 20 board games. But, despite the availability of the other games, we’re still playing San Juan when we want a game that moves quickly, is challenging enough to be fun, but easy enough to play when we’re tired after a day of work. In fact, we just played it tonight. I think that says quite a lot.