Stats:
No. of players: 2-4
Amount of time to play: 60 min
Age requirements: 10+
Set-up time: minimal

San Juan is a card game version of the board game Puerto Rico. Like in Puerto Rico you select roles, build buildings and produce goods to score Victory Points and win.

San Juan Rules Description:

You start San Juan with an Indigo Production building and four cards. There are two types of cards in the game. Production cards produce goods. The rest of the cards have a purple background and grant you a special ability or extra VPs at the end of the game.

The first player takes the Governor tile and checks everyone’s hand size. You may not have more than seven cards at the beginning of any turn. Next the Governor selects a role tile. The available roles are Prospector, Builder, Producer, Trader and Councillor. When you take a role tile everyone has a chance to perform its action. The player that selected the role tile gets a bonus when using it.

The Prospector draws a card. It is the one card that does not let the other players take an action.

The Builder lets players build a card from their hand. You must pay for it with other cards from your hand. And the player that selected the role pays one less card.

The Producer lets players add goods (that are represented by cards from the draw deck) to one of their Production buildings. As your bonus you may add goods to two Production buildings.

The Trader allows players to sell one good. Drawing the top market tile sets the sell price, which is the number of cards you draw. If you chose the role you may sell two goods.

The Councillor lets players draw two cards and keep one of them. Your bonus is drawing three extra cards but still only keeping one.

Once a player builds 12 buildings the game immediately ends. You total your VPs from buildings and their special abilities. The player with the most VPs wins the game.

Quick Review of San Juan:

San Juan is a fun card game that uses cards for most everything. That makes it portable. It is also easy to teach and play. It gives a great introduction into role selection games too.

The cards are of good quality and the role tiles are thick and sturdy. Overall the components are nice and the rules are easy to read and follow.

The Second Edition includes the expansion buildings and one new card, The Hut. It gets you a card each time no goods are sold during the Trader phase. Some of the other cards, like Guildhall and Prefecture, have been balanced. All these changes open up viable new strategies in this new edition.

Trying to get good card combinations or make the most out of the cards you have is fun and challenging. Even working your way out of a bad hand and into a winning situation is fun. As simple as San Juan is there it is fun to work with what you get and manufacture a win.

Once all players know the flow of the game, San Juan plays pretty fast. There is little downtime since all players take the selected role. This makes it great when you are pressed for time.

This is a great implementation of Puerto Rico as a card game. If you are trying to introduce the basics of Puerto Rico, but want to ease into it, San Juan is a great way to do it. It can also act as a bridge to its more complex sibling Race for the Galaxy, which I love.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 5 out of 6
Player Interaction 3 out of 6
Replay Value 5 out of 6
Complexity 3 out of 6
Fun 4 out of 6
Overall 4 out of 6