What Kind of Game is San Juan?

San Juan is a fun engine-builder game. You will need to figure out how to most efficiently get cards (which is also currency) while also balancing utility buildings. San Juan is another staple of the gaming industry, it’s a game that you’ll hear about shortly after looking into more board games past Catan.

I played this with my wife a few weeks back, but haven’t had a chance to write this out until now! It’s been a busy week or two. We played this on the same day we played Splendor, and she beat me by 3 points I think, but she also won every game we played that day so I don’t think it was luck.

San Juan Setup

Setting up San Juan is quick and easy!

• Shuffle the deck
• Shuffle the “Price tiles (the long-thin ones)
• Give each player 4 cards and an Indigo Plant
• Lay out the Roles in an easy to reach area and declare someone the Governor (Goes first)

How to Play San Juan

Each turn players will do the following, starting with the Governor:

• Select a role (Governor does not count as a role.)
• Do the Role Action, and the player who selected it also gets the Privilege bonus text
• Pass the turn to the next player

For Producing, draw a card and place it under the production building to show that it can Sell.

For Selling, take that card under the production building and discard it. Then, draw how many cards based on the “Price Tile” (The long-thin one), before finally moving that Price Tile to the end/back and flipping the next one over, revealing new prices.

And that’s how to play! Nice and easy. From there you should be able to read the cards to figure out how the game is going to develop. Also, make sure to clarify with the rulebook if you have questions!

Scoring

Each card in San Juan will tell you if it does or does not grant victory points, along with how many victory points it grants.

Typically, purple buildings are worth more, but building them usually doesn’t get you any more income, or at least not more than a production building.

Game End

The game ends when someone has any 12 buildings on the field. Meaning that it will end on a building phase, but each player gets to build before scoring.

From there, count up how many victory points everyone has, then determine the winner!

Conclusion

You would be on the right track if you picked up San Juan early in your board gaming hobby. I can’t imagine anyone picking this game up and thinking “Wow I wish I bought something else!” It’s a very good game, and proof that you don’t need much at all for a game to be good!

For another classic game review, check out my review on Splendor!

Try San Juan a Different Way!

Alright, now remember that one of the goals for the site is to lay out ways to spice up a game or make it more balanced. I don’t think San Juan needs any balancing, but it could be spiced up! Note that these will probably break the game balancing-wise, so make sure not to try these out in competitive play!

• Cranes Suck: Rather than a card, the Crane is a game mechanic. Remove the Crane cards from the deck, and any player can build over their other building for reduced cost.
• Everyone Pitches In: After each player chooses their card/privilege for the round, do the remaining role actions before round-end with no privileges. Choosing to sell cards this way reduces the goods value to one.

That’s all for now! Go give this game a shot, or check it out on Board Game Geek!