Playing Games at PAX, Part One: Lighter Fare

Playing San Juan with Cathi G., Michael Harrison, and Dave Banks

We kicked off PAX the right way: by playing a game! I met up with fellow GeekDads Dave and Michael and Michael’s friend Cathi in the lobby of the convention center Friday morning. We’d gotten there about an hour before the exhibit hall would be open, so I got out my copy of San Juan for a game. If you’re familiar with the game Puerto Rico, you can think of San Juan as its little brother—smaller and simpler but with a lot of similarities. It’s a well-designed game, using just a deck of cards and a couple of tokens for choosing roles. Each card has a building on it that serves a particular function, costs a certain amount to build, and is worth a certain number of victory points at game end. However, the cards in your hand also serve as money: to build a sugar mill at cost 2, you must discard two of your other cards from your hand.

Each player chooses a role, which then dictates an action for each player, and then the next player chooses a role. They allow you to build buildings, produce goods, sell goods for cards, or just draw more cards from the deck. Many of the buildings modify these actions, letting you produce or trade more goods, get more cards, or give other advantages. The game lasts until somebody has built their 12th building, and then victory points are tallied up.

What I love about San Juan is that there are a few different strategies you can use to win, so it’s a matter of doing the most with the cards you get, and finding the combinations that work well together. A large part of the strategy lies in choosing the role that gives you the greatest advantage without giving too much to your opponents. (I won, but I was the only one who had played before so it wasn’t really a fair fight.)

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