San Juan lies in the shadows of big brother Puerto Rico. However when it comes to elegance and streamlining, San Juan is better. Like Puerto Rico, each building constructed earns victory points, and your goal is to have the most victory points when the twelfth building is completed. Each card is a building and has a power that gives an advantage -- for instance, saving you money when building or permitting a bigger hand limit.
What is elegant about San Juan is that the game box comes with, cards, score pad, a few tiles, and a pencil. Because of these limited contents, cards are used as proxies for many things. For instance, when your factory produces a barrel of indigo, you place a face-down card as a proxy for a barrel of goods. When you sell that indigo, you get paid in cards from the draw deck. If you wish to build a building, you also pay in cards. Lastly, the Chapel allows you store one victory point per turn. What do you suppose we could use to mark victory points? You guessed it -- face down cards are placed under the Chapel as victory point markers.
San Juan has TCG-like feel to it; the game has basic rules that are superseded by the exceptions of rules written on individual cards. Anyone who has played TCGs will be familiar with the gameplay of San Juan.
There are excellent free fanwares of San Juan. I recommend JSan Juan by André Wichmann, because it is both bug-free and multi-platform. The Mac version by Jim Getzen is slightly better because it talks and has nicer interface, but the AI player in seat #2 does not produce when you choose Producer.
Alea, the publisher, commissioned designers to follow up with a card version after their success with Puerto Rico. Andreas Seyfarth, Tom Lehmann, and Carl Chudyk each submitted their designs. Seyfarth's submission became San Juan, while Lehmann's submission was redesigned as Race for the Galaxy (Space Juan) and Chudyk's submission became Glory to Rome.
I recommend that you watch a tutorial video, use a reference, or read the rules (PDF) before playing. Box photo provided by Steve Holden.
San Juan in the Air
A few years ago, I attended GenCon, for the first time in decades, to help promote then then-new edition of Paranoia. On the plane back to New York, my seat-mate turns to me and says "would you like to play San Juan?". Components are small enough that the three of us, in one row of seats, were able to play on airline tray tables.
Meanwhile, in the row behind me, a woman is talking about a LARP she is planning, a guy across the aisle is reading through the rules to some boardgames he bought, and in general, I realize that probably half the people around me were game geeks. Which you expect at a con, but not on a commercial flight.
A weird feeling. Like, we are all gamers now.
I can't recommend Race for
I can't recommend Race for the Galaxy enough! As in San Juan the card is used for many things, but the theme and artwork is much better, and with the three expansions its really epic! You can try playing against an AI on http://www.keldon.net/rftg/
San Juan is a good game...
... but Race for the Galaxy is basically the same game as San Juan, only with a bit more depth for experienced players.
That doesn't mean that RftG is strictly better than San Juan, though. I find San Juan is much easier to teach non-gamers than Race for the Galaxy because RftG's card design (which favours icons over text) is hard to follow until you have played a few games. It doesn't matter at that point but if you never get to play game #2, how easy game #3 is to follow is moot.
So, my buying advice: are you playing with hardcore boardgamers? Pick up Race for the Galaxy. Casual players? San Juan is a better bet.
BSW
It should also be noted that this game can be played multiplayer online in real-time on www.brettspielwelt.de.
I say Glory to Rome...
I believe the submission story is a bit more intertwined than that, since I think it was Lehmann's mechanic of paying for things with cards which was so clean that it was incorporated into the final design.
Personally, I rate Glory to Rome above both SJ and RftG (which is indeed epic now, but that's its downfall rather than an advantage. For me, at least.) But as it's OoP currently, then it might be more of a challenge to obtain.
SanJuanline
For those that don't want to deal with German and Java Applets, the game can also be played online real-time multi-player at www.sanjuanline.com.