Jaipur Review

Four seems to be the magic number when it comes to player counts. Although the side of the box typically lists a range from two up to six players, that just indicates the game can be played at that count, not that it's actually worth playing. This is especially true with two: the internal balance and action economy of most multiplayer-centric games tends to break down in the face of the zero sum nature of two-player gaming. Distinctions between earning points for myself and denying them to my opponent become purely superficial, and if I choose to specialize in, say, culture, I am effectively handing the military victory to my rival on a silver platter. Some two-player-only games invent mechanics to mitigate this zero-summiness—in Targi, I can deny a space to my opponent without being forced to take that space myself—but the best two-player games, like Jaipur, instead choose to embrace and capitalize on two-player gaming's essential nature.

Jaipur is a two-player-only economic card game—the players are rival merchants competing for the honor of becoming the Maharaja's personal trader. But the game's true economy is not in the value of the goods you're buying and selling; it's in the opportunity cost of the actions themselves. Both players begin with a hand of five cards representing Indian trade goods like spices, silks, leather, precious minerals, and camels (more on those later). There is also a central market of five more cards next to a facedown deck of all remaining goods. On your turn, you can and must take exactly one action from the following list: you can buy a good, taking a single card from the market and adding it to your hand; you can trade two or more goods from your hand with the same number of different goods from the market (i.e. you can't trade a card for another card of the same type); you can take all the camels; or you can sell one or more goods of the same type by discarding cards from your hand and taking the topmost goods tokens matching your sale. You get one token for each good sold, plus bonuses for selling sets of three, four or five identical goods.

If that sounds simple, that's because it is; this is one of those small-box, one-sheet-of-rules games that are perfect for playing with family and non-gaming friends. On the subject of the box, small as it is, it doesn't cut corners, especially with its insert: an antacid-pink custom-molded thing with decorative arches bordering the card and token wells, plus the game's title embossed in the plastic.

Just as the box has more going on than at first appears, the gameplay houses some hidden complexities. For one thing, the values of goods aren't constant; while gold is generally more valuable than spices, which are more valuable than leather, the actual coinage you'll earn per sale decreases with each good sold. The first leather sold gets you four coins, the third earns you two, the fourth through ninth are valued at one coin each, and any leather sold beyond the ninth earns you nada, though you can still sell sets of leather goods for those set bonuses.

This is one face of the opportunity economy: gathering large sets of like goods earns you access to the valuable bonus tokens, but it also gives your opponent multiple opportunities to sneak in a few quick sales, driving down the value of the product itself. The 5-goods bonuses offer hefty rewards, but the more goods you accumulate, the more obvious your intentions become.

The other side of the opportunity economy is that any cards removed from the central market are immediately replaced with a new card drawn from the deck. The tight, one-action-per-turn pacing means that every card you take into your hand gives your opponent first dibs on its (potentially more valuable) replacement. Buying a single good rather than trading is thus inefficient in two ways: you are creating an opportunity for your opponent, as mentioned above, and you are also falling behind in the race to be first to market. That doesn't mean the buy action is always the wrong choice, though, especially when you've got a hand full of diamonds and gold and just need one more to complete the set.

Which is where the camels enter the picture. These ill-mannered dromedaries are literally invaluable—they can't be sold for any price—but it's hard to decide if that's because they're so essential or because they're so obnoxious. Camels function purely as trade fodder, allowing you to grab cards from the market without letting any new goods trickle in. To facilitate this, camels don't count against your seven-card hand limit (they are set aside in their own little herd). In the right circumstances, camels are more valuable than diamonds, even though they exist only to be given away.

At the same time, a market full of smelly camels is the worst thing you can see at the start of your turn. That's because camels are like Pringles: you can never take just one. When you "buy" a camel, you get all of them, whether that's one card or the whole market. And then the empty, redolent market spaces refill with diamonds, gold and silks for your opponent to ponder. Before you know it, your rival is swapping yet more camels for the precious minerals that just flopped, and you have no option but to grab those camels too, until you are literally swimming in humps while your opponent cleans out the market on silver.

Or it might all work out in your favor. The nature of the random flop dictates that, while you know you are giving your opponent an opportunity, you don't know how valuable it will be. On the other hand, you have perfect information when it comes to trading and selling, except of course for how the other player will react. This mix of the known and unknown—the value of goods is known, while the set bonuses are semi-random—gives Jaipur a nice blend of calculation and intuition, leaving space for more impulsive players while generally rewarding skill over the long term. The best-two-of-3 win condition ensures that surges of luck have time to smooth out.

Even though Jaipur is a welterweight game, and it's strictly limited to the two-player audience, it fills that sorta-light two-player niche perfectly. This is a game that knows exactly what its value is...unlike those *@#! camels.