How to Play Jaipur

Jaipur is a set collection and set selling game where you collect goods and then sell them for points. In the game there are four different types of items. Three common items and three rarer items. They work the same, for the most part, with minor differences as to when you can sell them. But the rarer items are worth more to sell than the common items. And there are camels that you can get as well, which aren’t worth points until the end of the round. Then whomever has the most gets some bonus points.

Turn Actions

On your turn you take one of three actions. You either take a single card, trade to gain multiple cards, or sell cards. Take is simple, it is just taking a card to add to your hand. Or taking all the camels in the middle market row which don’t go to your hand and thus don’t count to your seven card hand limit. Then a new card is flipped out to fill that row.

Trading is not much more complex. You select the items from the center row and you trade that many items from your camels or cards in hand back into the center row. When you do that, no new cards are added to the center row.

Finally you can sell goods. You can sell as few or as many of a single type of good as you want. There is an exception for rare goods. You need to sell at least two of them. But for either type of good, rare or common, if you sell three or more you gain a bonus tile. And the more you sell, the higher value the bonus tile is. You also take a scoring token of the type of good to add to your scoring for that round per good that you sell. You can sell beyond the number of tokens, you just don’t get a token for that.

End of Round and End of Game

The round ends when one of two conditions is met. Either three of the piles of goods are gone, any combination of rare and common. Or when all the cards in the draw pile are gone. Then players compare to see who has more camels. Whomever is holding a larger herd will gain the camel bonus token that adds five to their score for the round. Player tally up their total score and whomever has the higher for the round wins the round.

The game is played over up to three rounds. Aka the game is best two out of three. If someone wins two rounds in a row, they win the game.

What Doesn’t Work

There is some luck in this game. Though, I want to say that it is pretty limited. The luck is going to come from the cards that are flipped up. You might take a card and then flip into a rare good that you want. But of course, it is a rare good, so your opponent is likely to take it as well. Or it might be a board of only camels. And your opponent will get a free board of new goods if you can’t sell anything.

What Works

The simplicity and speed of the game is great. Even as a turn based game on BGA, it is a fast game. Jaipur with it’s simple actions goes very fast. And I say simple actions, but really it is that combined with limited options that makes the game go fast. As a two player in person game, I suspect I would play this game a few times in a single sitting.

Now, I talk about how simple the game is and how fast it plays. That is not meant to hide the fact that the game offers interesting decisions. And I like that it does that while not being a complex game. I either take a single card or multiple. But as my hand reaches it’s limit, how do I navigate that. It is possible to just trade in a single common good to buy an extra turn to get what you really want. Or you might trade in some of the common goods, giving your opponent a chance for a bigger set, but you get more rare goods. It is just enough strategy for the game.

How the winner of the game is determined is very good as well. There is a bit of luck, so it is possible to just have a really bad round. Now, there is a lot you choose to do to mitigate that, but it is possible. But even if you find yourself having a bad round, there are more, likely. I think this game could have easily gone with, play a round and whomever does best wins. But the best two out of three feels like it offers more to it and balances out that luck.

Who is Jaipur For?

This is a great game for people who like two player games. In particular, I might get this game because it is one that my wife and I could play in an evening. It is simple to learn, set-up, and play. And because it is fast, it is going to be a game that could get played after a kid is in bed. Or maybe you play with someone who works a different type shift, it is an easy game to fit into a busy evening.

Final Thoughts on Jaipur

I like Jaipur. I was not sure how much I was going to like it the first time that I played it. But as I play more, I find that there is more strategy to the game and less luck than you expect at the start. In particular, how you manipulate the center row is really interesting. And I find that there are different strategies that both seem to work for it.

And I really can’t say enough how quickly this game goes. Even with playing a best two out of three rounds, this is a very fast game. I play turn based on everything I do for BGA and this is so fast even in turn based. I imagine it is going to fly by in person. And like I said, I think this is a game that you play two or three times in a single sitting.

So, as I said, I like Jaipur. I think this is a game that I am likely to pick-up. It is a good two player game and like a game like Hanamikoji, it is so fast and easy to teach that it works really well. And I think it is the type of game that my wife would like as well.

My Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: B
Casual Grade: B
Strategy (out of 10): 6
Luck (out of 10): 6

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How To Play No Thanks

No Thanks is a bidding and bluffing game where you are trying to score the fewest points possible over a set number of rounds. And the players set how many rounds they want to play. In a four player game, we played four rounds.

Each turn someone is the first player, they flip over a card, and decide if they want to take it. The cards range in number from 3 to 35. But there are 9 removed from the deck. Lower number cards are obviously better. But each player also starts with eleven chips. These chips allow you to say no thanks to a card and pass on it. But if you don’t have a chip, you must take the card. Whenever someone feels like there are enough chips on the card, and it is their turn, they can take that card and the chips.

Once all cards are gone through, players count up their points. Cards are worth the value printed on them. Unless, they are part of a run, then only the first card in a run is worth points. So, a run of 10, 11, and 12 is only worth 10 points. And any chips you have left are worth -1 point per chip. Fewest total points at the end wins the game.

What Doesn’t Work?

Honestly, this game is so simple that it works very well. I do think that some people can “crack” the game faster than others. For example, three of us were close in score and my wife had a much higher score. This comes down to just how people value the cards and chips. But that is a lot of what is good about the game too, so I’ll talk about that later.

I could also see some players getting frustrated with bad luck. In the game you remove nine cards, like I said, so it’s very possible that a player is shooting for a long run only to have a card missing in the middle. That increases scores fast when you can’t complete a long run. But that is a known part of a game and part of the pushing your luck in the game.

What Works?

Let’s start by talking about the valuation calculations that everyone is doing. I really like that aspect of the game. If I have a 32 and 33, taking a 34 is zero points for me. But for everyone else, that is 34 points. So I can make a decision to pass on it assuming it’ll come back around to me. Now, in a four player game, I get three additional chips. But then I let it go around again. Will it come back around, do players have chips left? It’s a judgement that I need to make to milk as much value as I can.

That piece of the game is fascinating to me. And it is tricky to get the value right. And sometimes you need to push your luck. If I already have the 32, and the 34 has 10 chips on it, do I take it risking that the 33 won’t be in there. If the 33 is in there, I now have 10 more chips to bid, a good chance I’ll get more chips with the 33, and then would only be scoring 32 points on those chips. But if it isn’t in the deck, now I have 66 points, with chips left to offset that scoring.

I also really like the speed of the game. The decision space is interesting. And the table talk is interesting, but the game still moves fast. Once in a while you reach a tough decision, but only two options exist. You either pass and put a chip on the card, or you take the card. So it moves around the table very quickly. And I think it’d scale well, as well. You just get less chips to start out with, which would change up how you value your chips.

No Thanks – Final Thoughts

This is a game that kind of seems like it shouldn’t work. The market value that is being created for each card depends on the group. Sometimes, depending on the card, the chips are more valuable to lose than others. So it might not work for some groups. But for myself, and the groups I play with, I think it will work most of the time. Because the game is an interesting bit of push your luck and bluffing as you go.

And while I think for some people the depth of No Thanks will be trickier to grasp, how to play it is so simple, and it can still get to the table easily. Even if people aren’t playing optimally, they can still understand what is going on. And it is still fun, because this game encourages table talk. Playing, we goaded players into taking cards, and talked about our decision making. it might not be ideal, keeping stuff hidden might be better, but it’s so like, we played it for fun.

My Grade: A-
Gamer Grade: B
Casual Grade: B

Have you played No Thanks? If you have, what do you think of it?

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The Contenders:

First, why are these two battling right now? Both of them have a common mechanic between them, in that they are card-drafting games. You are passed a hand of cards, you select one, all players reveal cards at the same time, and then your hand of cards passes to the next person and the process is repeated. But one of the games is about picking out your meal at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, and the other is about building the seven wonders of the ancient world. So the themes are very different, but mechanically, there are a number of things that are similar about these games. Like I mentioned, they use card drafting, but there is also an aspect of set collection in each game.

7 Wonders

7 Wonders has you building one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. You build up a tableau in front of you and your wonder, getting resources, buying those you don’t have, getting goods, studying, building military might, and building up your wonder. There is a cornucopia of points in this game, as well; you score points at the end of the game based on the sets of buildings you have, different things you’ve studied, your military might (in fact that’s at the end of each age), and other things. The big upside of this is that you can focus in on a few different areas and have a chance of winning. However, you do need to diversify some; otherwise, you won’t be able to get quite enough points to win. But if you try to do everything at once, you likely won’t get large enough chunks of points to win.

Sushi Go! Party

Sushi Go! is about putting together the best sushi meal you could possibly have. Maybe you want some maki, miso soup, and green tea ice cream — while you can get this combination of foods in this game, it might not give you the most points. The game is played in three rounds (similar to 7 Wonders’ three ages), in which you try to collect sets of different things to get the most points possible. If you have three sashimi, for example, you will score 10 points at the end of the round, but if you have only two, you get no points. Or if you have two tofu, they’re worth 5 points, but if you have more, all your tofu are worth 0 points. Desserts are scored after the meal, and are the only thing you keep between each round. It makes sense as a meal, since you eat your dessert at the very end.

Compare/Contrast

The card drafting is a huge similarity between these two games, but there are a few differences, too. In 7 Wonders, you are drafting from a new set of cards each round, whereas most of the cards in Sushi Go end up going back into the pool of cards to draft, and only the desserts see their numbers reduced as you go. In 7 Wonders, if you get off to a poor start, it is harder to catch up for that reason, and makes the card drafting a bit more tactical. There’s also the set collection aspect to both of them, as you are looking to collect a variety of buildings that can stack off of each other in 7 Wonders, as well as collecting the various studies and gaining military might. In Sushi Go!, there can be a bit more variety in the set collection because sometimes you don’t want a big set of cards. Having more than two eel cards isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t do you any good; you just want to have two eels for sure so that you don’t get negative points. Compare that to tofu, which I mentioned above, where you don’t want more than two of them, or they become worthless.

Another big difference is the variability in both games. In 7 Wonders, the variability from game to game comes in the number of players, using more cards with more players, and which wonders are being built. If you consistently are only playing with two people, the cards you are drafting from are going to be the same. In Sushi Go! Party, you have a wide variety of different rolls, appetizers, entrees, specials, and desserts to combine and choose from. While it isn’t endless and you can repeat stuff fairly quickly when building out which ones you are using, you have a very large number of combinations.

The Results

Who wins? Sushi Go! Party

While these are both great games, I’m giving the win to Sushi Go! Party. There are two big reasons for this — the first is that I think the variability in the game is higher. Now, if you are playing 7 Wonders with a varying number of players, you do get to see more cards, but if you buy it to just play in a group of four people, you will quickly learn what those cards are. Because of this, there are more defined strategies for every game of 7 Wonders than there are for Sushi Go! Party. The second reason is that I see Sushi Go! Party as more accessible for new players. There aren’t as many mechanically heavy bits, and the artwork is cute. It’s going to be easier to get to the table with a wider group of players. If you want something that is more mechanically challenging, I’d recommend 7 Wonders as a great other option for card drafting. I honestly don’t think there is a wrong choice for picking one or the other of these two games, though. Finally, I’ll leave you with one important thing as a comparison between the games — if you just get the basic Sushi Go! game, you lose all of the variability that is in Sushi Go! Party, and 7 Wonders immediately becomes the better game. However, Sushi Go! Party is a cheap game for what you get, so it is definitely worth the money.

Who is your winner?

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