Small Home Gaming: Jaipur

Hey all, it’s Chris. Yes we’re still here. Due to continued recommendations to limit external activities our lives haven’t really changed much in the last couple of months, so there hasn’t really been much in the way of family living to write about. So, we’re going to keep on trucking with this tabletop gaming series. Today we’ll look at another favorite game of ours: Jaipur.

Playtime: ~ 30 min.
Players: 2
Ages: 8+
Digital Version: Yes


Overview:

Jaipur is a two player game of strategy, hand management, and set-collecting brought to us by designer Sébastian Pauchon and published by Space Cowboys.

The goal of Jaipur is to become the Maharaja’s personal trader. In order to do this you must make more money than your opponent before the market closes by acquiring large quantities of goods and trading them at the highest price you can.

The setup is simple but effective. After dealing each player five cards (their starting inventory) you deal five cards to the market. From there players take turns to either choose one item from the market, choose many items from the market, or sell a resource in their hand. If a player takes just one item from the market, it is replenished from the market deck. If a player instead takes many items, that player must trade the same number of items from their own supply. If a player chooses to sell a resource (players can only sell one resource per turn) they simply discard the sold resources and collect their bounty from a stack of tokens representing that resource. Selling sets of 3, 4, or 5+ of a single resource grants bonuses depending on how big your set was. To complicate matters, players are kept to a strict 7 card hand limit. Additionally, each resource depreciates in value when it’s purchased. Finally, while strategy plays an important role, there’s not an insignificant amount of luck involved.

There are seven resources to fight over in Jaipur, each with its own market value and prevalence: Leather, Spices, Silk, Silver, Gold, Diamonds, and Camels. Leather is far and away the most common but worth very little. Diamonds, on the other hand (as you might expect), fetch a hefty sum but are much less common. While most of the other resources fall in between Leather and Diamonds (in both rarity and value), Camels do not. In fact, Camels are almost exclusively used as a secondary currency. They can’t be sold in sets like Silk, for example, but they can be used to buy goods from the market. They also don’t count towards the seven card limit, instead being kept in a separate area as your herd. Whoever has the most camels at the end of the round is awarded a bonus.

Officially Jaipur is a “best of three” situation where the first player to win two rounds is considered the winner. However, if you’re short on time, or if you’d just rather not play the same thing twice in a row, you can easily just play one round and declare a winner.


Spatial Requirements:

In addition to being an excellent game, Jaipur is very space friendly. The box measures a meager 7” x 5” x 1.5” making it extremely easy to store. The game’s play area is equally restrained, easily fitting on our 23” x 27.5” board.


Final Thoughts:


Jaipur really is a fantastic game. Yes it’s limited to two players, and it’s probably not going to keep you busy all evening, but it’s a great option for kicking off a game night. It’s also a solid choice if you feel like playing a game but don’t have the time or the energy for something like Settlers of Catan.