My Favorite Board Game - Jaipur

I haven’t done much talking about board games here, but I felt inspired to write about one of my favorite board/card games, Jaipur. It’s a game that is relatively easy to pick up, but every game always feels so close, and it’s such a breeze to play, that I highly recommend it.

Jaipur is a 2 player game where you’re both playing merchants trying to win over the favor of the Maharajah, to be their personal trader. You do this by collecting cards and trading them for the corresponding good off the marketplace.

The goods you’re trading for range in value, from the cheapest, leather, to the most expensive, gemstones. For the cheapest 3 goods, Leather, Spice, and Fabric, you can trade 1 or more card to take the corresponding number of point chips off the stack, and for Silver, Gold, and Gems, you need to trade at least 2.. The earlier you buy a resource, the higher the value of the chip. For example, Leather has a total of 9 chips on the board that can be bought. The stack order goes 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. If you’re the first person to buy Leather, you can clearly get the most valuable price for them. So what you could do is trade 1 or 2 leather just to grab those highest value units, but, there’s something you may be overlooking. If you trade 3, 4 or 5 of a resource, you get to take a token from the bonus pile. This gives you additional points at the end of the round. If you trade 3 of any resource, you take a chip that’s worth 1-3 points at the end of the round (flip to reveal value at end), trade 4, and you get a token worth 4-6 points, and trade 5 of a resource, and get 8-10 points.

There is additionally a 7th resource that’s just as valuable, and gives you a lot of flexibility in how you pursue cards. This 7th resource type are the camels. To understand their importance, we need to rewind a bit and talk about how the game board is set up.

Each player has a hand of up to 7 cards. They cannot exceed this hand limit for any reason. The center area has the stacks of resource chips, the deck, and 5 cards are turned face up. This is the marketplace for gaining new resources. You can usually either draw a card from the face up 5 in the center, or you can sell cards in your hand to get the tokens. You can also trade 2 or more cards from your hand for the same number of cards from the center area. This means you can trade 2 leather for a gold and silver on the board, if you want to gun for larger resource or if the other person took the last of the leather chips, invalidating your supply. The camels are a special card. They don’t count towards your hand limit. They sit in front of you as your herd. When doing exchanges for cards, you can use the camels in card exchanges, as if they were in your hand. So if you had 1 card in your hand, you could trade 2 camels for 2 resources to bring your hand total up to 3. Or if your hand is at 6, you could trade two cards from your hand and one camel to get 3 cards, and bring you up to 7. Once camels are in the marketplace area, a player can use their turn to take all camels on the board. You cannot take less than all of them. At the end of a round, whoever has the most camels gets a bonus 5 poinits.

These fairly straightforward systems allow for a really interesting ebb and flow to each game. Seeing some high value resources hit the board can make me try to shift course and “I already have one in my hand, do I try to flip some of this leather I have 4 of just to grab one more Gold and a Silver, or do I camp out and try to get that 5 card bonus?”, all the while keeping an eye on what your opponent draws and how they’re managing their camels. The camels themselves are such an interesting facet because they’re inherently valuable as a resource to save, and as one to use. Those points at the end can secure a win for you but maybe reaching to trade in 3 Silk will get you across the finish line at the end, even if they get the camel bonus.

Each round ends when either the deck is exhausted, and the market can’t replenish, or if 3 stacks of resource tokens are all gone. Total points, and see who won the round. First to win 2 rounds wins the game.

Jaipur is an affordable game, available for less than $25. It’s a game that goes pretty quick, so you can get a few games done within an hour if you need to kill time, and it’s really one of those “Easy to learn, hard to master” type feels. Every time you make some crafty exchange to trade in 5 of a resource, you feel smart as hell, and it’s a great feeling to play with a friend or loved one. I highly recommend anyone looking for a good 2 person game. You can find it at various retailers, and there’s also a few web browser versions where you can play Jaipur for free with random people or friends.