Review #8: Jaipur

# of Players: 2
Playtime: 0-30 Minutes
Core Mechanic: Set Collection
Theme: Market
Type: Card
Weight: Light
Year: 2009

Rating: 8.5*

I first played Jaipur well after I played Splendor countless times. Maybe it was the poker chip style pieces combined with set collection mechanics but it felt a lot like a two-player version of Splendor in some ways. I thought to myself that this seems like a nice twist on Splendor only to find out that Jaipur was released five years before Splendor. This really took me by surprise and was further impressed by how Jaipur was a game that felt like it was very recently released but is really almost 10 years old.

Each player is a merchant in India trying to make the most money by selling goods. On your turn you can either take one good or all the camels from the market, sell one or more of the same good from your personal supply, or trade an equal number of goods and/or camels from your personal supply with goods from the market. When you sell goods, you can only sell one type of good and each good you sell gains you one chip worth a certain amount of money. They are worth more money if you sell them earlier and you also gain bonus money if you can sell three or more goods. Once the chips for a type of good runs out, you are no longer able to sell that good. Once three types of goods runs out, the round ends. The round also ends if the market runs out of cards to refill it. The player with the most money wins the round and additional rounds are played until one player has won two rounds and is the winner of the game.

One of the keys to the game is managing camels. Camels are, in essence, a wild good that does not count towards your hand limit. Your hand limit is seven cards, but you can have as many camels as you want in a separate pile. When you take a camel from the market, you must take all of them. Because the player with the most camels at the end of the round gains a bonus as well, it is good to collect camels. Camels can also be used to trade for other goods and you don't need to worry about losing the goods already in your hand. However, because you are required to take all the camels, taking camels becomes a market refresh mechanism that gives the other player a large selection of new goods to choose from.

The components are great. You get colorful cards that show the different goods and camels and matching poker chips to represent the money you are able to sell goods for, as well as bonus chips for some of the aforementioned bonuses. It all comes in a small, portable box that has an insert that perfectly fits all the pieces. From a presentation perspective, it is simple, bright and colorful and looks like a game that was released this year rather than something that came out almost a decade ago.

My first impression of the game was that it felt a lot like a two-player version of Splendor, but the more I have played it and dived into the rules, it is really its own beast. I might even say that I prefer it over Splendor now, just because I appreciate how tight the gameplay is with two players and because it is a bit more portable while still feeling like it has the same amount of depth. A trading game for two players might not seem like it would work, but this game definitely proves that it can. I think this game definitely belongs in the Gateway and Middleweight collections, but it might be too light for the heavyweight category. As evident by its high BGG ranking, I am not alone in thinking it is a great game and it should be part of every Essential and Collector collections.