Catan, the internet and the marketplace of ideas

When I first got into gaming about twenty years ago, there were three games that seemed to be in every group’s collective game closet: Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico and Carcassonne. Very quickly, Ticket to Ride got added to that list. (It had to actually get published before anyone was willing to play it)

I’ve found myself thinking about these four games and wondering where to ramble with them. I could write about how the hobby has changed and there isn’t a unifying game like these were anymore.

But honestly, that’s a delusionally nostalgic viewpoint. It’s picturing a world where BGG was the center of the gaming world. Plenty of folks were playing Axis and Allies or Battletech or Titan and didn’t know Catan existed. (And that’s not even getting into Chess or Rummy or Scrabble or Poker or Go or- you get the idea)

Yes, the gaming world has become bigger and more mainstream and more varied. But it’s not like it was a magical Smurf village twenty years ago.

I also don’t think they represent a golden era of gaming and game design. We are talking about a ten-year span. That’s pretty short compared to Mancala or Chess but that’s a long time in the modern market. And it’s not like there haven’t been a ton of great games since then.

My next thought was that the game that actually mattered was Catan because, love it or hate it (I love it), no one can deny that it changed the landscape. But I don’t think that’s quite what I’m looking at either.

Then an idea occurred to me. We are looking at games that came out as the internet was becoming more and more mainstream. It is now so ubiquitous we carry the internet in our pockets but the internet changed so much. (Wow, there are grownups who have always lived in a world with the internet. )

I firmly believe that Carson, Puerto Rico, Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride are all great games that will still getting played twenty years from now. I also think they were in the right place at the right time to take advantage of an algorithm we didn’t even know existed.

I am convinced that Puerto Rico is NOT broken

 When I’ll first seriously got into board games, it was generally accepted that Puerto Rico was the greatest game ever made.

Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration but back when woolly mammoths and sabre tooth tigers could be found in most backyards, Puerto Rico had a lot of prestige. As large and diverse as the gaming community has become (which is a good thing!), I don’t know if a game could hold such a central position again.

(Actually, that may be more of a statement of how provincial Boardgame Geek may have been, as opposed to any kind of statement on the actual real world of gaming)

Looking back, there are two things that strike me about my experiences with Puerto Rico. One is that there was allegedly an ideal strategy to play and that an inexperienced player would break the game, giving whoever sat to their left the win.

And I don’t actually think either of those things is really true.

Honestly, if Puerto Rico was solved, it would not have been nearly so successful or beloved. And with multiple paths to victory and the plantation supply being random, I don’t believe there can be one ‘perfect’ strategy. Still, I remember players on BSW who would quit games if they felt people weren’t playing ‘properly’

As for the inexperienced player ruining the game,  any game where skill has matters and there’s interaction can be accused of that. I’ve certainly seen inexperienced players throw Knizia’s Modern Art or Sackson’s Executive Decision off more than I’ve ever seen it happen in Puerto Rico. Are poor players a problem or a convenient excuse? Different levels of skill is something you have to adjust for. Complaining about it is more a reflection of the one doing the complaining than the game.

What fascinates me about these complaints is that they didn’t seem to come from haters but from people who really loved Puerto Rico.

But the fact that I don’t think these criticisms hold water just makes me appreciate Puerto Rico more.

Oh, this is actually San Juan

I recently saw, at first, that Puerto Rico had been added to Yucata. I’ve been having a real itch to play it again. Back in my early days, that and Settlers of Catan was a huge chunk of what we played.

Then I saw it was Puerto Rico THE CARD GAME or, as we call it on our house, San Juan. That was kind of a bummer.

Don’t get me wrong. Even though I like Race for the Galaxy and Glory to Rome more, I still quite like San Juan. I have played it a lot and I’m sure I will continue to play it.

And I also know Puerto Rico is on Boardgame Arena so I could play it online if I really needed to. However, Yucata is where my friends play and it was hard enough for us to all end up there. Playing by turn instead of live helps us play over the time zones.

We have a long history with Puerto Rico. It was part of our foundation playing board games. Getting to play it again, making it part of our routine again would have been really awesome.

But we may get in some San Juan.

San Juan opened doors for me

San Juan was my first real experience with a card game adaptation of a board game.

It certainly wasn't the first one out there. I knew that Monopoly's Free Parking game came out back in 1988. And Settlers of Catan and Starfarers of Catan had their two-player card versions out as well.

Still, San Juan was ahead of the pack of turning board games into card or dice games.

And San Juan definitely has its own identity outside of its parent Puerto Rico. It shares a theme and the mechanic of role selection with Puerto Rico but it also helped create the genre tableu builders as well as multi-use cards. San Juan has its own legacy.

I first played it very early in my gaming experiences. I'm not sure I had even started collecting games at the time. It was after I had been introduced to Puerto Rico and was playing it with a small circle of friends at least once a week.

Since we already knew Puerto Rico so well, we were able to pick it up almost immediately. At the same time, cards being buildings, money and goods was amazing. (Truth to tell, still is)

In fact, I ended buying San Juan years before I bought Puerto Rico, because it was portable and played down to two and everyone else had a copy of Puerto Rico.

San Juan led the way for other tableu building games with multi-use cards, Race for the Galaxy and Glory to Rome being two of the highlights. I've played a lot of both of those games and I would not only describe them as deeper and more complex but actually better than San Juan.

Not because San Juan is simpler and lighter. Neither of those two traits makes a game worse, although I have friends who would tell me I'm wrong. No, it's because I've found San Juan has really one fundamental, overriding strategy. Getting big buildings out. And luck

of the draw plays a big part in who gets a chance to play them. (Both Race for the Galaxy and Glory to Rome avoid this by having multiple ways to get points)

Despite what I do think is legitimate flaw, I have gotten a lot of play out of San Juan and I have had a lot of fun with it. It is still in my collection and it is a game that still calls out to us to get played.

Frankly, that's because it is lighter and shorter. Between the different roles and the different powers of the buildings, it offers a lot of choices and different experiences in that short playing time. In addition to being a great game to help teach other games like Race for the Galaxy, San Juan gives me the experience of playing a big game in a short amount of time.

San Juan isn't a perfect game. However, the richness and fun of its play vastly exceeds the flaws. I have had over a decade of fun with it. It was one of the first games that opened my eyes to the possibility of how a boardgame could be adapted to a card game. At the same time, San Juan is not Puerto Rico the card game. It is its own fascinating beast.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8217/san-juan