Jaipur
My kingdom for a camel
Work hard, earn more than your opponent and become the official merchant of the Maharaja.
At the beginning of the game, three camel cards and two merchandise cards are on the table between the players, who already have five cards in hand. On your turn, you can take some cards or sell some. Each time that you take cards, you can take one or more, however if you decide to take more, then you will have to trade in the same amount of cards from your hand that you take. If you decide to take all camel cards, then they can be used later to trade. You can sell all the merchandise that you want, as long as they are all the same type. For each sale, you will receive tokens with various point values. At the end of the game, the player who has the majority of the camels also wins points.
At the end of each round, the richest merchant will receive a Seal of Excellence. The first player who receives two of the seals, wins the game.
User Reviews (9)
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Game Backstory
You are a trader in Jaipur trying to collect and trade commodities then sell them on the market for money. Make the most money and you will become the Maharaja’s personal trader.
Gameplay Summary
This 2-player card game takes place over 3 weeks (rounds).
Each round consists of players alternating turns taking one action per turn. The 3 possible player actions are:
1) Pick up 1 commodity card from the face-up tableau OR take ALL of the camel cards and place them in front of you.
2) Trade commodities from your hand and/or camels (which you leave on the table in front of you) to pick up cards from the tableau.
3) Sell commodities from your hand to obtain ‘coins’ from the market (there is one type of ‘coin’ for each type of commodity). The coin values are higher the earlier you sell. You also get bonus coins if the sets of commodities you sell equal 3 or more.
Once 3 rows of coins are gone the round is over. Highest amount of money earned wins the round! Come out ahead on 2 of the 3 rounds and you win!
My Impressions
At first the game seems very simple, especially once going through the rules. In reality, the RULES are simple, but the actual game play becomes slightly more complicated. The complications occur because you have a hand limit and you have to work around that limit juggling it with several aspects:
* When to sell your sets of commodities. Should you sell a set of 3 for a smaller bonus now but bigger initial payoff (and perhaps prevent the other player from doing the same) OR should you wait a bit longer and pick up one or two more cards to get a bigger bonus a bit later? But selling a set now will also free up space in your hand for more commodities later.
* When to trade out sort of good stuff in your hand for better stuff on the table. If you trade it out, the other player may pick up when you put out to get a nice set for themselves. But, you might also be able to get a better bonus or better coins.
* When to pick up camels versus doing something else. Camels are always good to have but taking a large set of them from the table brings out more cards for the other player to be able to select from. This may or may not be good depending on how close to the hand limit they are at (and how close you yourself are).
* When to pick up commodities that your opponent wants but you don’t really care about. Picking them up may muck up your hand, but it can also prevent a huge score for the other player. Can you wait out holding it until they finally play that commodity if you do pick it up? Is there something better to pick up instead and put you over the top instead?
These are the types of decisions you have to weigh and make, hoping that the cards you need come out and possibly being forced to change up your plans if something unexpected happens.
However, even though luck is definitely there (it IS a card game after all) there is a lot you can do to help mitigate the luck depending on how to react the situation and manage your hand.
Final Comments
I love how this game plays out with a lot of options. You have a lot of flexibility in what to do within the confines of what becomes available on the table. And, even with the hand limit that is imposed, the extension of your hand with your collected camels on the table cannot be underestimated.
The key to this game is timing and control – when to pick commodities up, when to sell them, when to pick up camels and even what to pick up something that might negatively affect the other player.
Final Verdict
This is actually a nice casual/social game – you can have a conversation while playing. However, you still must pay attention to what the other player is doing and manage your hand properly to be successful at it.
I always enjoy playing Jaipur and I don’t expect to get tired of it for a long time.
I give it a BG rating of ’9′
This is going to be a slightly different review then most people are used to seeing. It will compare Jaipur to two other highly recommended two-player card games: Lost Cities and Battle Line. Mainly because fans of one of these games are fans of the others. Even though two of those games are designed by renowned game designer Reiner Knizia, Knizia probably wishes he had designed Jaipur, because it’s that good!
First let me review Jaipur. Jaipur is a game of trading goods and camels for rupees. The game is played in up to 3 rounds as a best of two of three match. Each round, the players take turns trading for goods in the market with items from their hand and camel herd or selling goods for rupees. Sounds simple and straightforward, but it is very subtle because of a limited hand, limited market, and limited amount of goods to be sold. All these have to be managed with skill, so that you can get the better payout then your opponent. The round ends when either three of the six goods sell out or the draw deck which supplies the market is depleted. The winner of each round is the one who bagged the most rupees.
The game is full of decisions that make you press your luck with each turn. Many times you are holding onto a set of goods, because you want to sell a bunch of the same good (3, 4, or 5) for a big bonus payout alongside the normal payout. The more you sell at the same time, the bigger the bonus. However, if you sell sooner then your opponent, you get a higher normal payout in the beginning, because each successive selling of the same good is less rewarding. Then there is the give and take of the market. If you take all the camels (if there’s a bunch) in the market into your herd, then you give your a opponent the first pick of the new items coming into the market. Yet, having the most camels gives you a five rupee bonus at the end of the round. You’re also exchanging other goods in the market with items in your hand, and that could give your opponent an advantage especially early in the game when you don’t know what they are collecting. The give and take aspect of this game is phenomenal in subtly delicious ways.
Now, how does Jaipur stack up to Lost Cities and Battle Line. Well, let’s start with the basics:
Component quality.
The quality of Jaipur components is outstanding even though the cards are a little thin, the tokens are superb. Battle Line will be next with it’s thick and hard-to-shuffle cards, then Lost Cities with the flimsy, big, easy-to-shuffle cards and thick almost useless board.
Fiddliness
Jaipur is easily the fiddliest of the three having so may tokens to setup each round and get in the correct order on top of shuffling the cards. Battle Line is the second fiddliest with having to setup the nine flags in a row at proper card width distance, then shuffle two decks. Last and best is Lost Cities where all you do is shuffle and go again.
Complexity
Both Jaipur and Lost Cities are heavy on the numbers. Lost Cities is probably the worst with having to both add and subtract, then multiply. Jaipur you just add your money, and Battle Line you rarely add. Jaipur has probably the most rules to start out, but the concepts are pretty simple. Battle Line is probably the simplest of all, but the tactic cards can complicate things.
Theme
Jaipur wins hands down, because you almost feel like you’re wheeling and dealing trying to make trades, selling goods, and collecting coins. The other two games can almost be played with a regular deck of cards if they had more suits.
Gameplay
Wow! They’re all great at giving you that “press your luck” and “am I making the right decision?” intensity you come to know and love. Most of the concepts are easy to pick up and games don’t last terribly long. They all have that “let’s play again” emotion that grabs you.
Overall
Just get all three and appreciate them for what they are. They are all worthy additions to your collection. I’ve heard some people get introduced to Lost Cities first, and if they like it, they then get Battle Line. If that goes well, then they move to Jaipur and don’t look back.
Anytime my wife says she likes it and asks for more, I know I have a hit. Jaipur is really a solid little two player game that should appeal to social and casual gamers plus a few avid gamers. If you like playing with your significant other who isn’t big into games, then you might try Jaipur.
I am not the biggest fan of games that revolve around trading or selling. It’s nothing against the genre itself, but rather that games of that nature don’t really strike a chord with me. This doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate them, however. I recently got a chance to try Jaipur, and I was surprised at how simple the game was, but at the same time, how the game itself remained flexible and entertaining.
The basic premise of this game is to acquire goods and sell them efficiently so that you can gain Seals of Excellence. Gaining a seal means you won the round; there are three rounds of play, and winning two out of three rounds means you win the game.
There are 6 kinds of goods in the game. Cloth, Spice, Silk, Silver, Gold, and Diamonds. Cloth is the most common, and worth the least, while Diamonds are rare and are worth the most. There are also camel cards in the game. Camels are not goods (in the context of the game, at least – some would argue that point in general terms), and cannot be sold, but whoever has the most camels at the end of the round will earn 5 points.
The way the game works is this: You and your opponent are dealt 5 cards, and any camels that you draw are placed down in front of you (camels are never considered part of your actual hand, and you can have as many camels as you want). Three camels are placed in a trading pool to start the game, as well as two goods that are drawn from the card deck.
During a player’s turn, they may either trade cards or sell cards. When trading, a player can either take all the camels from the trading pool (if he or she does this, all of the taken cards are replaced with cards from the deck), take one good from the trading pool (it gets replaced by a card from the deck), or take more than one good from the trading pool. If a player takes more than one good from the pool, he or she must replace them with camels from their camel pool. In theory, a player who has five camels in their camel pool can collect any and all goods that are left in the trading pool. However, a player has a seven-card maximum hand size, so a player cannot trade cards if it would put them over that seven card limit.
To sell cards, a player must discard 1 or more goods of the same type from their hand. For cloth, spice, and silk, a player can sell 1 or more goods of that type, but because silver, gold, and diamonds are more valuable, a player must sell two or more at a time; selling just one gold is not allowed, for example.
When a player sells a good, they acquire a goods point token from the appropriate pile for each good they sold. these good tokens are ranked from most valuable to least valuable, and the most valuable is placed first, so the player who sells first for a particular good will get the point tokens that are worth the most. In addition, players who sell goods in bulk can get a bonus depending upon the number of goods they sell. There are mystery point tokens that are awarded for three goods sold at once, four goods sold at once, and five goods sold at once. The three-good mystery tokens are worth the least, and the five-good mystery goods are worth the most.
The round ends when all the cards from the deck have been drawn, or when three of the six good token piles are depleted. Once a round is over, players flip over all of their good points tokens that they acquired and tally up all the points that they accumulated, with the 5 point token going to the player that had the most camels at the end of the round. Whoever had the most points gets a Seal of Excellence, then the cards are shuffled back into the deck and the board is set up for the next round of play, with the player that lost the last round going first for the new round.
Because Jaipur is such a simple game, it might seem as if it might get boring after a few plays. However, the game is very fast, and it is easy to learn. Since Jaipur is played with two players, and the game itself consists of three rounds, players will be able to read their opponent’s tendencies before the game is out, and smart players will pay attention to their opponent’s trades to get an idea of their hands. Since there are no actual card effects that would make your opponent discard cards or get new ones, the game doesn’t play vindictively or get overly complicated.
After playing Jaipur, my opinion of this game is that it is a solid game that is worth looking into. It’s fast and play consists almost entirely of cards, so it can be picked up quickly by just about anyone. What keeps this game from being completely open as a play-anywhere game is the fact that you need to have the goods tokens in a specific order, and that the tokens themselves are small and numerous, so you have to spend extra set-up time making sure they are in order and in the proper piles. But the game itself is fluid, and quite worth the price tag that is associated with the game.
My wife and I enjoy 2 player games – Lost Cities and Qwirkle among them. I have found Jaipur to be another very good offering in this space.
The theme is yet another in the Mediterrean trading style, with players collecting sets of rubies, gold, silk, leather, etc. Players draw cards on their turns from a set of available cards to build sets of a single good. These sets are then turned in for tokens representing victory points. The player with the most victory points is the winner of the hand. The game is set up to be a best of 3, but you can certainly set up your own parameters.
There are a few interesting twists to the “set collecting” mechanic that makes this game interesting. The first is the “press your luck element”. There are a set amount of tokens for each good, and they decline in value, so there is a bit of a race to turn in sooner. To balance this, there are also bonus tokens for turning in larger sets of 3, 4 or 5 cards. So the question begins, “Do I cash in early or turn in a larger set for the bonus?”.
The other twist are the camels. There are numerous “camel” cards, which can be collected on turns and used as filler cards to make it possible to collect more goods on your turn without sacrificing your better cards (you have to give cards to get in most scenarios). Everyone I play with has a different strategy regarding camels – some try to collect them early, some avoid them like the plague, others try to hoard them to receive the 5 point bonus at the end.
Components are of good quality(thick cardboard cutouts), and I definitely would invest in a collector’s edition with wooden tokens if available. There is some set up involved, but it should only take a minute or two to set up each hand.
The game takes around 15 minutes per hand and play is lively. One of my pet peeves with other 2 player games is that it becomes solataire with 2 people. In Jaipur, there is actually reason to pay attention to the other player’s turn. There is a little question on balance (It can be challenging to win if you don’t get the rubies), but overall this game is a lot of fun. I would highly recommend Jaipur to anyone looking for a light, 2 player filler game.
Jaipur is a two-player card collecting game where you save up cards to purchase resource tokens. Different resources are worth different amounts of gold (i.e. victory points), and each resource provides diminishing returns. There are a few other details, but it’s very quick and easy to learn.
I thought this game was a lot of fun the first few times I played. Sometimes it’s still fun when I want a light game that doesn’t take much deep thinking.
But I found the depth of strategy in this game to be disappointing. Once both players work out the optimal strategy it’s pretty much down to chance. If you’re dealt three diamonds at the start, you’ve pretty much already won.
I think Jaipur is probably a great game for kids, but serious gamers will find it a bit simplistic.
Jaipur’s production values are nice enough to be a selling point.The cards are divided into camels and 6 suits of goods (diamonds, gold, silver, cloth, spice, and leather)this suit is the only attribute on each card, and there are differing numbers of cards in each suit.Cards are added to and taken from a row of 5 face-up cards, which always begins the round with at least 3 camels. Each player starts with a hand of 5 cards.
There are sets of goods tokens for each of the 6 goods represented on the cards, the number of tokens varying proportionally with the number of cards in each corresponding suit. Each set of tokens has a different range of rupee values (1-4, 5-7, all 5, etc), and these are arranged from highest value to lowest value. There are also stacks of bonus tokens, awarded for selling 3, 4 or 5+ cards. Each of these stacks is shuffled. There is one camel bonus token. There are 3 “richer trader” tokens, used to mark the number of rounds won by a player.The bonus tokens can be quite valuable, making it a considerable sacrifice to small sets quickly.
Jaipur is an economic game for two players. I find it is easy to teach and learn, but has enough strategy to keep me coming back. I’m always happy to play a game of Jaipur.
This game is phenomenal. It’s easy to teach, beautiful to look at, and offers lots of strategic depth for two players. A great game in a small box.
Jaipur is an easy to learn two player card game. Appeals to non-gamers too but personally i found a bit repetitive after some plays.
Works well with female gamers as well.