Jaipur is a card trading game. You each start with five cards in hand, five open cards in the center, and a bunch of numbered coins in certain colors on the side. You and your opponent each take turns doing one (and only one) of the following actions:
-draw one of resources of the open cards in your hand (note: you can only do this if you have less than seven cards in hand)
-take all of the available camels from the open cards (note: you put your camel cards on an open stack in front of you; they don't go to your hand)
-trade two or more of the open cards for an equal number of your own cards (note: you cannot trade just one card)
-sell all of one kind of goods for the coins of the corresponding color

At the end of each turn, any taken cards from the open stack get replenished by others from a closed deck of cards. Players take turns doing this over and over. The game ends either if three kinds of coins are completely sold out or when the deck of cards run out. The player with the most points wins the round. By default, the best of three rounds wins the actual game.

If all that sounds simple, you'd be correct: Jaipur is a very simple game. Even to the point that you might mistake it for something you'll grow tired of within a couple rounds. But as I've come to experience: there's depth in this game.



If you take a look at the goods on the table (leather is brown, tea is green, teal is purple, silver is grey, gold is yellow and diamonds are - for some reason - red), you'll see they have very different values. Since diamonds are worth more, they are also sought and traded more actively. But this is somewhat counterbalanced by an extra rule: you can never sell just one silver, gold or diamond card: you'll always need a minimum of two. It doesn't affect how much they are sought after, but it's more a disadvantage than it might sound.

Second: even within goods, the prices change. The first goods usually give more points than the latter. Or vice versa: if you hold on to your goods for too long, you risk your opponent selling these same goods first, thus getting a better price than you in the process.

Then there are the bonus coins. If you sell three cards, you'll get a coin that's worth 1, 2 or 3 points. Sell four cards and you'll receive a coin worth 4, 5 or 6 points. And sell 5 or more cards you'll get 8, 9 or 10 points. All in addition to the cost of the goods, obviously. You'll get this bonus regardless of how much coins actually remain on the board.

Finally...the camels. Camels are a wildcard for multiple reasons. For one, you can grab all the camels on the open stack. You also don't keep them in your hand but in an open stack in front of you, so they don't count toward your seven-card hand limit. And the end of the round, the person with the most camels get five extra points. The only drawback: you can only trade camels, not sell them. This means that once camels are in the game, they sort of remain there.




At first I was sort of disappointed with this game. Grab resources or sell resources...that's it. It sounded pretty meager. And with a large amount of randomness to it. The starting player is picked at random. The bonus coins vary in what they'll give you (1, 2 OR 3...4, 5 OR 6...8, 9 OR 10). And worst of all: if you grab a card (or cards), it'll be replaced with a new card. And with the cards varying so much in value, that can lead to pretty frustrating situations (you just KNOW that if you pick three worthless camels, they'll be replaced by two diamonds and a gold that your opponent can swap for more garbage). But the more I played it, the more I came to realize that things balance out better than they appear. Higher quality gems are worth more, but also more rare. This means that a combo of four or five cards is much less likely to be pulled off. And while the two diamonds and a gold from previous example are certainly the better pick, the three camels are actually all but worthless. Besides...your opponent then faces the dilemma of either picking up just one of these gems (assuming he doesn't already has 7 cards in hand), or exchanging it for something that'll have less value but might work very well with what you have in hand.

It took me some games to get a feeling for the whole game. It's frustrating to see your opponent pick up valued goods, but if you keep your head straight and adapt to the situation, you can survive or even outsell strong sales by your opponent. Rounds usually end with a score between 60 and 110. That's usually enough to negate or outrace a lucky draw.



My previous games tended to focus most or exclusively on the board game. I can't really do that here. Not because I haven't played the board game itself (though that's obviously a strong reason), but because the app comes with important bells and whistles that you just don't get in the box. A decent AI opponent, to name the most important one. The thing with AI is that it's easy to make things too strong. Bots don't have problems remembering what you've got in hand, calculating the best risk vs reward factor and even counting the cards to know what's still in the deck. At least...that's how things could have been. In Jaipur, the AI has four difficulty levels, and these stack up rather well. The easiest mode makes some stupid trades at time, but afaik these aren't because it just played some random actions. The other levels gradually increase the difficulty, but even at the hardest setting it doesn't get stupidly overpowered. I'm not TOO familiar with the game, but I honestly don't think I could distinguish the AI from an online opponent, purely based on the plays.

The real surprise, however, is that this game comes with a full campaign in it. In it, you play a merchant wanting to take control over India's different regions. You do this by playing (and winning) matches in each region. And while it's certainly a step away from the board game, I honestly can't deny that it's a nice step in a good direction (it's like it's a game within a game...only this second game more ordinates the actual game). To travel, you'll need camels (which you'll get by earning camels in the game). You need coins to settle somewhere, there are a few encounters as you pass territories and there are rubies that lets you build your castle. That castle and encounters are a bit of window dressing: it's a nice touch, but not something you should get the game for. But the territories themselves have variations on both the rules and the difficulty: a different hand limit, different trading prices, multiple rounds, less resources. The amazing thing isn't so much how this affects the game (which it obviously does), but the ease in which your opponent adjusts for these changed rules. It really gives the game some extra punch. It's still not really the kind of meat and bones that adept video gamers have grown to expect, and even board gamers might find it to be more a kind of filler game. But there's nothing wrong with that: the campaign is lenghty but can be done in multiple successions. And there's even a bit of storyline to make things extra interesting.




I haven't played the board game yet, but I would think this is at least as good as the app. Two player only games are often mindbenders, and this is probably no exception. The game has quite some "push your luck" element to it: I found myself feeling nervous whenever I took three or more camels or making an attempt at "casually" taking a card I know the opponent also has. My girlfriend has seen me grumbling and grinning whenever things got bad or just good. Matches can be very close, but as points are hidden from the enemy, it's (nearly) impossible to know for sure who is actually winning. But even so, I can absolutely recommend Jaipur.