Last time I went over a brief summary of the game San Juan and a quick breakdown of my general philosophy for playing the game. In this post I'm going to cover the cards related to the Producer and Trader jobs. The next post will cover the cards related to Builder, Councillor, and Prospector. Finally I'll go over the rest of the deck which mostly covers big point buildings.
Producer
Card: Indigo Plant
Cost: 1
Value: 1
Quantity: 10
Ability: Can receive 1 good during production phase. That good sells for 1 always.
Note: Each player starts the game with one of these cards in play.
Ability Power: Low. Selling for 1 is an ok add-on when you're selling something bigger and a decent consolation prize when your opponent sells (it's better than nothing!) but you're never building more of these for the goods.
Scoring Power: Low or Very High. There is a scoring building which makes this worth 3 points instead of 1. If you've built or plan on building that building (the Guild Hall) then these become incredibly efficient sources of points.
Card: Sugar Mill
Cost: 2
Value: 1
Quantity: 8
Ability: Can receive 1 good during production phase. That good sells for 1.4 on average.
Ability Power: Very Low. It may seem odd to give this a worse score than Indigo when this sells for more, but there are a couple factors at work here. For one, you don't start with one for free. It also costs one more but doesn't return enough extra to be worth that card. Running a Produce/Trade cycle to sell a Silver can be good. Running it to sell a Sugar is terrible.
Scoring Power: Very Low or High. The Guild Hall also makes this worth 3 points instead of 1. If you've built or plan on building it then these become reasonably efficient sources of points. Just worse than Indigo though, since it costs 1 more for no extra points.
Card: Tobacco Storage
Cost: 3
Value: 2
Quantity: 8
Ability: Can receive 1 good during production phase. That good sells for 1.8 on average.
Ability Power: Medium. On the first round you start with enough cards in hand to build one of these if your opponent first picks Builder, and it's a very reasonable build. You don't want to base your game plan around Tobacco since it isn't that good but it is a decent counter to your opponent trying to sell a lot and is also a decent fall back yourself for when you don't have a good job to pick.
Scoring Power: Low or Very High. The Guild Hall makes this worth 4 points instead of 2. It's less efficient cardwise than Indigo is but more efficient per building slot.
Card: Coffee Roaster
Cost: 4
Value: 2
Quantity: 8
Ability: Can receive 1 good during production phase. That good sells for 2.2 on average.
Ability Power: High. Coffee is always worth at least 2 which is the sweet spot as far as making Produce/Trade bigger card advantage than just Prospector. You start with enough cards in hand to build this on the very first round when you go first, and if your opponent can't counter you can get a big advantage out of it. One thing I like to do when going first is to Prospector anyway. This way, should my opponent build, I get to throw the Coffee out second. This doesn't give him a chance to respond at all, and I can immediately Produce with my second action for the round. (And if he doesn't build I get both card advantage jobs in the first turn which is awesome in its own way.)
Scoring Power: Low or High. The Guild Hall also makes this worth 4 points instead of 2. It is again just worse than Tobacco points wise. It's a lot less efficient than Indigo for cards but it is better per building slot.
Card: Silver Smelter
Cost: 5
Value: 3
Quantity: 8
Ability: Can receive 1 good during production phase. That good sells for 2.6 on average.
Ability Power: Very High. Now we're talking. This is one of the few ways to consistently draw many cards at once, and I think it's the third most powerful card in the game. It has the downside that it's reasonably easy to counter on its own (just building a Tobacco cuts into the power of your opponent's Silver) but it has the upside that you're allowed to build more than one of them. Getting into a situation where you have 2 Silver is very dominanting, and difficult to counter. You do have to worry about hand size limits when you get to that point (mostly that means you have to trade as your first action when you're Governor) but it's a small price to pay for the massive numbers of cards. This is a situation where Prospector starts to look pretty bad, and that's hard to do.
Scoring Power: High or Very High. On it's own a 3 point building is pretty decent, even with that cost.
The Guild Hall makes this worth 5 points instead of 3 which is just awesome in terms of space. Still worse than Indigo in a strict cards->points conversion but if you have any extra cards lying around at all you want to pump these bad boys out.
Card: Aqueduct
Cost: 3
Value: 2
Quantity: 3
Ability: You can produce an extra good during the Producer phase.
Ability Power: Very Low to Medium. This card is a combo piece. On it's own it does pretty much nothing at all. If you're the one doing the Produce/Trade cycle then you can't use the extra good right away. At best you can leave it lying around for a future Trader phase, but then it's going to be your 3rd best good. It's possible to build a board with enough specific cards to make the Aqueduct reasonably powerful but the game as you build to that point is going to be pretty weak. It's going to require a good mix of both production and purple buildings as well, which tends to be bad for scoring as we will go over in the points post. One time when it's reasonable is when you've built two Silver as has your opponent and you want control of Producer. This way you always end up with 2 Silver no matter who calls the job.
Scoring Power: Low or Medium. 2 points for 4 cards is baseline mediocre. City Hall makes this worth 3 instead of 2 which is ok but not awesome.
Card: Well
Cost: 2
Value: 1
Quantity: 3
Ability: If you produce 2 goods during the Producer phase then you draw a card.
Ability Power: Low to High. This card combos very well with the Aqueduct above since it lets you draw the card even if your opponent calls Producer. Even with as little as 2 Indigo this is a decent counter to your opponent trying to go a selling strategy. Even better is when you include it (without the Aqueduct) in your own selling strategy. The Well alone takes selling 2 Indigo from mediocre to on par with Prospector. It can be countered by the opponent calling Producer more aggressively (where the Aqueduct helps) or actually by calling Trader and stranding you with only 1 open production building. In general it's not good defensively but if your plan is to Produce/Trade and you don't have a lot of competition then this is a good addition. Note that it's harder to be the Producer in a 3 or 4 player game so it gets worse there.
Scoring Power: Very Low. 3 cards for 1 point is the worst deal in the game and unlike Sugar there's no building to increase the value by 2 here.
Trader
Card: Trading Post
Cost: 2
Value: 1
Quantity: 3
Ability: You can sell an extra good each Trader phase.
Ability Power: Very Low. You need to have an extra good to sell which either means you're Producing and your opponent is Trading or you've built an Aqueduct. This is one of the cards needed to make Aqueduct any good at all and it's truly terrible itself. The Well above likely gains you a card every turn or two when it's up and running. What is this actually going to gain you? The answer is not much.
Scoring Power: Very Low. In addition to being terrible it's 3 cards for 1 point which is still the worst deal in the game.
Card: Market Stand
Cost: 2
Value: 1
Quantity: 3
Ability: If you sell at least 2 goods during the Trader phase you draw an extra card.
Ability Power: Low to Medium. This card is very similar to the Well when it's up and running but it's easier to disrupt. If you're the guy who wants to Produce/Trade and someone jumps in with a Trade you either have to skip the whole Trader phase or turn off the Market Stand for a couple turns. It combos with Trading Post, Aqueduct, and Well and comes out not half bad when you've got them all together other than the fact that you still need several production building and you have a bunch of low point buildings to show for it.
Scoring Power: Very Low. Still terrible point efficiency but at least this one is going to recoup some cards along the way unlike the Trading Post.
Card: Market Hall
Cost: 4
Value: 2
Quantity: 3
Ability: If you sell at least 1 good during the Trader phase you draw an extra card.
Ability Power: High. This card is not the best offensively but is excellent defensively. It alone is enough to turn a bad Producer/Trader cycle into a win for you. Silver/Indigo from your opponent is 3.6 cards, your Indigo alone is 2, so he's back below the Prospector line. And if you ever end up building production buildings yourself or get stuck needing to Trader once you're not going to lose out as much. It's still quite good if you're the Producer/Trader as it's always the extra card no matter what is going on, but it does cost a little more to lock in that consistency.
Scoring Power: Low or Medium. 5 cards for 2 points is not very good. 5 cards for 3 points is decent, which is where you'll be if you build City Hall.
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