The games can be interactive in similar ways. In StP, players generally draw cards from a common pool, and one reason for you to consider drawing/playing a card is that it's too valuable to another player. Players in SJ are drawing roles from a common pool, and while you'll generally choose a role because its action will benefit you more than it will benefit an opponent, you'll often choose one because allowing an opponent to draw it will benefit him too much. There's a great deal of luck in both games -- they are, after all, card games -- but in both you have a great deal of information about your opponents' plans, and you can form your own plans accordingly. It's harder to obviously benefit from knowing your opponent's plans in StP. In SJ, if you can predict what role an opponent is going to take, you can plan around what will happen when you take that action. In StP, determining your opponents' plans helps you predict what cards they'll likely draw from the pool, which helps you prioritize your own choices (if no one is going to pick the Firehouse in the upcoming turn, you can afford to pick the Observatory and leave the Firehouse for your next turn, say). In both games, you're collecting cards that either make it easier for you to play cards in the future (by earning money) or earn you victory points to win you the game. But StP's turn structure and VP mechanism adds a dimension of timing that doesn't exist in SJ. Cash flow planning seems more complex in StP, and the value of a card that generates its VPs once a turn is proportional to how many turns are left in the game. I find SJ a lot easier to play than StP. I have to think harder and plan more carefully playing StP. I really like them both. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 7 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com