Wow, I am probably not elegant enough to do this discussion justice. Both are fine games in their own right. San Juan although very much tied to the Puerto Rico game by look and characters, is really a very different card game and could have had another theme easily. In San Juan your cards double as buildings/farms or money. So, you have difficult choices on what to build and what to hold to build for later. There are so many strategies that I think it may be a little tougher for a new player against veterans. Most of the player interaction in San Juan is taking a role much like Puerto Rico and being able to do something that your competitors cannot. Although cards are limited, unlike Puerto Rico your available builds are blind draws from the deck so you really do not compete to take a building before someone else. St. Petersburg is a money management/victory point management game. I did not realize it was really solitaire until someone told me. It feels like you are competing with your other players as you take cards in turn order, which rotates all the time. The luck of the draw can be helpful. There are some legitimate strategies to take cards you may not need quite so much or that are a little too expensive to keep your opponents from getting them. This is really the only interaction. I enjoy both of these games quite a bit and both are well worth the purchase. At the moment I do not own San Juan because my daughter (13) said, don't get it, I like Puerto Rico better. But, I am sure, this will hit my acquisition stack one day. I am very happy to own St. Petersburg which, for me, was one of the hits of the Gathering. 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