Our step-by-step guide to the rules of how to play Jaipur Board Game. This is one of the best 2 player board games in existence and is a fantastic showdown meant to be a card trading game where you play off the moves of your opponent. You have simple choices to make but just enough freedom to brew a mean strategy up against the other player. The game has the simplistic balance and replayability of a card game, but with a rich theme and that euro style quest to the most victory points. Learning how to play Jaipur is very easy and following these steps will have you in the market and handling camels in no time.
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HOW TO PLAY JAIPUR – WHAT IS IT?
In Jaipur, you are hoping to become the Maharaja’s personal trader by amassing more riches than your opponent at the end of each week (round). To do so, collect and exchange goods (cards) at the market, then sell them for rupees (flip tokens over). If you manage to arrange a bigger sale (3 cards or more) you will receive an award (bonus token). The camels have no sale value, but they’re very useful for trading, especially when you want a lot of goods from the market.
HOW TO PLAY JAIPUR – STEP BY STEP
Time Needed: Approximately 30 minutes.
This is a step by step guide for how to play Jaipur the popular strategic card exchange showdown board game. Additional notions and special rules can be found below the list. These will be referenced for your convenience.
1. SETUP | Put Out Seal of Excellence Tokens
To kick off how to play Jaipur rules setup, put out the three Seal of Excellence tokens. These are markers for a game win as the first to two will win the game.
2. SETUP | Put Out Goods Tokens
Sort the different goods discs into separate piles. Within in type pile, sort them in descending order so the 1s are on the bottom, 2s above those, 3s above those and so on. You will earn these as you turn in goods so the faster you can get there, the more lucrative the sales.
3. SETUP | Put Out Wildcard & Camel Tokens
The tokens that have 3, 4, or 5 cards on the back of them are the wildcard tokens. Sort these by that card number and put in stacks but keep hidden numbers a secret. When you turn in a set, if you happen to turn in 3, 4 or 5 of that good, you get the corresponding score wildcard token as extra score. The lone camel token gives whoever ended with the most camel 5 points.
4. SETUP | Add 3 Camel Cards To Center
Now you need to build you center market area. Start by finding three camel cards and putting them spread in a row in the center.
5. SETUP | Shuffle & Put Out Trade Deck
The deck you just got the camels from is the trade deck. Shuffle the remaining cards and put them as a face down deck for players to replenish from throughout the game.
6. SETUP | Add 2 Additional Trade Cards To Middle
After you have shuffled the deck, flip up two additional random cards to add to the camels in the center. It is ok if they too are camels.
7. SETUP | Give Each Player Five Cards
Now that the central market is setup, get each player their starting hands. Each player draws five cards from the trade deck.
8. SETUP | Put Your Camels In Front Of You
Any camels you have in hand now should be put in front of you. This is your herd. Camels never go in your hand and always go to this separate area.
9. SETUP | Determine First Player
The final step of how to play Jaipur setup before getting into gameplay is to determine a first player. Use your randomizer of choice.
10. GAMEPLAY | Players Take Turns Back & Forth
Players each take turns. On your turn you can do 1 of 4 actions – (1) take all camels from the middle and put them in front of you, (2) Grab any one non-camel card from the center and put in your hand, (3) Take any number of non-camel cards from the center and replace them with the same number of cards from your camel herd or hand or combination of both or (4) Buy goods.
11. GAMEPLAY | Option 1 | Put Camels In Front Of You
If you choose as your action to grab camels, you put them all in front of you, adding to any others you already have there. This is your herd. If you do this, replace all cards taken from the center with new cards from the deck.
12. GAMEPLAY | Option 2 | Take A Good
You can choose to take any one non-camel card (goods) to add to your hand. Because you are only doing one, there is no need to put back any of your own cards. If you do this, replace the empty space in the middle with a new cards from the deck. Note that you can never have more than 7 cards in your hand, which does not include your camels.
13. GAMEPLAY | Option 3 | Take Multiple Goods
Just like above, you can take goods from the center. The difference here is that by taking more than one, you now have to put cards from your hand or herd back into the middle to replace those. You get to choose and it can be a combination of both areas. In this case, no new cards are coming off the deck, your existing cards is what replaces the taken cards.
14. GAMEPLAY | Option 4 | Buy Goods
As you will see in these how to play Jaipur rules, the way you win the game is by scoring points, and you score points by buying goods. This process is you exchanging cards from your hand for the circular score token. You can only turn in one type of good but you can turn in as many of those as you want, the more the better. Whatever you turn over, take that many of that good’s disc. If you turn in 3 or more of something, you also take one of the extra bonus discs depending on the quantity. For special goods, you need to turn in at least 2 of that type or you can’t do it.
15. ROUND END | Run Out Of Discs or Cards
Play continues until (1) any 3 of the score disc piles have been depleted or (2) you go to replenish from the deck and you are out of cards. You add up the points on all of your discs and whoever has the most wins the round. Give this player one of the seal of excellence discs.
16. WINNING | Best 2 Out Of 3
The first player to hold two seal of excellence discs wins. You get one of these for winning a round and by the end of 3 games, mathematically a winner will be decided. Rounds all happen exactly the same.
HOW TO PLAY JAIPUR – KEY INFORMATION
REMINDERS AND NOTES
- When you take cards from the market, you either take goods or camels, but never both.
- If you decide to take camels, you must always take all camels from the market.
- When making an exchange: (1) The returned cards can be camels, goods or a mixture of both. (2) The same good type cannot be exchanged. (3) You can never exchange only 1 card from the market and your hand.
- If both players have the same number of camels at the end of the round, neither takes the “most camels” 5 point token.
- Sometimes there are fewer tokens available than cards during a sale. In the case, you still receive the bonus token for the number of cards sold.
- Players are not required to let their opponent know how many cards they have.
- Camels do not count towards the 7 card hand limit.
GAME CONTENTS
- 1x Rulebook
- 55x Goods Cards
- 38x Goods Tokens
- 18x Bonus Tokens
- 1x Camel Token
- 3x Seals of Excellence
HOW TO PLAY JAIPUR – IN CLOSING
We hope you can now say you know how to play Jaipur. This market card game for two people is a fantastic showdown game. As you have seen, getting the Jaipur rules down is easy but mastering how to play off of your opponent takes time. There are just enough options to give you tons of freedom, but not so much that games are going to take forever. The back in forth is quick and with the best two out of three structure, you have plenty of room to get into it. This title comes in a small and portable case, but it has tons of big gameplay each time you take it to the table.
