We Traded Camels Across the Kitchen Table and I Lost Badly

The first time we played Jaipur, Walt beat me so badly I laughed until my side hurt. I had traded away my best goods, hoarded camels like they were going out of style, and finished with a pile of rupees that would not have bought a cup of tea in the marketplace we were supposedly ruling. Walt, who has never once bragged about anything in thirty-three years of marriage, leaned back in his chair and said, 'I think I got the hang of it.'

That was a Thursday night in February, and it was exactly what we had signed up for. After the last kid moved out, dinner had gotten quiet. Not bad quiet. Just quiet. We had run out of things to say over meatloaf. So in the first week of February we started keeping Thursday nights for ourselves, phones in the kitchen drawer, and I bought a few things I thought might get two tired people talking again. The Asmodee Jaipur game was one of them.

Here is what I did not know when I set the box on the table. Jaipur is a two-player game about rival merchants in Rajasthan, and you spend thirty minutes buying and trading leather, spices, cloth, silver, gold, and gems, trying to earn more rupees than the other merchant. You also trade camels, and that is how I lost. I kept taking camels because the little tokens looked friendly. Walt kept turning them into better trades. By the time I understood the strategy, the game was over and he was stacking his rupees like a man who had just bought the whole marketplace.

The box says it is for ages ten and up, and each game plays in thirty minutes. I mention that because it matters on a weeknight. We are usually done with dinner by seven, and a thirty minute game fits before the dishes and the news. It uses card drafting, hand management, and set collection, which I had to look up, but what that really means is you are always deciding whether to grab the goods you want or wait for a better turn. That decision is what keeps it interesting, and it is also why I keep losing.

Walt wins more often than I do. I am telling you that straight because I want you to know what this game is really like before you buy it. It is not a game where everybody gets a trophy. It is a game where one person figures out the market and the other person ends up with a lot of camels. But here is what I did not expect. Losing made me want to play again. I wanted a rematch. I wanted to figure out what he saw that I missed. By the third Thursday, I was the one pulling the box out of the cupboard.

Walt wins more often than I do, and I still ask to play again. That is the whole review in one sentence.

We play about twice a month, always after dinner at the kitchen table, always on the nights there is no movie. It is not every Thursday. Some weeks we just want the couch and the TV. But the Jaipur nights have become my favorites, and I think that is because the game does something the television cannot do. It makes us look at each other. It gives us something to talk about that is not the dishwasher or the neighbor's fence.

The first night, I told Walt I did not understand the point of trading camels. He explained it to me with the patience of a man who had just won. The second night, I tried his strategy and lost a different way. The third night, I won, and I have to tell you, at fifty-eight years old, winning a card game at my own kitchen table gave me a little thrill I had not felt in a long time. Walt just said, 'Good game,' and meant it.

The Asmodee version we have is the New Edition, and everything you need is in the box: the rules, fifty-five goods cards, thirty-eight goods tokens, eighteen bonus tokens, a camel token, and three seals. There is nothing to download, nothing to charge, nothing to set up. You open it, you deal, you play. For two people who spent twenty-seven years managing schedules and appliances and orthodontist appointments, that simplicity is the whole appeal.

I am not going to tell you this game fixed anything, because nothing needed fixing. Walt and I were never in trouble. We were in a rut, the kind every long marriage slides into when the kids leave and the conversations get shorter. What Jaipur gave us was a reason to sit across from each other with something to do that was not a screen. It is hard to explain how much that matters until you have sat through a dinner where neither of you can think of anything new to say. Asmodee makes plenty of games, but this is the one we reach for.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you not to buy this expecting a quiet, gentle game. Buy it expecting a little competition, because that is what makes it fun. I would tell you the rules take about five minutes to learn and the first game will probably be a mess, and that is fine. I would tell you to let the person who wins explain the strategy, because they will enjoy it more than the win. And I would tell you that thirty minutes is exactly right for a weeknight, long enough to feel like you played a real game and short enough to still get the dishes done. If that sounds like your Thursday night, this one is worth a look.