by rmshay
After dozens of plays, I still find San Juan a fun game . I play a lot of 2-player SJ and it is always challenging. Most of the criticisms are due to not playing enough against good players. If you do, you will see the breadth of available strategies.I play a lot of Eminent Domain as well (shameless plug: podcast playboardgamesbetter.com). I honestly don't think of them as that similar. Eminent Domain is a deck building game where the strategy is putting together (and taking apart) a winning deck. San Juaun is about building a tableau that scores a lot of points, supports your strategy and minimizes the advantage of roles selected by your opponents.
What they have in common is that they are lean implementations of their genre with very reasonable play times and significant depth. Oh, and there are cards aand cardboard.
