Players: 2-5
Time: 1.5-2 hours
Difficulty: 4 (of 10)
This is a review of the Rio Grande Games edition; I suspect there’s a largely identical edition put out by Hans im Gluck.
The Components
El Grande comes with:
- 1 game board
- 2 mobile score boards
- wood bits:
- 161 wooden cubes
- 1 king
- 1 castillo
- cards:
- 65 power cards
- 45 action cards
- 9 region cards
- 5 secret disks
- 1 game rules
- 1 sample game sheet
Game Board: The game board is a large 4-panel map of Spain. It's printed on linen-textured cardboard with quite-attractive artwork. The map is divided into a number of regions, each of which includes a score board showing how valuable the region is for the first, second, and third players in the region. There's also a space for the special "Castillo" off to the side of the board, with another scoreboard.
Surrounding the board is a score track which runs from 0 to 99. It's one of the few frustrating components, because of the fact that it's only numbered every ten spaces. It also won't be quite long enough to mark the score of the winner in some games.
A turn track run downs the left side of the track; it's probably the best example that I've seen of a turn track, because it includes not just spaces for the nine main rounds, but also the three scoring rounds--and it includes a long horizontal track next to each scoring-round space which lists out all the steps required for each scoring round, so that you never forget anything.
Mobile Score Boards: These score boards, printed on cardboard, are meant to go over score boards printed on the board during play. Like the set score boards, they clearly show the rewards for first, second, and third-place players in a region.
Wood Bits: The majority of the wood bits in this game are simply colored wooden cubes. There are 155 normal cubes ("caballeros"), 31 each in the five player colors (blue, green, red, yellow, and brown. There is also a black cube which is used as a turn marker. Finally, there are also 5 oversized cubes, one per color, which are "Grandes" for each of the five players. (Personally I would have choosen a shape other than a cube for the Grandes, since they don't count for majorities like the caballeros do, but the size difference was clear enough that there wasn't much problem.)
The king is a huge wooden pawn. It looks like a salt shaker. It's nice and distinctive.
The castillo is one of the coolest components I've ever seen in a game. Four pieces of wood, painted black, fit together into a medium-sized keep. It's placed in a specific place on the board and throughout the game wooden cubes are tossed into it.
Cards: The cards are all printed on sturdy, glossy cardstock with rounded corners. The power cards are a small German card size and the action and region cards are a square German card size. All the cards are printed full-color on the front and grayscale on the back.
There are 13 action cards in each of the 5 player colors. Each clearly shows a number from 1-13 in the appropriate player color, with a number of caballeros depicted in the middle, from 0 to 6.
The action cards each describe an action and depict it pictorially. In addition they show a number of caballeros along the bottom, from 1 to 5.
Both of these cards make very good use of iconography. A number of the textual descriptions were sufficiently complex to require me to look them up in the rules (which listed every single card), but almost every time my interpretation of the card based on the text and icons was correct. Overall, the icongraphy was very well done and made the game easier to play.
The region cards each list one of the 9 regions on the front, and have a short rules summary on the back. They're just used for initial region selection.
Secret Disks: Each of these disks features a pie chart of the 9 regions with a plastic arrow which can be spun to select one of these regions. The disks assembled well and the arrows all seemed nice and tight to the disk surface, so that they didn't spin after you'd selected your region. They also had attractive art on their faces.
Game Rules: The rules are printed in black and white on a parchment-colored and slightly weighty paper stock.They're a bit short on pictures and examples, but do feature a nice sidebar that itemizes all the components. There's also a detailed explanation of all the cards, which is very useful. I had a few questions after reading the rules, but they were cleared up by the last component ...
Sample Game Sheet: A few turns of a sample game are depicted on a heavy cardstock, full-color rulesheet. You could theoretically play out the turns, but I found just reading them sufficient to clear up any questions I had; overall, a very nice addition.
Box & Tray: The box is quite large, and is perhaps twice as tall as it needs to be. It also has no tray, and so the pieces slide randomly around in the cavernous box; a real shame in an otherwise top-quality release.
The only thing really missing from the game is a set of player boards, each of which could depict "provinces" and a "court" and also have a space for used Power Cards. (More on what all this means momentarily.) One of our players made one himself by sketching on a piece of paper.
Overall, I found the Components of El Grande generally beautiful, with a few of exceptional quality, particularly the King and the Castillo. In addition, I found all of the cards well designed in a way that generally improved the play of the game and made it simpler. Thus I gave El Grande's Components a full "5" out of "5" for Style.
The Game Play
The object in El Grande is to score as many points as possible through majority (or secondary or tertiary) control of various regions of Medieval Spain.
Setup: Each player randomly draws a card from the region deck and places one Grande (big cube) and two caballeros (small cubes) in the region depicted. He also takes a secret disk and a full deck of power cards for his color, labelled 1-13.
The action cards are divided up into five decks, one for each of the categories of "1", "2", "3", "4", and "5" caballero action cards.
Caballeros and Scoring: Caballeros are the heart of the game, because they're how you score. At the start of the game you'll have two caballeros on the board and another seven in your "court" (meaning that you're allowed to move them to the board). Your other 21 caballeros are out in the "provinces"; you have to move them from the provinces to the courts before you can move them to the board (which all happens during the player turns).
Once caballeros arrive on the board they're placed in certain regions. Each region has score board showing three numbers, marked like this: "4/3/1". Those are scores for the first, second, and third-place player in that particular region, with place scored by total number of caballeros. So, when this region was scored, the player with the most caballeros in that region would get 4 points, the second 3, and the third 1 (presuming there are actually three different players with caballeros in that region). In cases of ties, all tied players get the next highest score. So, using the above example, if two players were tied for majority they'd each get "3" and the next player would get "1".
There's two addendums to this: if a player has an uncontested majority in the region containing the king he gets +2 points; and if a player has an uncontested majority in the region containing his Grande he gets +2 points.
Scoring occurs in those aforementioned scoring rounds, but can also happen for specific regions throughout the player turns of the game.
Order of Play: There are 9 rounds of play in the game. During each round of play, the players together engage in the following actions:
- Setup the Round
- Play Power Cards
- Take Player Turns
- End the Round
After the third, sixth, and ninth rounds of play a special scoring round occurs, which is discussed more below.
Setup the Round. Each round is setup by flipping over one each of the five types of Action Cards.
The "1" cards are generally intrigue. They let you move caballeros around on the board, including those belonging to other players.
The "2" cards are generally decay. They let you remove caballeros from the board.
The "3" cards are generally scoring. They let you score specific regions based on a number of criteria (all "4" regions, most caballeros, least caballeros, etc).
The "4" cards are generally wacky. They let you dramatically improve or make worse the scoring of a specific region by placing a "mobile scoreboard" on the region. They also let you move the Grande, recover power cards, and do other unusual things.
There's only one "5" card, which is flipped back up every round. It lets you move the king to any region.
Once the five cards for the round are flipped up, there will be a wide variety of actions which players can bid on, either because they want to take the action or because they want to prevent another player from doing so.
Play Power Cards. In order to bid for first right to select from among the Action Cards players must play their Power Cards. Starting with the first player each player chooses one of his Power Cards, from 1 to 13, and plays it. Each card may only be played once during the game, and a player may not play the same numbered Power Card as someone else has in the round. The highest Power Card is going to get to go first, but there's a catch: Power Cards also allow you to move caballeros from the provinces to your court, and the higher the number the less you're allowed to mov (from 6 on the "1" card to 0 on the "13" card).
Once each player has selected a Power Card, the regular player turns commence.
Take Player Turns. Each player now takes his action, in order from the highest Power Card played to the least.
First, the player moves a number of caballeros from his provinces to the court, as depicted on the Power Card (from 0 to 6).
Second, the player chooses an the Action Cards not already taken by another player. Each Action Card allows a specific action, as generally categorized above, and each Action Card also is numbered from 1 to 5, which depicts the number of caballeros that may be moved to the board.
Either before or after taking his card's action a player may move the appropriate number of caballeros from his court to the board. These caballeros may be placed in any region adjacent to the region containing the king (but never the region containing the king itself; nothing can ever change when the king is there, not due to caballero movement and not due to action cards) or the caballeros may be tossed into the castillo, which is that large wooden keep on the board, where they'll be scored, then moved during the next scoring round.
The player may also choose to or not to take the action depicted on the Action Card he selected. (Often players will take a card solely to keep other players from activating it.) As already discussed this action may allow them to move caballeros about the board, remove caballeros from the board, score specific regions on the board, move the king, or take various other actions.
After having taken his three core actions (moving caballeros from the provinces to the court; moving caballeros from the court to the board; and taking an action from a card), a player's turn is over and play continues on with the player who played the next highest Action Card.
End the Round. The round ends after all players have taken their actions. The player who went last in the current round is the new first player. The round marker is advanced and a new round is begun ... unless round 3, 6, or 9 was just completed, in which case a scoring round begins.
Scoring Rounds: A scoring round includes the following actions:
- Set the Secret Disk
- Score the Castillo
- Move Caballeros
- Score All Regions
Set the Secret Disk. Each player secretly chooses one region on his secret disk; this is where his caballeros in the castillo will end up.
Score the Castillo. Now the caballeros in the castillo are revealed. It's scored just like any other region. Its scoreboard is "5/3/1".
Move Caballeros. Now each player moves all the caballeros he had in the castillo to the region that he dialed. (If he choose the king's region, he instead moves them back to his court.)
Score All Regions. Finally all 9 board regions are scored, one at a time. The round track very helpfully has a listed of all 9 regions so that you can mark each one as you complete it.
All caballeros, Grandes, and other pieces are left on the board, and a new round begins.
Ending the Game: The game ends following the third scoring round, which follows round 9. The player with the highest score is the winner.
How the Game Works
Generally, El Grande is a game with rich and multileveled strategy. Each round players study the new Action Cards that have appeared and try and figure out how badly they want which ones. Then the first player plays a Power Card and play continues around the table. There's generally some really angsting in this round and a bit of paralysis because players have to carefully balance lots of stuff: what cards they have, what other opponents might play, what Action Cards they want, what Action Cards other people might want, how many caballeros they want to get to their court, etc.
Once all the Power Cards are played, the first couple of actions go pretty quickly because people already know what they want and what they're going to do. Sometimes players will select a card mainly because they want to take the action, and sometimes they'll just pick a high-numbered card so that they can get lots of caballeros onto the board.
Toward the middle of the round, things can slow down, as people start to feel like they've only got a couple of bad choices, and as they take actions that they weren't really planning for. However, this just underlines the strategic depth of the game at pretty much every point--and, there's always room for kibitzing.
Relationships to Other Games
El Grande (1995) is a majority-based area-control game with an auction-based action selection method. It's the first of many similar area-control games, including Wolfgang Kramer's own Tycoon (1998), wherein players are instead fighting for control of hotels spread across the world.
El Grande also seems to have had a real influence on the collaborative works of Alan R. Moon and Aaron Weissblum. San Marco (2001) is a similar, if simpler, area-control game while Mammoth Hunters (2003) is a more chaotic and free-wheeling area-control game. The Power Card selection method for El Grande is also somewhat similar to the turn selection method used by New England (2003).
This turn-selection method is the heart of El Grande's "auction" gameplay. Though there isn't a specific exchange of money as in most auction games, players are bidding a limited resource (the cards), and also giving up the ability to move caballeros from the provinces when they play higher Power Cards. Auction games are, of course, a real force in Eurogames game design, from the Knizia's German High Society (1995) to Bruno Faidutti's French Fist of Dragonstones (2003).
The Game Design
Overall, the design of El Grande creates a quick-paced, enjoyable, and strategic game.It's also got a lot of great game systems. Here's some of the top good elements:
Real Tactics, Real Strategic: Much of the play of El Grande is technically tactical: you make an optimal decision for play based on what resources you have available by the time it gets to your turn. However, there's also some strategic depth; unlike in many more recent area-control games, you can't have your position entirely wiped out, and thus you can continually be moving forward in solidly strategic manners.
Multiply Useful Cards Original & Strategic: Each of the two types of cards has two purposes. The Power Cards offer you the ability to move caballeros from the provinces balanced against how fast you want to go, while the Action Cards offer you th e bility to move caballeros to the board balanced against what type of actions you want to take. This means that every choice has multiple repercussions.
Power Curve Well-Balanced: El Grande straddles a narrow line. You can't knock a player straight out of the lead, but on the other hand you can't get so totally behind that it's impossible to improve your lot. Thus, players are still involved in the game, but the leadership position isn't unprotectable.
Chaotic But Controlled: Real chaos is possible in the game, thanks to various pieces being moved around the board by all the players. The effects are big enough to make a difference, but small enough that you don't feel like the chaos makes the game impossible to plan for. Here's some of my minor complaints:
Some Paralysis: Some players can get paralyzed at certain points in the game, particularly when choosing a Power Card or selecting an Action Card.
Some Counting: I don't entirely like the fact that players can see the caballeros going into the castillo, as it means that the person who counts best has an advantage. I think the idea of the caballeros being hidden is great, and wouldn't want each player doing lots of math while trying to figure out where to send pieces, but still think the subsequent design is a bit subpar.
Overall, however, El Grande is a very interesting, strategic, and fun game design. I give it a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
El Grande is one of the oldest majority-based area-control games, and surprisingly I think it remains the best. I'd call this a pivotal German-game design; if the like the genre, you should pick it up.
