Players: 2-6
Time: 60-90 minutes
Difficulty: 4 (of 10)

This game is published in German by Queen Games; my current guess is that there won't be an English version anytime soon. However, the German version is widely available at online game stores. The proper German name for the expansion is "Der Palast von Alhambra die 1. erweiterung: Die Gunst des Wesirs".

As is discussed below, this expansion actually contains four different supplements, each of which can be used separately, and each of which changes the gameplay.

The Components

This expansion comes with:

• 6 wooden Viziers
• 6 exchange cards
• 10 bonus cards
• 24 building huts

Wooden Viziers: These are large, thick wooden squares in the six Alhambra players' colors (red, blue, green, orange, white, yellow). Each is printed on one side with a wood cut of a Vizier. They're very overproduced, but quite nice too.

Exchange Cards: These cards are printed on the same slightly glossy stock as the deck of cards from Alhambra. However, rather than money each card shows two currencies with an arrow between them. The colors for the two currencies are also displayed at all corners, making them easy to see when you're fanning a hand of cards.

Bonus Cards: These cards have a different back, to distinguish them from the main deck of cards. Each one shows one of the game tiles on the front.

Building Huts: A new set of building tiles in the 6 different building colors, but these are actually construction huts which show graphics somewhat similar to the originals, but with extra construction work. They have no prices or names and so they're relatively easy to distinguish from the normal buildings.

Rules: The game comes with four high-quality rule sheets, one for each of the supplements. However they're, of course, in German.

With any German game I review, I try and measure the German-language angst level. Here it's very low. The game components themselves cause no concern due to German text. The rules are in German, but there's good quality translations at boardgamegeek.

However, the German edition of the game uses different backs for the tiles and the cards than the English edition, which means they're distinguishable. This doesn't matter for the tiles, since they're coming out of a bag. For the cards, you can see when a new card is coming up, but I don't think this is a very big deal. It could be a minor annoyance if you strategized about whether to take cards or not based on what was up next.

Overall the pieces meet the same high standards of quality and usability as the original Alhambra. However, to be charitable, the supplement is grossly overpriced for the minute number of components you receive. Between importing & online retailers, it's a bit hard to measure true costs, but looking comparitively this supplement seems to run about 66% of the cost of the original game, but only comes with 6 wood bits, 16 cards, and 24 tiles. That's pretty close to my definition of outrageous.

When I measure Style I usually take into account beauty, usability, and quality, but I then modify that based upon cost: I have lower expectations for cheaper games and higher expectations for more expensive ones. For the cost of this supplement, I'd have expected the Vizier pieces to be gold-plated. Thus what would be a rating of "5" slides down to a "3" for Style.

The Game Play

This expansion comes with four supplements, each of which changes the way the core Alhambra game plays. Any combination of them can be used in any game.

The Favor of the Viziers: Each player is given a wooden Vizier piece which is initially placed face-up. They may flip it face-down, after a player's turn, to make an out-of-turn purchase of a tile as long as they have exact change. (They do not get an additional action in this case.) Later, as an action, they may flip it face-up.

The Exchange Office: Six cards, each showing two currencies on it, are shuffled into the main draw pile. When an exchange card is flipped face-up, it may then be taken as a card-draw action just like any currency card. These exchange cards may be played as part of a purchase of a tile to allow either of the currencies to be used or for them to be mixed freely for that purchase (as long as one of them is the currency for the tile's current location).

The Bonus Cards: Each player is given 1-3 bonus cards at the start of the game, each of which displays a specific tile with no walls. If the player later adds that exact tile to his Alhambra, he may at any later time reveal his bonus card. It is worth one extra point for counting majority in the depicted color.

The Building Huts: The 24 building hut tiles each depict a building hut for a specific color of building, with 1 or 2 walls. They are shuffled into 6 piles (1 for each color), then the top tile in each pile is flipped face-up. As an action a player may take the top tile from a pile and place it (to a maximum of three building huts over the course of the game). These tiles are worth bonus points when counting majorities of the appropriate color equal to the number of tiles of the same color adjacent to the construction hut (meaning they can be worth as little as 0 or as many as 3 for those huts with just one wall).

Relationship to Other Games

The Favor of the Viziers is a supplement for Alhambra. It is the first of three expansions, each based on the same "four new supplements" model. Queen Games has released them like clockwork, once a year.

The Game Design

Each of the supplements contained in this expansion does indeed do some unique things to the gameplay of Alhambra:

The Favor of the Viziers: These pieces introduce better control into Alhambra. In particular games of Alhambra with large numbers of players tend to be a bit chaotic and you can feel like you don't have much ability to affect your fate. By being able to immediately purchase a tile that you really want, you can feel much more in command. You can also do some clever tactical things, like take the right amount of money into your hand, then immediately use your Vizier at the end of your turn. These are a little weak in 2-3 player play, which doesn't have as much control issues, but still useful.

The Exchange Office:You can get a bit of additional strategy with these cards, as you can collect lots of a color with the intention of later exchanging it, but whether you can get a desired exchange card or not can be entirely luck. Also, the exchange offices can sometimes really clog the draw piles.

The Bonus Cards: The goal of these cards seems to be to offer players an orthagonal tactic: trying to get their depicted tiles. Unfortunately, whether you can get your own tile or not is largely random, as everyone is encouraged to grab the no-wall tiles, because they're worthwhile to someone. This does definitely add new excitement to the game, but without any actual strategic basis due to the large chaos factor.

The Building Huts: These form the most complex supplement in the set. They add a lot of interesting decisions to the tile-laying aspect of the game. Most importantly, the building huts force you to try and put a specific color together, to increase the value of the hut. Secondly, you have an open set of tiles, with specific wall configurations, which can be used to close up or connect segments of walls. On the downside, the building huts make the counting of majorities a lot less obvious, particularly when you're doing it on the fly, during play.

In addition, two of the supplements can caused increased Analysis Paralysis: the exchange office and the building huts, each because they increase the array of possibilities for player actions. The building huts seem to the worst, if you have players that are prone to AP, because they increase the number of possible picks from 8 to 14 at the start of the game.

On the whole: the favor of the Viziers are a superb add; the building huts are very interesting, though only if you're willing to increase the complexity of the game; the exchange office is sort of interesting, with some flaws; and the bonus cards tend to increase the chaos of the game, one its original flaws, and thus are the least interesting supplement in the set.

While I derided this supplement for the value of the components, the value of the gameplay additions is much larger. The favor and the building huts alone would probably earn the supplement a "5" for Substance, but including the others lowers that rating to a average of "4".

Conclusion

The Favor of the Viziers is an overpriced expansion for Alhambra that nonetheless has a lot of gameplay in it. The value of the four supplements contained in this expansion runs from "average" to "excellent"; on the whole it's worth picking up if you've played out your unexpanded Alhambra game.