Review of Alhambra

Alhambra by Dirk Henn, is one of the more acclaimed games to come out of Germany in 2003. It centers on building the Medieval Palace of Alhambra.

Players: 2-6
Time: 60-90 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

This game was orignally produced in Germany by Queen Games as The Palace of Alhambra. The Uberplay edition should be substantatially identical to Queen's latest release.

The Components

Alhambra comes with a set of highly evocative, quality components:

• 60 Alhambra tiles
• 1 bag
• 1 building market
• 108 money cards
• 2 scoring cards
• 1 score track
• 12 counters
• 6 tile reserve boards
• 1 scoreboard
• 1 rule booklet

Alhambra Tiles: The Alhambra tiles are printed on heavy, linen-textured cardboard. Six starting tiles simply show the fountain of Alhambra in an isomorphic view.

The other 54 building tiles each show a full-color, isomorphic depiction of one of six types of buildings: blue pavilions, red manors, brown mezzanines, white chambers, green gardens, and purple towers. There's actually a variety of color on each tile, though the named color is shown prominently. In addition, there's a banner at the bottom which shows the title of the building as well as the individual building's cost, all against the appropriate colored background. Finally, each tile has walls on between 0 and 3 sides.

The tiles are easy to make out from across the table thanks to unique coloration and architecture, and are easy to use during play.

Bag: This black cloth bag is fairly plain, though it has a nice, braided black and white drawstring. It also looks fairly sturdy. It's used to hold the tiles during play.

Building Market: This heavy, linen-textured cardboard game board has spaces for four tiles currently "for sale". Each space is associated with a different type of money: yellow Florins, green Dirhams, blue Denars, or orange Dukats.

(This board also highlights my only issue with the component design of Alhambra. Some of the money colors and tile colors are too similar in color, even though they're not related. In particular, both Dirhams and gardens are green while both Denars and pavillions are blue. This has made most people I've seen try and pay the wrong type of money at least once in their first game or two. The problem disappears after those first couple of games, but it's a shame that there wasn't more variety in the colors.)

Each color of money is also marked with a distinctive icon so that color-blind people can easily make out the differences.

Cards: The cards are all printed on medium-weight card stock with a slight gloss and rounded corners.

There are 108 money cards, which include 3 each of the numbers 1-9 for each of the four types of money--Florins, Dirhams, Denars, and Dukats. Each is also marked clearly with its monetary color and the matching icon, as also depicted on the Building Market.

There are scoring cards for scoring round #1 and #2, which will be mixed into the money deck. Each one shows the points scored during that round.

Counters: These are thick wooden disks in the six player colors: orange, green, red, blue, white, and yellow.

Tile Reserve Boards: Each player also gets a thick, linen-textured cardboard player board. The top very helpfully lists the six types of tiles, how many there are of each, and the value of each during the three scoring rounds. The rest of the board contains space to hold unused tiles.

Scoring Board: Another thick, linen-textured cardboard piece. This shows the numbers 1-120 running around drawings of the various Alhambra buildings. It's very nice looking, though 120 points sometimes isn't enough, particularly in 2-player games.

Rulebook: A six-page, full-color glossy rulebook. It's easy to follow and is filled with helpful pictures and examples.

Box & Tray: The box is a compact bookcase size, which is just the right size for the components, a real rarity in most game box designs. The tray is absolutely superb. It contains spots for each individual component and has appropriate finger slots to lever everything out. It's one of the best designed trays I've seen.

Overall, Alhambra has lots of high quality components, and they're really pretty to look at when you have them laid out. It earns a full and unquestioning "5" out of "5" for Style.

The Game Play

In Alhambra your goal is to design the best palace of Alhambra. It should be well-defended and have a plurality of interesting features.

Setup: The game begins with each player being given a fountain of Alhambra, which is an unwalled tile that he will build his Alhambra around. He takes the two wooden disks in his color and places one on his fountain and the other on the score board.

Then each player takes money cards until he has a total value of 20 or more. As noted above, there are four different colors of money, each of which can be used to purchase from a different section of the Building Market. Each player will thus have a variety of money in at least a couple of different colors.

Four money cards are then placed face up.

Finally, the two scoring cards are placed in the money deck, one about a third of the way in, the second about two thirds of the way in.

Play then begins with the first player.

Order of Play: On his turn a player may take one of three actions:

• Take a Money Card; or
• Purchase a Tile; or
• Redesign Their Alhambra

After a player has taken his action, he then may:

• Add Newly Purchased Tiles to Alhambra; and
• Refill Tiles & Money

Take a Money Card: A player may take any one face-up money card or else any number of face-up money cards that total a value of 5 or less. Or:

Purchase a Tile: A player may purchase one of the tiles on the Building Market by paying at least the value of the tile in the color of money shown for that space in the Building Market (the idea being that builders come from throughout Europe to build Alhambra, and each must be paid in the correct currency).

Recall that tiles come in six types. Each also has 0-3 wall segments and a cost which can be as low as 2 (for a pavilion with 3 wall segments) to as high as 13 (for a tower with no walls). Also, let me reiterate, you pay based on the color of the Building Market space, not the color of the tile.

You don't get any change when you purchase a tile, so you might have to overpay. However, if you pay the exact right amount for the tile, something special happens: you get an additional action which you can use to take money, purchase another tile, or redesign your Alhambra.

You might be able to take several actions in a turn, but there is one limit: tiles don't get refilled in the Building Market until the end end of a player's turn, thus the techincal limit to the actions in a turn is 5: purchase all four tiles with exact change, then either take money or redesign your Alhambra. Or:

Redesign Your Alhambra: A player may move a tile from his Alhambra to his reserve board, move a tile from his reserve board to his Alhambra, or swap a tile on his Alhambra with one on his reserve board. In all cases, the tile placed on Alhambra, must be legal, as discussed in a moment.

Add Newly Purchased Tiles to Alhambra: A player only adds his newly purchased tiles to his Alhambra after he has taken all other actions in his round. This means that he might have a number of tiles to add.

There are only a few rules to tile placement.

First, walls must match adjacent tiles. If there's no wall on a tile side, and it abuts another tile, there must be no wall on the tile side it abuts. Likewise, if there's a wall it must match a wall on the other tile.

Second, you must be able to walk from the fountain to the center of the new tile without having to go through a wall (meaning that there needs to be a path that isn't blocked).

That's it, but it's actually pretty limiting. I've played about a half-dozen games of Alhambra, and I inevitably build too tightly and start getting stuck for tile placements near the end of the game. (Knowing this, if you look at the two Alhambras pictured in this review, you can probably guess which belongs to me and which belongs to my wife.)

If a player can't place a tile (or doesn't want to), he instead places it on his reserve board. It does not count for scoring here. It can be moved into Alhambra by taking the "redesign" action in a future round.

Refill Tiles & Money: Only after a player has completed his round, possibly placing his tiles, does the Building Market get refilled with tiles and are new money cards drawn to replace any that were taken from the face-up area.

Scoring in Alhambra: There are three scoring rounds in Alhambra. They occur when the two scoring cards are drawn from the money deck and when the game ends. In each case, players score based on majority control of the six tile types and based on wall size.

During the first scoring only the first-place player in each of the six building type scores, and only between 1 point (for control of the pavilions) to 6 points (for control of the towers). During the second scoring round, the first and second place players score. First place is now more valuable (8-13 points) while second place is 1-6 points. During the third scoring round, the first three players score. This time first place is 16-21 points, second 8-13, and third 1-6.

Scoring is based on simple majorities of each building type in each player's Alhambra. In cases of ties, points are divided among all eligible players, rounding down.

Each player also scores for his longest continuous wall during each scoring round. Each tile side with a connected wall segment counts as one point, but only for external walls (around the edges of Alhambra), not internal walls. Only each player's best wall scores.

Ending the Game: When there aren't enough tiles left to refill the Building Market the game ends. The remaining tiles on the Building Market are divied out to the players with the most of each appropriate color of money. The third and final scoring round occurs, and the winner is the player with the most points.

Two-Player Play: The rules above apply to games with 3-6 players. The rulebook also includes clever rules for playing with two players. A set number of tiles are set aside at various points in the game for an imaginary third player and players can also give tiles to that imaginary player if they like. It turns out that he's a major force in the game. I've never seen him do better than third place, but nontheless both players have to carefully consider his tiles when figuring majorities.

I've played more two-player games of Alhambra than larger ones, thus far, and the two-player rules work very well.

Relationships to Other Games

Alhambra is a real hybrid. It's a tile placement game with set-collection-based majority-control scoring and a unique purchasing method.

The tile placement aspect of Alhambra is basic, but the requirements for edge matching are very real and can be restrictive. It does remind me of other edge matching tile placement games like Wooly Bully or Carcassonne, though this is clearly much simplified.

The majority control aspect is most reminescent of Union Pacific, because they're both built around set collection with sets being a specific, limited size. Any majority control game, probably also should be compared to the original El Grande.

Finally, we have the purchasing mechanism. I suppose it's a sort of turn-based auction, with people slowly gathering either enough money to buy an item or else smaller denominations of money in order to make an exact change purchase. But, really, it's pretty unique.

Alhambra is actually an expansion of a previous Dirk Henn game called Stimmt So!. The earlier game was substantially identical to Alhambra, except it was about the stock market, and it didn't feature Alhambra's tile-laying component. I don't have much doubt that Alhambra is a much superior game due to the additional depth. Stimmt So! was in turn based on another game called Al Capone, which was entirely identical to Stimmy So, except that you were spending influence on certain parts of Chicago.

I should also comment that Alhambra reminds me a lot of another 2003 release: O Zoo Le Mio!. Instead of a unique purchase mechanism there, you have an auction for tiles, which you must then place, and score via majority control. Instead of additional scoring for external walls, you instead have additional scoring for internal paths. They play quite differently, but I can feel many of the same mechanics running through both.

The Game Design

Though Alhambra features a number of disparate elements, they're melded together quite well into a cohesive whole. Here's some of the best features:

Good Brinkmanship: There's a definite aspect of brinkmanship in Alhambra which shades over into some interesting decisions. If there's a tile that you really want that's available do you grab it immediately, or do you wait hoping to get the right denominations of money to purchase it with exact change?

Interesting Interdynamics: The human interdynamics in the game are interesting because you can often guess what another player is going to do based upon his play and thus try and get in the way of his future moves. (For example, if he pick up orange money, he might well be looking to buy the tile currently on the orange market, and you can move against that offensively or defensively.) As discussed more below, this is more important in games with less players.

Good Choices: There are always a lot of good and tactical choices available in the game because you have four tiles you can pick up or four money cards or if none of them appeal you can just work on your Alhambra. This nicely offsets any randomness implicit in the game.

Ability to Fix Mistakes: Rebuilding your Alhambra is costly because you have to do it one piece at a time, but having this ability to fix your mistakes is still very nice.

I don't have any complaints about the game, though I will offer one comment: the gameplay does change as you increase the number of players. In a two-player game you can play somewhat strategically because you only have one purchaser to worry about, but as the number of players goes up, the chaos factor also goes up, and so your play becomes much more tactical--though there's still hopeful strategy in the background. I've heard some people comment that the game works less well with five- or six- players, and I believe it. Clearly the sweet spot is in the 2-4 range.

I've already played this game a half-dozen times in the couple of weeks since I've received it and I continue to appreciate it quite a bit; thus it earns a full "5" out of "5" Substance rating.

Conclusion

Alhambra is a very good light strategy game. There is a core simplicity to the game, but still you have the ability to consider several different tactical choices at any point. Alhambra gets some nice kudos from me because it also plays very well with different numbers of people. It's a superb two-player game, which is a rare for a game designed primarily for multiplayer play, but I also thought it was quite good with four players.

I can see why Alhambra was Germany's Spiel des Jahres winner for 2003. It's a very well designed casual strategy game that will appeal to both families and serious gamers.