El Grande

We (Alan, Todd, Nick, Ram, and I) played a fantastic game of El Grande last night at Alan's house.

El Grande is a political conquest game set in medieval Spain. The board is divided into the provinces of Spain, such as Valencia, Aragon, and Basque, and scoring is based on who has control of the regions, by having the most, the second most, or the third most "Cabaneros" in a given region.

Each player has a home region, containing the player's Grande (lord), and players score bonus points for controlling their home region. The King moves from region to region, and controlling the King's region also scores bonus points. There is also a special region, the Castillo. Cabaneros placed in the Castillo are moved onto the board right before scoring, which gives players a final chance to seize control of a region.

Each turn has two phases. In the first phase, the bidding phase, players bid on the right to go ahead of other players in the second phase, the action phase. Each player starts with thirteen "power cards," numbered through 13, and bids using these cards. No player may bid the same number as another player, and the second phase goes in order, from who bid the lowest to who bid the highest. The power card used to bid also determines how many Cabaneros the player may bring from the "provinces" to his "court," in preparation for placing them on the board in the action phase. The lower numbers let you bring in more Cabaneros to the provinces, so there's an advantage to bidding low as well as to bidding high.

In the action phase, players choose from one of five "action cards" from five stacks. These action cards determine how many Cabaneros a player may move from the provinces to the board, and also grant the player an optional action he may take. Actions may be something like "move five Cabaneros of your choice," or "score one region of your choice," or "send all the Cabaneros in your opponents court back to the provinces." One action card is always present: the card that lets you move the King. The King's region is special, in that no Cabaneros may move into or out of it. So if you move the King into a region that you control, no one else may seize control of from you without moving the King first.

All regions are scored at the end of the third, sixth, and ninth turns (or after the second, fourth, and sixth turns in the short game).

The rules can be learned very quickly. The only thing complex about the rules is interpretations of the action cards, which are sometimes ambiguous. Fortunately, the rule booklet has a clear explanation for each of the action cards.

El Grande uses a scoring track, which is a feature I like in a game, as this gives you a good idea of each player's standing. The board is not so complex that one can't have a pretty good idea how scoring would go if it took place at any given point. The state of the board, however, can change greatly in a few turns, and a person who looks like they have a comfortable lead may see that lead evaporate.

This happened last night. Todd was well ahead of everyone else on the scoring track going into the final three turns. Alan was in second place, and Ram and I were tied for third. When the final round of scoring took place, Ram pulled ahead of Todd, and then Alan pulled just ahead of Ram to win by one point.

A lot of the strategy in El Grande is psychological. How you decide to act is determined greatly by what you think other players are going to do. We played one action that said "Each player secretly picks one region to score. If more than one player picks a region, it is not scored." You choose regions secretly with a cardboard wheel and pointer that each player has. When we did this, two regions were both chosen by two players, and so only one region scored. (The one I picked, New Castille!)

The only downside to the game is that the psychological elements to the strategy can make it easy to get caught up in "analysis paralysis," and slow the game down. This is compounded by the fact that one's strategy is very dependant on what other players do, making it difficult to plan what one is going to do in advance of one's turn. A group decision to limit table talk, i.e. giving other players advice, can make the game go quicker.

The game lasted about two and a half hours, which is quite a bit longer than the playing time listed on the box.

Overall, I'd rate El Grande 9 out of 10. The only five-player games I like better are Princes of Florence and Ra.