Preamble.
I’ve had this game for ages, but after an initial flurry of plays it has sat on the shelf, mainly because my wife loathes it. However, I’ve recently dusted it off and played a load of games, so I thought time was right for a review.

Components.
The game comes in a large box. There is a very nicely illustrated board depicting Medieval Spain, complete with scoring track around the outside and turn track with scoring aids covering Portugal. There is a simple but very sturdy slot-together Castillo (castle). There are then five sets of coloured playing pieces (red, blue, green, yellow and brown), each comprising one large cube (Grandes) and 31 small cubes (Caballeros and scoring marker). There is a small black cube for use as a turn marker, and a large black pawn to represent the king. There is a set of 13 power cards for each player, 45 action cards, 9 region cards (with rules summaries on the reverse), and 2 extra rules summary cards. Finally, there are a couple of small mobile scoreboards and 5 disks for secretly sending Caballeros to a region of your choice.

Overall, the components are very nice. The board and the Castillo are really excellent. The cubes and cards are functional and work well. The turn track with horizontal scoring tracks to help players during record points is really good. My only complaints are that the scoring track around the outside of the board could do with a few more numbers on it, rather than just the ‘tens’, and the king pawn could be smaller and more king-like!

Gameplay.
To set up the game, the board is laid out and the Castillo put into place. The region cards are shuffled and one drawn at random to place the king and to decide each players start region. Players then place their Grande and two Caballeros in their home area, plus one small cube on the scoring track. Each then takes an additional 7 Cabelleros (the ‘court’), leaving the others in a large pile conveniently to hand (the ‘provinces’). The black cube is placed on the turn track.

Each player then takes the set of power cards in their colour, plus a disk for secretly allocating Caballeros to a province.

Finally, the action cards are sorted into piles according to the number of Caballeros on the back (1 to 5). These five piles are placed next to the board. Note that the fifth pile has only one card in it!

The game is played in either 6 or 9 rounds. Scoring occurs after rounds 3, 6 and 9. The shorter game skips rounds 1, 4 and 7.

Play then begins. A turn consists of:

1.move the turn marker.
2.reveal the top action card from each stack.
3.play power cards: starting with the youngest player (first turn) or the player who played last in the previous round (other turns), each player must lay a power card face up on the table. Each player has cards with power ratings of 1 to 13. Each also has a number of Caballeros printed on it that allows the player to immediately stock his/her Court with that number of Caballeros from the Provinces. Low value power cards allow transfer of more Caballeros than high value cards (e.g. the 1 power card allows movement of 6 Caballeros, the 13 card does not allow movement of any). Playing of power cards is pivotal because the power rating determines order of play for the next phase and the Caballero rating controls how many Caballeros players have in their courts and hence available to play onto the board (they can only be placed on the board from Court, not from Provinces). Once played, power cards are discarded (unless returned by an action card).
4.take and play action cards: in power card order (highest first), players take and play action cards. These cards do two things, and players may choose the order in which they execute these two actions (and may choose not to execute the special action):
a. Firstly they allow players to move the number of Caballeros shown from their Court onto the board. These Caballeros can only be placed in regions adjacent to where the king resides, or in the Castillo. If a player does not have sufficient Caballeros in his/her court, he/she may take them from the board to make up the number required, and then redistribute back onto the board using the aforementioned placement rules.
b. Secondly, they allow players to execute special actions. These typically involve: moving small numbers of Caballeros on the board, or between board/court/provinces; scoring certain regions; adding or moving mobile scoreboards; veto power to prevent other players’ special actions; retrieving spent power cards; moving Grandes; moving the king.

After each player has taken and played an action card, these are discarded (except for stack 5 which contains only the ‘move the king’ card, which is re-used each turn).

In addition to determining where Caballeros can be placed (as detailed above), the King prevents anything happening in the space where he is placed.

Scoring.
Major scoring occurs after turns 3, 6 and 9. Firstly each player uses their disk to secretly record which region they will send their Caballeros from the Castillo to (if they have any). They cannot send them to the King’s region. The Castillo is then lifted up to reveal how many Caballeros each player has there. The Castillo is then scored.

Each region, including the Castillo, has a three space scoring chart. Scoring depends on the number of players. With only two players, only the first space on these charts is used. With three players, the first two spaces are used. With four or five players, all three spaces are used. The player with the most Caballeros scores the highest value, the second the middle value (if 3+ players) and the third the lowest value (if 4+ players).

Players then move their Caballeros from the Castillo to the destinations shown on their disks, before scoring the remaining regions. The turn track contains three useful horizontal scoring tracks to help keep track of the scoring process. Each province is scored in the same way as the Castillo, but with a bonus of 2 points for controlling the region with your Grande present, and a bonus of 2 points for controlling a region containing the King.

Action cards often cause one or more regions to be scored mid-turn. If this happens to the Castillo, it is not emptied of Caballeros.

Ties are resolved by awarding both players the next value down on the scoring chart. Bonuses for the King or Grande are not awarded for ties.

All scores are recorded on the track around the outside of the board. The player with the most points at the end of the game is the winner.


So What do I think?
I like El Grande. It plays quite quickly (very quickly with 2), and there are interesting decisions to be made. I particularly like both the Castillo and power card mechanics. Keeping track of how many Caballeros each player has in the Castillo can be tricky, particularly in 5 player games, and watching them all pile out to change the balance of power in the regions during scoring is great fun. The power cards are excellent: the balance of whether to play high to try to get the action card you want or to play low to get more Caballeros into your court is a core part of the game.

What I don’t like is that sometimes the game feels too chaotic. You can think that you have good control of a couple of key regions, tentative control of another and a decent position in some more, but all that can change each time a player executes an action. Our group tends to favour what might loosely be called empire-building multi-player solitaire games like Puerto Rico, Race for the Galaxy and Stone Age, which means that El Grande does not often get to the table. Worse than that, my wife if the most keen on these aforementioned games, and steadfastly refuses to play El Grande at all because she hates the feeling of a lack of control.

More recently, I have played El Grande with my kids, and this was surprisingly successful. Even my six year old managed to pick up the rules, and after a few games he has become quite capable of beating adults. That means that the game is getting to the table more often, which is good. The downside is that the more I play, the less enamoured of the game I become. It is definitely a very clever design, with some interesting decisions and nice gameplay, but it doesn’t engage me enough.

Overall, I can see why it has a high rating on the Geek, and I can understand why gamers might rate it as a 9 or 10. But ultimately, the point of my reviews is to give my own personal view so that those of you who take the time to read them can get an idea of the kind of games that I like and the kind of games that I don’t. If this is the same or opposite to your own likes and dislikes, then hopefully these reviews can help you make decisions about which games to play or purchase. For me, El Grande is a solid 7 out of 10. I like playing it, and will always be happy to join in if somebody suggests it, but ultimately there are many other games that I prefer. I think the theme and mechanics fit together very well. However, for me the game is: (a) a little too chaotic; (b) has a little too much screwage; and (c) requires the investment of too much brain power to make the best strategic and tactical choices, for insufficient return in terms of enjoyment.