I’ve always been a little timid about trying to play El Grande. I’ve read a great deal about how wonderful the game is, but it always looked and sounded like it was such a hard game to understand that I’ve shied away from it. Well, after getting a chance to play it in the game store recently, I can only say that my preconceptions were far off base...VERY far off base. While the strategy level of the game can be (or IS) very challenging, the game is not difficult to learn at all.

Theme/Object of the Game – Set in medieval Spain, this is a game of area control. There are nine provinces and a Castillo (castle), each worth a certain number of points for majority control as well as second and third majority in each province. You must try to gain majority by placing workers (caballeros) in the provinces and gain majority by scoring time (every three rounds). The person with the most victory points at the end of the game wins.

Components: The game is pretty much solid, with lots of wood cubes, small cards of very good quality, a large but non-descript pawn for the king, and a tall wooden structure to represent the Castillo. There are two kinds of cards: the power cards for each player and the action cards. The action cards can be difficult to read at a distance. A quick-start sample game sheet is laminated well enough to double as a placemat. There are also ‘province wheels’ for each player, which contain the names of all nine provinces and a plastic pointer that you can move manually used to identify provinces that are affected by action cards or placement of cubes from the Castillo (more on that later). Though the quality of the pieces are all very good, there’s nothing that screams out as being overly thematic, so the bits make the game appear pretty generic. The game board is very handsome and easy to read, with the possible exception of the scoring rows on the ‘rounds’ chart. A quick-start sample game sheet is laminated well enough to double as a placemat.

Rules: There is a sheet included that allows you to trace your way through a sample game. It’s instructional and can really help to introduce the game to a group who’s never played it before. The rules are apparently set up very well, because the person looking up the rules as we played for the first time was able to find things very quickly.

Good Stuff: The game can be played in six rounds (for beginners, or even if a short game is desired) or nine, lending a bit of flexibility to the play time (I imagine that house rules can also be created for playing 7 or 8 rounds if desired). The game plays especially well with 4 or 5 players because appropriate bidding is essential when good action cards are more in demand.

The game is one of the most well-balanced games I’ve seen. You constantly have to assess your needs. For example:

- Bidding high to get a particular card vs. bidding low to draft more caballeros into your active pile.

- Placing caballeros in the provinces vs. placing them in the Castillo.

- Placing a larger number of your caballeros vs. more beneficial special actions.

The Castillo itself is an interesting concept. Any player may place caballeros into it on any turn (its’ contents are hidden). At the end of every 3rd round (or when a special scoring card is played), the contents are shown, and it’s scored like any other area (1st, 2nd, and 3rd majority). Then each player who had caballeros in the Castillo secretly chooses a province on his ‘province wheel’. The wheels are then turned upward and each player moves his cubes to the province selected. When this is done on the normal scoring rounds, the Castillo is the first area scored, which means those cubes are transferred to the province of your choice BEFORE that province is scored!

And because the game lasts for only nine rounds, there is always plenty of opportunity to either pat yourself on the back or second-guess yourself on any one turn, because each move is very important.

Bad Stuff: The theme of this game is rather light, and it’s pretty transparent that this is just an abstract area management strategy game with the theme pasted onto it. This is not helped by the tons of colored cubes you push around the board. This may turn off some people who demand more thematic elements.

My other pet peeve is that the writing on the Action cards is too small. If they used a standard sized deck, this problem could have been alleviated.

Recommendations: If you love strategy games but you’ve never played El Grande, I suggest you find occasion to do so before purchasing your next game. I really enjoyed this game a lot – it catapulted into my top 10 after just one play (I came in last, if you must know).