Alhambra


Alhambra is a wonderful game by Queen. It was published initially in 2003 and has won several awards, including the 2003 Spiel des Jahres, and rightly so. Players all take the role of a master builder, trying to hire four different cultures to build masterworks in their palace, but they must do so while watching their neighbors closely, and paying the contractors in their own currencies. In the end, the best builder, by way of building the finest palace with the best structures and longest contiguous walls for protection, will prevail!



It is my contention that this game is simple enough to engage even the most Euro-wary, gamey enough to satisfy the Europhile, and strategically challenging enough to address the concerns of any brain burners out there. Indeed, it is rare enough to find a game that garners attention from two of these three camps, let alone all three. Alhmabra is, then, a treat that most people should have in their game cabinet. While borrowing heavily from other tile-laying games, this affair twists those tried and true paradigms into something sublime and tasty.

Let's take a look at the components, shall we?

The whole is combined in a wonderfully sized bookshelf box clad in excellent, themed artwork in a linen finish. That same finish adorns the very-thick and well appointed tiles, auction board, scoring board, and personal palace renovation boards. There are high quality wooden scoring discs, or rather, cylinders, since they are quite tall, as well as a deck of money cards, which are of suitable thickness and quality. The artwork, color palette, and design sensibilities all smack of good taste and well-appropriated theme. The tile artwork consists of isometric thirty degree point-of-view snapshots of different types of palatial additions, such as gardens, apartments, and the like. These are the staple of the game, and each type of addition has a color associated with it. Additions also can have walls which encompass them on one, two or three sides. Placing tiles in such a way that these walls become contiguous without blocking off parts of the palace is a tactic that pays dividends in the end, but it is not always so easy to do. Since we spend so much time with these tiles, holding them, drawing them from a bag (which is thoughtfully included in the game), placing them, and looking at them, it is very important that these were quality and well done, and they are. The same quality is found in the scoring board and the personal renovation boards. The cards, again, are a good quality, but really seem like they could have been thicker or treated with a thicker plastic; component-wise, these cards will wear out much faster than the other components, and the artwork on them is relatively sparse and uninspiring, simply having a number and an associative iconic coin to denote which building culture can be paid with them. They are functional, yes, but not really up to the standards set by the tiles. However, the whole set is packed neatly in what might very well be the best designed insert I have ever seen; everything packs away so neatly and tidily, and it is all held so securely that you can prop the box up on end in your bookcase and be confident that everything will be just where you put it when you you take it down for the next play.




Now let's look at the game play.

Each player gets a Lion's Fountain starting tile. This is the center of that player's personal Alhambra. The scoring board is placed in the middle of the table near the auction tile. The auction tile holds four spots, numbered one through four. These four spots are color coded to match the cards which have monetary numbers on them. Four tiles are placed on the four auction spots; this way, each tile can be "bought" for the tile's price (which is on the tiles itself) in the associated culture's currency (a number of points of cards in that color). For example, you might want to buy the blue palace tile on the orange culture spot; this would cost you the value of the tile in the orange currency, paid in cards. The cards are set up thus: each player is dealt, face up, cards that equal twenty or more, total. Once the total is twenty or more, the dealer moves on to the next player, and this is the last time that anyone will see each other's cards. After each player has a starting hand of cards, the deck is cut into five parts, with the five parts being combined again with the two scoring cards in between. This way, the scoring rounds will come up roughly every third way through the cards, so you have a rough idea of when they will happen.

Players can do one of three things on their turn:

1. Take cards from the draft. A player can take one card from the draft, unless the cards he takes equal no more than five points total, in which case he can take as many cards as he wants, granted they don't total more than five points.

2. Buy a tile and play it on his Alhambra. A player can buy a tile with his cards, given that he has enough card points in the right color to do so. There is no change given if you have to pay more than the tile costs, but if you can pay exactly the right amount, you get to go again (without the tiles being replaced, so you can do this, at maximum, a total of four times, meaning that a fifth card-taking round would be the most you could take, a total of five "turns" in one turn). The tile can also be played directly into the player's renovation area.

3. Renovate your Palace. A player can use his turn to move a tile from his Alhambra to his renovation tile, or vice versa. This is very handy when your palace isn't going quite the way you'd like, but you have a plan to make it better with a tweak or two.

And that's it, really, aside from the scoring, which happens thus:

Let's take a look at scoring.

Scoring happens in at three times. Once about a third of the way through the deck of money cards, another time about two thirds through it, and then again when there aren't enough tiles to completely fill the auction card.

When the first scoring card is pulled, each player gets points according to how many tiles of each colors they have in their palace (you don't count the ones in the renovation area) and how many contiguous wall segments you have. Going through the colors of tiles, you tally up who has the most of each color. Whoever has the most of that color gets a certain amount of points, with ties being split and rounded down. Each color, due to different rarities, yields differing amounts of points to the round victors. For example, purple tiles yield the most points, but are harder to get than other colors. In addition to tiles, you count your longest section of contiguous walls and score that as well.

The second scoring round mixes it up a little. Now we look to to see who has the most, AND the second most. This is where things start getting interesting! It's important to keep up with colors because you can still get a good amount of points even if you don't have the most of that color, especially if two or even three players have to split the first-place reward. Again, longest walls are scored.

Finally, when there are no longer enough tiles left to fully fill the auction card, each person looks at their cards and sees who has the most of each color currency...whoever has the most gets that last tile and can play it, or in the even of a tie the tile stays on the auction card and is unavailable to anyone. Once players have played any tiles gained in this manner, a final scoring round takes place. This time, even third place builders get points! Again, if anyone ties on the amount of tiles in a given color, the reward is split amongst them, rounding down. Also, the contiguous wall scoring happens again.

After this third round, the person with the most points is the victor!



What do I think of Alhambra?

I think that Alhambra is a rare combination of gateway and depth. While it is a little less friendly of a gateway game than, say, Ticket to Ride is, I feel that it is still very accessible to the the non-gamer. I also feel that the game stands up to some harder play with euro-friendlies, and I think that trying to find a balance between which cards to take, which tiles to buy, how and when to build your palace, and which tactics to use (all of one color, keep up with many colors, go for the longest wall at any cost) leaves plenty of room for brain burning number crunchers. I think that fans of all three types of games can have a lot of fun with this one, and all at the same time. I think that this is a rare combination indeed.

The game handles up to six players, which is very nice (a lot of euro style games only do 4 or 5, at least in my collection) and it plays fairly quickly, maybe an hour or a little more.

This game is certainly finding a nice home in my "go-to" collection, which is something that I didn't at first realize. I think this is one that grows on you and your group. It might not be the favorite all the time, but it has a strong chance of becoming a go-to when you aren't quite sure what you want. Like I said, this game wears many hats!