The game is El Grande, yet another splendid German import by Rio Grande Games. The game takes place in medieval Spain and your goal as a budding political leader is to collect as many influence points as possible by having more Caballeros throughout various territories than your opponents. If you have the most in a single territory when scoring time comes around you will score the biggest, but second and third positions might also score as well.

When playing this game I was struck with how it balances very well the need for thinking and strategy while keeping it very simple. The four people playing this game had never played it before and within a few minutes were up and playing with little to no difficulty in understanding rules or the systems of the game.

I think that El Grande does a few things very well. The first is the physical pieces of the game. The layout of the board is very well organized. There is a track around the outside to keep score, the territories are large enough to be able to fit all of the pieces in, and there is a track that allows scoring of the territories to go smoothly, without the "You didn't score this one" "Yes. I did" "No I don't think so. Better start scoring over again". Also I thought the board looked very pretty, which won't make or break a game for me, but it's always nicer to play a pretty looking game :). On top of that the game pieces are all wooden. Wood pieces are my favorite game pieces, they are so much more satisfying to use. The last physical aspect of the game I'll mention is the castillo. It is a surprisingly hefty tower that well, um, towers over the rest of the board. It looks and feels like a dark menacing castle should.

The second thing the game does very well is how it makes the players interact with one another. Through the whole game you are secretly bidding on various items that can drasticlly effect the outcome of the game. This adds a psychological aspect to the game that I liked very much. "I'll bet he's going to put his caballeros in Galicia, but then again, he'll know that that's where I think he'll put them, so he'll put them Valencia. But then again...he'll know that I'll be wise to Galacia, AND Valencia, so he'll go back to Galicia knowing I'll put mine in Valencia...." and so it goes.

The last thing that I really liked about the game was that there were multiple ways to accomplish a specific goal. Say I wanted to take control of a territory away from Gordon (sorry Gordon), I could do so with several of the action cards available to me. I might be able to move some of his caballeros out, or move in some of mine, or just plan on throwing my castillo caballeros there just before it is scored. What this flexibility means for me is that no matter how poorly I might be doing I will always have hope of pulling myself back into a competitive position. I like games where no matter if I make a few poor decisions I can still recover.

El Grande is a very fun game. It has been well planned and put together beautifully, it offers a healthy amount of strategy and competition to keep things interesting, and it doesn't take forever to play. I would certainly play this game again, and in fact look impatiently towards that time.

Reviewer: Kay
Subject: What is a Dudeski, anyway?
Review: Spain was in the age of rival chevaliers. You want to deploy as many of your dudeskies (I mean, caballeros) as possible in as many provinces as possible to prevail. However, you have limitations in how many of your dudeskies can go to which provinces. The player who plays the highest priority card out of 13 plays first to place the dudeskies and pick and play/not play an action card. Action cards can move other players' dudeskies (others can do the same to you) or take other actions. The player with most dudeskies in a province gets the most points from there, so you want to assign your dudeskies in a strategic way. At the end, the player with the most points wins.

My personal favorite part of the game was "the tower". If you will, you may assign your dudeskies in the special tower, which you can't see inside, instead of the lands. When players start putting their dudeskies in the tower, you want to have some idea who put how many of them, because at the scoring time the tower gets scored just like other provinces and all your dudeskies goes to one province you secretly choose. This feature adds more randomness to this non-dice-rolling game and I like it, especially when people start putting dudeskies competitively and a totally unrelated distraction messes up someone's memory (an action that involves a number is highly effective; e.g., "high five"). It's fun to put lots of dudeskies in the tower, however, I quickly noticed the big pitfall was that all of one player's tower dudeskies go to ONE province. I might have better performed when I test-played if I had distributed my dudeskies more evenly. Yeah, I was having too much fun.

Action cards are important to do well in this game, and if you have never played before, I highly recommend reading all action cards beforehand to know the effect of them and to remember the number of powerful cards. For example, there are only two Change Scoreboard cards, which can change the scoreboard of one province. That means if two of these cards are used, the replaced scoreboard stays until the end of the game and you don't have to worry if the original scoreboard comes back again.

This is a great game for both experienced and inexperienced players. Rules are easy enough for the first-timers to play in 1.5 hours, and the patterns of playing are endless. Better yet, the Decennial Edition comes with expansion that lets you ship out of Spain!

Reviewer: Dave
Subject: To the point.
Review: At the first Thursday Night New Games night, we had the opportunity to play the El Grande Decennial Edition. I found the game relatively easy to learn, but similiar to a game like China, there's a layer of strategy to the game that makes it much more complex than it first appears. The only problem I noticed this first time is that the explanantion of the Action Card abilities seem to be unclear on some of the cards. Still, I look forward to playing this game again, especially some of the expansions, which we did not get to that time.

If you've played and enjoyed games like China or Puerto Rico, El Grande is likely a game you'd enjoy as well.

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