Send your knights, the valiant ones caballeros, to conquer a torn Spain, and become the most influential nobleman in the country. It is El Grandeour board game of the week, reissue of an essential classic.
What is a board game? El Grande ?
Edited by Hans im Glück, El Grande is a game by Wolfgang Kramer and Richard Ulrich, illustrated by Stefan Sonnberger, is sold at the price of €40.95 at Philibert.
15th century Spain was divided, and different factions fought over its territories. You are a Big(read with accent), an influential noble, and you are trying to unite them all under your banner. Will you be able to conquer enough regions to rise to the rank ofEl Grande ?
Accessible from 12 years old, for 2 to 5 players, and games lasting around 90 minutes, it is a game of majority and placement, with simple rules, but high stakes.
In short
We liked
- Very simple rules
- Tense situations
- Lots of interactions
- Made in Germany, plastic-free
We liked less
- Nothing, it’s a masterpiece!
How do you play it?
Set up
Installation is simple and quick.
The game board, representing different regions of Spain (Galicia, Castilla, etc.), and the large tower, the castillo , are placed in the center of the table. The big royal pawn is randomly placed in one of the regions.
Each player receives the 13 cards and 7 pawns caballerosto its color (the remaining pawns are put aside, in a common reserve).
Finally, we mix five piles of cards separately, and the game can already begin.
Note that the box contains three small additional modules, which you can add or not as you wish.
Rules of the game of El Grande
Part ofEl Grandetakes place in exactly 9 rounds.
At the start of each of them, we determine the order of the turn by playing, one after the other, one of our cards numbered from 1 to 13.
The highest value takes priority, then the second, and so on. But that’s not all, each card also indicates how many pawns, caballerosyou add to your personal reserve from the common reserve.
This is important because, as we will see later, you can only place pawns on the board if they come from your personal reserve. And you only have 7 at the start of the game.
And this number is inversely proportional to the value of the card: 13, which ensures you play first, does not grant you any new caballero while 1, the smallest value, adds 6 to you. The choice is difficult.
In the order thus determined, the players choose one of the five cards offered in each round. These allow us to place between 1 and 5 of our caballerosin regions adjacent to the king, and to perform a very specific action (move caballeros , ours or others, move the king, etc.). We can also place our pawns in the tower, but it is forbidden to check its contents.
And for what purpose? To score points, at regular intervals, in the third, sixth and ninth innings. For each region, the players with the greatest presence score victory points. But before that, we reveal the content of the castillo, and everyone secretly chooses in which region they wish to add the pawns it contained. Enough to shake up every count…
The game ends after the ninth round, and the highest score wins.
Why play El Grande ?
El Grandeis not a very recent game. And that’s no small thing to say: released in 1995, the same year as Catanit is, to date, the second oldest game in our selection.
Like his counterpart, he left his mark on the spirits of the time. Winner of the Spiel des Jahres in 1996 (the highest gaming distinction in the world), it is the fruit of the imagination of two co-authors who were very popular at the time. Including Wolfgang Kramer, the most awarded author of the prestigious German prize, with five victories to his credit. It was he who was the first to think of putting a score track around the board (a track which bears his name in his native country).
But has the game retained its splendor to deserve a new edition, after so many years? Yes ! A thousand times yes!
El Grandeis an old-fashioned game, one of the great classics of contemporary board games, those which have brought it into a new era. Some glories of yesteryear have lost their panache, with outdated, noisy mechanics, and a pace that is too slow. Not El Grande.
The game is still as engaging, as fluid, as intelligent. It does not offer a multitude of possible actions, resources to manage or ways to score points. It gets to the point, and that’s more than enough.
What we think of the El Grande game
Evolution of mentalities and habits, what was, upon its release, rather considered as a game for initiated or even expert players, can, nowadays, without too much difficulty be placed as a family game, as the rules are simple.
The implications of each choice, of each action, nevertheless remain profound and no less decisive. Is it better for me to play quickly in the round, or rather last? In which regions should I fight to be in the majority? How many pawns should I throw into the tower, and in which region should I place them next?
The tension increases as we approach one of the three rounds which end with a counting of points. It is palpable around the table. Sometimes, no one speaks, everyone develops their action plan, their strategy. Sometimes it negotiates, then it squeaks when an opponent steals a majority of a single pawn.
The icing on the cake is that the game contains no plastic (except the cellophane surrounding the box), only wood and cardboard. Even the small storage bags are replaced by small cardboard boxes. All made in Germany, not on the other side of the world. It doesn’t change the quality of the game, but we salute the publisher’s effort.
As its name suggests, El GrandIt’s a great game. A fun nugget. A masterpiece. Its simple and clever principle has not suffered in any way from the past years. Reissues of this caliber are welcome, both for older players and for newcomers. It holds its own against more recent games, and is far superior to most of the hundreds of new games that arrive in stores every year.
Subscribe for free to Artificielles, our newsletter on AI, designed by AIs, verified by Numerama!
Some links in this article are affiliated. We’ll explaine everything here.