(Disclaimer: I am a CASUAL gamer at best. My reviews are not based on years of hard core gaming with hundreds of different games under my belt. I have never played Age of Steam and I have never formed a coalition in Die Macher.)
It was with great anticipation that I awaited a reprinting of El Grande. I knew very little about the game but I had heard so many good things about it. I am a fan of "area influence" or "area control" type games so I though that El Grande would be a good fit.
OVERVIEW:
El Grande is an area control game based on 15th century Spain. Each player is a <PERSON> (a member of the high aristocracy) who is associated with 30 Caballeros (members of the average aristocracy). By careful placement of these Caballeros in the nine different regions (and the Castillo), players will attempt to attain a majority in these regions to score points at different times in the game.
COMPONENTS:
I will be speaking of the components that ship with the new El Grande reprint, the Decennial edition from Rio Grande Games. For the El Grande base game you get:
1 game board - it is beautifully illustrated with the nine game regions (and a tenth region that is used in some of the expansions), a scoring track around the outside, and the "round/scoring round" track. The map is beautiful and the board is high quality with a linen finish. I have had no problems with warping or fraying. The back of the board is also nicely finished.
5 Grandes and 155 Caballeros - these are your standard wooden cubes that are stained in 5 different colors (red, brown, green, yellow, and blue). I say that the cubes are stained because you can still see the grain of the wood in the cubes. The cubes are well made and very functional. I like the feel of a wooden cube. The <PERSON> are larger than the <PERSON> and the two are easily distinguishable.
1 King - a large pawn that is stained black. He is CLEARLY the King.
1 round marker - a wooden cube stained black to mark the round of the game (there are 9 of them) and to help move through the scoring rounds in an orderly manner.
65 Power Cards - there are 13 Power Cards in each player color. Each Power Card depicts a number of Caballeros from 0-6. The number of Caballeros on the Power Card determines how many Caballeros a player may "bring to his court". More on this later. The cards measure 1-3/4" by 2-5/8" (4.4cm by 6.8cm). 336
I prefer larger cards but these are functional.
45 Action Cards - the Action Cards are the central part of the game. Each round five different Action Cards are revealed. These cards determine which actions players can execute or prevent during the round. The cards are 2-5/8" square. The El Grande Decennial cards have a few cards with text missing. I can understand why some might consider this a real problem, but it is only a few cards that are affected. No big deal as far as I am concerned. The cards are of good quality.
9 region cards and 2 El Grande cards - these cards will determine players' home regions and the starting region of the King. They have a rules summary printed on the back side. They measure 2-5/8".
5 secret disks - cardboard disks that have the names of the nine regions on them and plastic pointers. Some have complained about the thickness of the cardboard in these disks. They seem plenty thick to me (1/16") and they are 3-1/4" in diameter (8.25cm) with a nice linen finish. The pointers are secured in the usual manner and they are “sticky” enough to maintain there position when they are used to secretly select a region.
The Castillo - 5-7/16" (14.9cm) tall with an opening that measures 1-1/4" (3.2cm) square. It is made of four pieces of 1/8" (.32cm) fiber board painted glossy black. It looks like a tall castle tower. Having seen this in pictures for so long, I was very happy when I got to meet it face to face for the first time. It serves its purpose well and I think it is a very clever game component.
2 mobile scoreboards - these replace the scoring values in the region where they are placed. They may be introduced or moved around due to special actions that appear on several Action Cards.
1 sample game sheet - a great resource to learn how the game flows. It walks you through the first couple of rounds of a game. It is on full color glossy paper and it will help ease you into your first go ‘round. 336