El Grande

A little while ago I posted what was essentially my Dungeons & Dragons origin story on how I got into the game. My beginnings in board games are not really all that different. My group of friends from college played a lot of games in the dorms, mainly Magic: The Gathering and PC games on the LAN. After school, we all eventually ended up back in Norman, living around town and getting together for football games and other fun stuff. Along the way we started playing some board games that we’d previously never heard of. Games like Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Tigris & Euphrates, and Puerto Rico soon became staples at our parties alone side another game called El Grande.

El Grande was one of the first games we’d played that used no dice at all. Like Carcassone, Tigris & Euphrates, and Puerto Rico, the random elements of the game came from drawing cards or tiles and from the decisions of the other players. El Grande was also the first game to introduce me to the ubiquitous multicolored wooden cubes. It was such a different experience from what I’d been used to from board games, and it was a welcome change.

El Grande plays like a war game, but without the war. The game is all about political influence in Renaissance Spain, and the players use their pieces (known as caballeros) to control various regions of Spain. There’s also a Castillo, a large fortress where players can deposit caballeros for a surprise “attack” every three rounds. Play continues for 9 rounds, and the player with the highest score wins.

The game provides players with a myriad of strategies for victory, and there’s no single “right” way to win. Some players favor controlling a single high-value region throughout the game, and other try to get second place (which also gets some points) in lots of regions. Still others favor keeping their “strongholds” mobile, and will shift their caballeros over the entire board over the course of the game.

El Grande is sublime, and easy to teach to people who are new to European-style board games. This remains, even after the hundreds of different games that I’ve played since my first El Grande session, one of my favorite games. To be honest, I’m shocked that I don’t already own it. I’ll go ahead and change that, right now.