El Grande is a German-style board game for 2-5 players, designed by Wolfgang Kramer and Richard Ulrich, and published in 1996 by Hans im Glück in German and Rio Grande Games in English. The game board represents medieval Spain where the nobility (the Grandes) fight for control of the nine regions. El Grande was awarded the Spiel des Jahres prize in 1996.

Gameplay

The game is played in nine rounds, of which there are three rounds when player scores are counted with respect to all the regions. When played with two players, it can be rather fast-paced. If five players participate, the game becomes very complex and challenging, as it becomes almost impossible to "do the maths" on the regions, and players team up and compete to keep others from winning, or to score more points for themselves.

Decision making

There are no dice in the game, and players have an ample choice of cards. Thus the game is all about agonizing decisions. Often the path to scoring more points is clear, but sometimes it can be wiser to prevent opponents from scoring.

The role of Luck

Since the game is played without dice, the role of luck is rather minimal. The original game has a number of cards that are turned up each turn as a random generators (where each player gets to pick one of the cards); the expansion set, Konig und Intrigant, eliminates this aspect and instead gives each player a hand of identical cards at the beginning of the game; each player may use each card only once.

The main challenge of the game is keeping track of the many factors that determine the balance of power in the regions and the score track.

External links

• Board Game Geek reviews and pictures of the game.
• Sangria, an open-source software implementation of the game, under development