El Grande is a German-style board game

German-style board game

German-style board games, frequently referred to in gaming circles as Euro Games or Euro-style, are a broad class of tabletop games that generally have simple rules, short to medium playing times, indirect player interaction and abstract physical components...

 for 2-5 players, designed by Wolfgang Kramer

Wolfgang Kramer

Wolfgang Kramer is a German board game designer.Kramer formerly worked as an operations manager and computer scientist, but since 1989 he has worked full-time on game design. He has designed over 100 games, many which have been nominated for or have won the Spiel des Jahres...

 and Richard Ulrich

Richard Ulrich

Richard Ulrich is a German board game designer. Many of his games have been nominated for or have won the Spiel des Jahres, a German games award.He is best known for co-authoring the board game El Grande with Wolfgang Kramer.-External links:...

, and published in 1995 by Hans im Glück

Hans im Glück

Hans im Glück Verlags-GmbH is a German board and card game publisher. Though many of their own games are language-independent they themselves publish only printings for the domestic market which include only German-language rules; English-language printings of their games have been published...

 in German, by Rio Grande Games

Rio Grande Games

Rio Grande Games is a board game publisher based in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. The company primarily imports and localizes foreign language German-style board games.-History:...

 in English, and by 999 Games in Dutch. The game board represents renaissance-era

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 where the nobility (the Grandes) fight for control of the nine regions. El Grande was awarded the Spiel des Jahres

Spiel des Jahres

The Spiel des Jahres is an award for board and card games, created in 1978 with the stated purpose of rewarding excellence in game design, and promoting top-quality games in the German market. It is thought that the existence and popularity of the award is one of the major drivers of the quality...

 prize and the Deutscher Spiele Preis

Deutscher Spiele Preis

The Deutscher Spiele Preis is an important award for boardgames. It was started in 1990 by the German magazine "Die Pöppel-Revue", which collects votes from the industry's stores, magazines, professionals and game clubs. The results are announced every October at the Spiel game fair in Essen,...

 in 1996.

Gameplay

The game is played in nine rounds. Three of these (rounds 3, 6, and 9) are scoring rounds, when player scores are counted according to their positions within the various regions. When the game is 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 mathematics" 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

Dice

A die is a small throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers...

in the game, and players have many chances to influence the turn order. Thus the game is all about 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 action cards that are turned up each turn, which is the only source of randomness in the game. However, the effect of this luck is very small, since these cards are potentially available to be used by any player in the game.

Each player starts the game with a hand of identical cards (numbered 1-13) at the beginning of the game. These cards are used to bid for turn order. The person who plays the highest card chooses their action card first, etc., but each player may use each card only once in a given game.

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.