My Favourite Game: El Grande

just what is the best board game this is my best board game wait EA but the title said El Grande not side gig conflu are you having me on is this a ba and switch no no no no no think about it what is sideshow Carnival well it's bizarre esoteric it's completely impractical and most people don't even like it if I tell you that sideburns conference is my favorite game you might buy it and that is most likely a mistake instead I want to do a series focusing on my favorite games from multiple genres today we're talking about El Grande my favorite area majority game and one of two things are happening you're either nodding your head going yeah El Grande is pretty good I can respect that or what's an El Grande in which case you are in for a treat because this is one of the best games ever made let me show you why [Music] this is what your brain looks like when you're playing a board game and [Music] this is what your brain looks like when it's playing El Grande if you like me desire for your brain to be in this state then El Grande should already be going into the shopping cart but if that hasn't convinced you it also has one of these ooh that feels good inside board games have a long history of Flagship components from The Birdhouse Dice Tower in wingspan to The Dark Tower in the Dark Tower even the robber in Katan is somewhat of a flagship piece a component that happy campers huddle over to warm their hands a centerpiece that brings everyone together and makes them go ooh and ah and isn't it clever Katan came out in 1995 and that same year saw the release of El Grande and it too had its own robber piece except now it looks like this because the piece represents the king who if you think about it is also a kind of robber but it also had the Castillo and let me tell you these two are the OG Flagship components and it's not just street cred birdhouse dice towers are very cute but you just use it to roll some dice it looks like a bird house in a game about birds and I like that but that's where it centerpiec ends the king and the Castillo are the definitive Flagship components because the tensions of the entire game revolve around them let me show you you how it works this is a bunch of men cabayo specifically there's a whole conveyor belt of men happening in Al Grande you want to get them from this General pile to your personal court and then onwards to Spain where they will score points if you have more than other players in a region hence area majority if I have more men in that region I score points more men in that region than you also more points and so on so let me show you how to move a man El Grande has two types of cards power cards and action cards at the beginning of every round you will play one of your 13 Power Cards once you play one Gone Forever the lower the card the lower you are in turn order but also lower cards bring more men to your court for example the 13 card guarantees that you go first but brings you zero men which is where you might ask how important is it to be First Once everyone's played their power cards and gotten their cavos that's where the real fun begins in turn order every player Claims One action card these will let you send caberos from your court to one of the regions in Spain anywhere from 1 to 5 remember sending them to Spain is what matters because the more you have in a region the more likely you are to score points from it but these cards also have a special action the game revolves around these cards the actions are so dramatic so game warping so profound to your wheels and also deals that sometimes even just going second can be destructive Soul crushing flip tesque one of the actions is to move the king it's a great example of something simple and there's just layers of consequence to move the king you take the king and move it action done but you can only place caberos in regions that are adjacent to to the King which means that with one action you can place a man to break a tie you had with your opponent in a region and then just move the king away meaning no one can place that anymore ah but that's not it the region you move the king into is deadlocked in fact there are various actions in the game that let you move Cabas around but this is Rock log solid nothing can move in here at all there is so much power behind moving the king but the thing is as powerful as that action is can it withstand the combined might of the four other actions when each of them is game warping consider this when you take an action you have the option to not do it and it happens more often than you think because these actions are so devastating sometimes you take them just so no one else has access to them an action card might let you place a new scoring tile on a region let's say the green player Mr far was dominating Toledo the highest scoring region in the game to do that he had to give up contests in other areas now what if someone had the power to make it the lowest scoring region in the game what would Mr far sacrifice to have that power for himself and if he couldn't what would he promise to not have that power used what would he give up for that how far would Clinger go going first means picking these actions first and even that can be an agonizing decision because what if there's two action cards that in the wrong hands Doom you you can have one but not the other what are you going to do so to answer my earlier question yes going first is very important but what about going last El Grande does not let you stay at the top of the P forever there's only 113 and you need to deploy low cards to have caberos to begin with so what happens when you go last well the later you are in turn order the earlier you are in turn order next turn to determine turn order for that turn basically if I play a one I'll go last but the next turn I can play my 13 first this is important because you don't score regions every round scoring happens at the end of every three rounds splitting El Grande into a free act structure each beginning with claiming territories and posturing and ending with well you know how these things end shot and Freud and tears which finally brings us to the Castillo anytime you deploy caberos you can take any number of them and instead of putting them into Spain you can chop them into the Castillo and there they will stay forgotten by everyone each player moving on with the schemes not paying attention until the scoring begins at which each point every player selections a region secretly on a Nifty dial and sweet sweet release if you have the most men in the Castillo you'll also score points but then they all go to the region you've selected on this dial completely changing the landscape of this B Battlefield I don't need to explain why that's cool and I hope you can see how the Castillo is such a pivotal and dramatic component in a game that's all about counting how many pieces you and other players have in territories and then with one stage magicians trick completely changing that number recently board games have somewhat forgotten how much fun it is to reveal things it's a guaranteed surprise especially when what you revealing is so Central to how your game shakes out but revealing things can also feel unfair Fair a surprise that you had no say in El Grande lets you count how many pieces are being put in in fact there's a rule that says You must announce loudly how many pieces you're putting in as you drop them into this Vault the only thing you can't do is peek inside so it's up to you to keep tabs on it most people won't and that's part of the fun the Castillo is as much a surprise as each player allows it to be you are in control of this but mostly it's a game that wants you to Fred a really fine needle for something so mathematical and concerned with numbers it's almost uninterested in your ability to account anytime I've done well in El Grande was because I could read the room rather than the game State knowing what my opponents thought I would do and then deliberately doing something unexpected was enough to upset their plans and force them to recalibrate for something full of meeples and a score track wrapped around the board El Grande's surprisingly psychology and interaction driven how does something so fundamentally beige play like Twilight Imperium and it constantly keeps your brain in a heightened State there's this term in Psychology called being in the zone or flow coined by Mii shiks and mihai and the basic idea is that if your knowledge and skill matches your confidence in a subject then you enter a state of flow where everything just Vibes and feels reward recing El Grande despite being so Cutthroat makes it quite easy to enter Flo because the strategy in the game is evident if I move the king into an area no one can place pieces there if I have the most men in the Castillo as well well the scoring round is a CCH but it also makes you pay attention what are the other action cards can someone change scores in my region can someone trigger scoring early before I can Implement my moves I need to predict the moves that are unpredictable and make my predictable moves unpredictable Everything feels feels holistic tied together with a rubber string pull on one end and everything bends pull too hard the whole thing snaps I think there's something to be said about the fact that El Grande a game from 1995 is my favorite area majority game the fact that so many games came afterwards yet none of them have managed to improve on it here's two things you need to know about area majority games number one you shouldn't confuse them with area control games area control games are the ones where you have Miniatures fight over a control of the territory and in area majority games you want to have the most in a territory thing number two is that they're all kind of clunky I can count the non-el Grande ones that I like on the fingers of my two hands so we have Hans Tonica iari an that's it the reason they are so rarely instant hits is because it requires the designers to have a combination of skills that not a lot of people have you have to have a real good understanding of math but also psychology and how those two intersect you have to understand what incentivizes people and how to affect that with numbers and you also have to make it really fun basically you need to be a magician but also the fact that El Grande is 30 years old means I don't really have to sell you on the idea that this game is great it's 30 years old one or two people have played it by now and it keeps being reprinted somehow for some reason I don't know if you like games with a mean bite if you like conflict if you like weaving yourself out of impossible situations if you like reading people if you like taming chaos listen do yourself a favor play this game once at least a few notes on this recent production you might think that maybe it looks pleasant but nothing special this is what the printing before looked like and I just think this is a vast Improvement it's also almost entirely free of plastic the only compromise are these little Pips that connect the dials together and I think this is just overall A really lovely touch most El Grande fans will warn you that whilst this box says the game plays 2 to5 it really is five to five as in it's five players on nothing and I almost agree with that I think the four-player game is fine but this is a high player count game that really blooms when it's steeped with more humans in the next episode of my favorite game we'll talk auction games what do you think my pick will be what's your favorite auction game do you think El Grande did area majority best or do you think I'm wrong let me know in the comments and now it's time for the final Castillo reveal I wonder what's inside it's the Subscribe button oh and looking right behind it is our patreon plug if you subscribe listen if you subscribe a very wonderful 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Channel: No Pun Included

Views: 50,685

Keywords: no pun included, board game, review, npi, boardgames, boardgamegeeks, brettspiel, brettspiele, jeuxdesociete, tabletop, games, juego de mesa, gamenight, bgg, best board game, good board game, best board games, hot board games, thinky games, susd, watch it played, dice tower, strategy, mean games, el grande, classic, battle, amazing board games, my favourite game, my favorite game

Id: BGlXxhta6d0

Length: 14min 11sec (851 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 04 2024