Revisiting: El Grande

Has some family over to play games yesterday.  Ending up having way too much family over to play games.  Most of them just came to generally socialize.  Which is cool and all, in some ways.

Ended up played some El Grande with a few of the more hard core gamers.  I think it went pretty well.  We had one 12 yro.  He sort of understood what was going on.

It's interesting that El Grande once won the SdJ.  I mean, it wouldn't stand a damn chance these days.  I went over explaining the game, and a couple eyes glossed over.  In the end, all the adults had it figured out by the first scoring round.  A couple of them even gave me a pretty good chase right up until the very end.


As for the game?  The first time I played it I thought it was "meh".  But I played it at my first GenCon where it was nothing but new game after new game.  After a couple years of retrospection, I admit that it seemed better than most of the crop from that GenCon.  So I eventually tracked down a copy to play again.

Well, I think it was worth it.  It's not worth playing unless you have 4 I imagine, but then I could still see it doable.

I really liked the Castille.  Not exactly for the hidden nature, but for the tough balancing act you must make.  The guys you put in the Castille have the chance to help you score two regions.  The Castille and where-ever they paradrop into.  That's great to get two scoring chances from one dude.  However, if you put a ton in there, then you'll be missing out on having a nice spread on the board.  Squeeking one dude in to get third in a region is a lot more efficient than adding him to your horde in the Castille.  But it's very hard to tell where the perfect balance is between these options.

I'm glad I have it.  Now I just need to go find the bigger 6" dildo version of the El Grande so my wife isn't disappointed about the "little King" in our old copy of the game.