My Favourite Game: El Grande

I haven't gotten to play el grande yet but I'm looking forward to playing it when I can.

My favorite area control game is: Battle for Rokugon
Favorite auction game: The estates

El Grande is my favourite area majority game. Mission Red Plant comes a close second!

My favorit auction game... Rising Sun (But the main mechanism is area control, but who controls the area is decided by an action... uh), Ra and You are Bluffing.
When it comes to Area Control I am suprised by your selection and the general popularity of El Grande.
It was too swingy for me. You mentioned how it is unpredictable and that even the players themselves want to be unpredictable. I think that leaves you with a very tactical and swingy game where opportunities are formed by the action cards which are revealed every round.
I prefer strategic games where you must think about longterm consequences and weight them against short term opportunities. Therefore I like Hansa Teutonica where you must decide when to stop upgrading your abilities and when to start building your network or Blood Rage where you have a strategic draft which determins your opportunities in the thactical area control phase. I also like the mild negotiation which is introduced in Rising Sun.

Hot take: Is El Grande not an auction game too? You have your cards from 1-13 which you us too bid on the right of action selection and this is crucial. So determining within this auction how important it is is to have a high bid or to fill up your caballeros is key to this game. Therefore an auction mechanism is key to this game similar to Rurik.

Second Hot take: Is the Area Majority mechanism presented in this game not also an auction. Players are using action cards to bid on different victory point generators and how these victory point generators are geographically connected is not so important in this game. In games like Bloodrage, Rsing Sun and Ankh the distribution and placement of your troops is way more important. The geography of El Grande does not play a significant role?

Another way too long commentary. Actually I like your content I hope my comments do not appear to be too rude. Thank You

As for your favorite auction game, it's gotta be Modern Art right? It's just the best and I love it with all my heart, can't think of a better one I've played

El Grande seems like an awesome board game! Too bad my board game group maxs out at 4 people (and even that is a stretch)...

El Grande and Tammany Hall are the only two anyone needs.

Ethnos

Rock lock solid. I'm in

Ethnos great too.

Seems like the subscriber counts has gone up ~20k since I last paid attention. Nice!

now i want to know about sidewind conlanguage.

Speaking of reprints of old classics, my all time favorite game is Dune, a game of conquest, diplomacy and betrayal.

So after praising The King is dead some years ago, you dont even mention it here... :(

Either you dont like it anymore or you dont dont count it as area majority....nor younsimply forgot it?

Ever play Inis?

I think your Right Efka.
😊
Although in personally think Inis is Equivalent to El Grande
🤭

Schadenfreudentears!!112

I love how much our host loves this game, but it sounds horrendous to me... 😅

My favourite area majority game is also my favourite auction game: Merchants of Amsterdam. It uses a Dutch auction system with a timer bringing the price down until someone slams the timer. You're figuring for area majority in 2 locations and on a goods track. It's built around the history of 17th century Dutch colonialism which is interesting, if not totally unproblematic.

My game group played this for the first time this past weekend and it was an total hit.

I won, but the way...just in case you were wondering...I don't win a lot...but I did.

Thx for the great review, I am fond of your humor🤣.What do you think of DEI : Dive et Impera since it's an area majority game too ?

No love for Rococo? El grande takes the cake but I do love Rococo. For auction I have to go with Cyclades followed by every Knizia auction game.

1) Goa (probably still the best auction/bidding game)
2) Genoa (has that social aspect, you seem to like..)
3) Ra (well it's Ra)

This is about your podcast not this video but “SEA-SPAN” was a severely underrated pun by Elaine 👏👏👏

Play Tikal too

But I still share more love to El Grande

Is it better to get the Big Box or the base game is already all that is needed?

Maybe it is just me but I don't see Hansa Teutonica as area majority, since it is so often position that breaks ties and actually controlling cities is just one way to score points.

In terms of auction games, I think The Estates and High Society are so good but for different reasons. High Society is so simple pure, like dancing on a razor's edge, and The Estates is such hellish mechanism, an utter meatgrinder of a game where the winning move might actually be not to play i.e. not own a construction company.

yknow..that tower...they could've made it out of plastic, put some lights on it and had an app interact with it and apparently people would've loved it. Damn, the publisher missed out on an added $50+ per game.. ;)

I picked up a copy of RUMBLE NATION DELUXE and it's scratching that El Grande itch but in tiny tiny tight fun form. 2-4p, 25-30m. Also does Inis count? Those would be my only arguments for games outside your Good Area Majority Games list that are not already in it. Still countable on one hand!

So, it's an Area Plurality game.

My hope for the auction game episode is that we continue with greats from the 90s and go with Ra.

I know Ra is the auction hotness right now, but it will be interesting to see what you pick… sidereal confluence has bidding in it…

Area Majority seems like a genuinely hard mechanism to do well. The two that I really like in the genre are The King is Dead and Rumble Nation, both have somewhat similar ideas executed super well. Though, maybe they are technically more area control given how the region scoring works.

El Grande is a real timeless pearl

Completely agree with all your points, great video. My top area based games of all time are Ankh, Tigris & Euphrates, El Grande, and Elite 2nd Dawn. If you allow Hansa Teutonica which I like a lot, I’d add Concordia.

Having recently played this. It's great. I just wish the reprint was more exciting. This rightfully needed a reprint, but you can clearly feel a lot of buzz about RA, even though that game didn't change. It just has a more exciting and nicer reprint.
It kind of doens't matter, but it's fair to say that this board it bland.

great review - and i now have El Grande! Really really good game - thanks Efka

This looks fun. However I have a big question.

When I look the game up on Amazon to purchase I see it is called "El Grande 2.0".

What is the difference between the 1.0 version and the 2.0 version?

It's gonna be RA.

love the use of John Cage <3

Im not the biggest fan of that kind of games but damn that sounds interestnig

I think your pick will be Ra.

Pax Pamir is also a majority area game; did you like it too little to include it?

Schadenfreude and tears 😂 Watching here from Germany and I enjoy the way you are presenting that game! Didn’t even know that Schadenfreude seems to be well known in English board game situations 😊

Props for pronouncing Mihály Csíkszentmihályi almost perfectly.

This game is so good it’s out of stock everywhere. If someone knows where I can get this game I would love to buy it.

I like Dominant Species. It really expands on the concept

I got Sideburns Conscience and... yeah... it was a mistake. But then I got El Grande. And what a gem of a game.

Tammany Hall is right up there alongside El Grande for me, and also a 5 to 5 player game (it's fine at 4, i guess, but more humans = more backstabbing).

Ankunding Ramp

For those who don't know there is a most amazing story behind that "What your brain looks like" clip. The avant garde composer John Cage appeared on the panel show "I've got a secret" to play his piece "Water Walk". The piece involves him turning on and off several radios. Before air this became a demarcation dispute with union members about whether non union personnel could operate electronic equipment on stage. Cage agreed to do the performance but hitting and pushing the radios instead of turning them on and off.
The host asks Cage if it is ok for the audience to laugh. He says it is ok as he considers it preferable to tears.
The whole section of the show is available if you look for Water Walk - it is quite amazing.