El Grande

Use your caballeros to control regions of medieval Spain, keeping clear of the King!

Difficulty: Medium

PLEASE keep an eye on your messages as I may need to message you. You will need to reply within 24 hours or potentially lose your place.

In this award-winning game, players take on the roles of Grandes in medieval Spain. The king's power is flagging, and these powerful lords are vying for control of the various regions. To that end, you draft caballeros (knights) into your court and subsequently move them onto the board to help seize control of regions. After every third round, the regions are scored, and after the ninth round, the player with the most points is the winner.

In each of the nine rounds, you select one of your 13 power cards to determine turn order as well as the number of caballeros you get to move from the provinces (general supply) into your court (personal supply).

A turn then consists of selecting one of five action cards which allow variations to the rules and additional scoring opportunities in addition to determining how many caballeros to move from your court to one or more of the regions on the board (or into the castillo - a secretive tower). Normally, you may only place your caballeros into regions adjacent to the one containing the king. The one hard and fast rule in El Grande is that nothing may move into or out of the king's region. One of the five action cards that is always available each round allows you to move the king to a new region. The other four action cards vary from round to round.

The goal is to have a caballero majority in as many regions (and the castillo) as possible during a scoring round. Following the scoring of the castillo, you place any cubes you had there into the region you secretly indicated on your region dial. Each region is then scored individually according to a table printed in that region. Two-point bonuses are awarded for having sole majority in the region containing your Grande and in the region containing the king.

(Description from BoardGameGeek)

Price: $100

First-timers, or people I haven't met before, will be asked to confirm their booking. I'll message you with details after your RSVP. You need to reply within 24 hours to keep your spot.

No outside food is allowed at the venue. It is also a shoes-off venue.

No-show and lateness: anyone not showing up, dropping out on the day or late the night before or being late a number of times without good reason may be blacklisted from my future games.