Operation: Game Night
Travis Smith, Jared Erickson, and Clay Gable get together to discuss the latest and greatest in board games in this weekly podcast. What's hot, what's hitting the table, featured discussions about board games and the board gaming culture, and the primary mission objective- to play more board games!
Operation: Game Night
Debrief: Pure, Simple, & Mean- El Grande Stands the Test of Time
Dive into the enduring brilliance of El Grande, the 1995 area control masterpiece that revolutionized board gaming and continues to captivate players nearly three decades later. Despite its unassuming appearance, this Spiel des Jahres winner delivers some of the purest strategic gameplay you'll ever experience.
What makes El Grande special isn't flashy components or complex rules—it's the elegant tension woven throughout every decision. The dual-layered card system forces constant trade-offs: play high-numbered power cards to choose actions first but receive fewer caballeros, or go low to amass forces but potentially miss out on key opportunities. Every action reshapes the board in profound ways, creating a gloriously interactive experience where no plan survives contact with your opponents.
The game's crowning achievement might be the Castillo—a separate tower where players secretly stash caballeros before using a hidden dial to deploy them during scoring rounds. This brilliant mechanism introduces just enough uncertainty and game theory to prevent the experience from becoming purely calculable. Who will outthink whom when those forces are finally revealed?
While modern games often rely on elaborate components or convoluted rule systems to create depth, El Grande achieves greatness through pristine simplicity. Nothing feels extraneous, and every mechanism serves the core experience. For players weary of solitary tableau-building games with minimal interaction, El Grande offers a refreshing alternative where you're constantly engaged with your opponents.
Looking to experience this classic yourself? El Grande plays beautifully at four players in about 45-60 minutes and is available on Board Game Arena for those wanting to try before they buy. Listen as we explain why this unassuming game deserves its place in the Board Game Geek Hall of Fame and why, after all these years, it still delivers one of the most satisfying gaming experiences available.
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what is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the operation game night podcast, the only board gaming podcast there ever was. Joining me, as always, the co-peddler on this bicycle built for two Clayton Gable, how are you doing, clay?
Speaker 2:I am doing great Missing out on the big, big, big fella Jared. We're all big fellas here, but he would be considered the El Grande of this podcast.
Speaker 1:He is the El Grande, the big papa, the El Jefe, but we will be missing him today because he's got family in town. So, if you may have noticed, this past week we shifted our schedules around a little bit. Going forward, we were going to do a Monday, wednesday, friday schedule for Debrief, special Ops and then Over the Fence. Three episodes per week is a little bit too much for us to handle at the moment. Life got in the way of board gaming. Board gaming got in the way of podcasts and around and around we go.
Speaker 1:So, going forward, we will shoot for a Tuesday Thursday release schedule Midnight Eastern time on Tuesday and Thursday. But we aren't going to set a scheduled release for what topic we are covering each bout. So it might be a couple of debriefs in a row, it could be a couple special ops, it might be an OTF sprinkled in there every once in a while. But we just want to make the most out of our time, the most out of your time as a listener, and we hope to keep this thing rolling. We are almost at one year, clayton, can you believe that?
Speaker 2:I actually can. I can't remember a time without this podcast.
Speaker 1:Life started when we started this podcast. That's correct. That's how it feels. Yeah, so in order for us to bring you better content more often, we're just going to shoot for that Tuesday Thursday window and we're going to keep this thing rolling for as long as we can, till the wheels fall off.
Speaker 2:Heck. Yeah, I got a wobble, but I'm going to keep on rolling.
Speaker 1:That's right, wobbling like an El Camino, but today we're talking El Grande. Clayton, you played El Grande, the classic from 1995, published by Hansen Gluck. Is that the copy that you played? I did? Yeah, legend Wolfgang Kramer, richard Ulrich, Doris Mathaus and Steven Sonnenberger does the art Clay. Why'd you go back to?
Speaker 2:this classic Guys. I gotta give credit where credit's due Decision Space, the podcast, the guys on there. They just rant and rave about El grande and how great it is. I'll be honest with you the cover looked boring and old and I had no interest in playing it until I heard these guys talk about how awesome of a game this oldie but goodie is and it it I. I tread lightly here because we are talking about board game royalty, if you will. Oh yeah, this is. You know, you said 1995. It won the spiel in 1996. In 2025, it got inducted into the board game geek hall Fame. So this game's been around, it's well-regarded and it stands the test of time in my opinion. But let's talk about it.
Speaker 2:So in El Grande, it is area control at its purest form. All right, all you're doing on your turns is placing caballeros out onto the map and moving caballeros around the map in order to have the majority of people there when the scoring rounds come up. So how this plays out is everybody has a hand of power cards, so there's two interesting card play dynamics that happen each round of the game. So the first thing that happens is everybody has their hand of power cards that go one to 13. Everybody's got one to 13. The first player plays one of their cards. The higher the number card means you get to go first in the next phase, but you also get to add less caballeros to your court. So there's a province where it's kind of like the general supply of your caballeros of your color, and then to get those into your court where you can then eventually place them onto the map, you have to play power cards that get them into your court and so if you play a high power card, you may get to get your first pick of the next phase, but you're getting less caballeros into your court to place out onto the map. So everybody goes around, plays their numbered power card and then the next part happens where you get to pick one of the available action cards.
Speaker 2:So these action cards also have a tension in them where there is an action that is beneficial to you. But they also are dual purpose in that you do the action and then you get to place X amount of caballeros out onto the map. So you know the big. The card that's always available is the king card. So there's a king out on the map that travels around and around the map and wherever he is on the map is like a lockdown region no caballeros go in, no caballeros go out. But if you have control of the King's region, when the scoring phase comes around, you get an extra two points. So it creates this interesting tension there. But that card, that action card, lets you move the King wherever you want and place five caballeros out onto the map, as long as you're not placing them into the king's region but they, they have to go adjacent to the king's space, correct?
Speaker 2:that is correct. Yep, good call. Yeah, not wherever you want adjacent. So you're playing your power cards, then you're taking turns, picking an action card and taking the action and placing meeples on the map. Some of the other actions that might come up are scoring action cards which, let you say, score all four point regions. You might opt to take that card instead of, maybe, the king's card and score all four point regions because you're going to get more points than everybody else for that. So you play three rounds and then a scoring phase happens.
Speaker 2:Now this is interesting. There's this little castle, castillo, on the side of the board. I didn't mention it before, but when you're placing your caballeros on the map, you can always place caballeros into this Castillo and the Castillo. At the beginning of the scoring phase you reveal it and I mean you can try and count who's putting what in there. I never was very good at that, but you reveal it. It's fun. Whoever has the most scores? You know five points. Second most, three points, third, most one point. And then you take a little secret dial and you put it to whatever region on the map you want and you can send those caballeros that were in the castillo out to double dip on the map and influence another region again.
Speaker 2:The. It's not the king's region. You can't go in or out of that. That rule is pretty steadfast. So you do that before the scoring round starts. So you get that fun reveal. You get to, you know, maybe jockey to get control of another region.
Speaker 2:When you just go by the numbers, everybody's getting points for the different regions and of that you start another three round sequence playing your power cards, playing your action cards, jockeying for pitch position around the map, another scoring round. You do that all one more time and it's the end of the game. Whoever has the most points wins. But the weight on this it said like 2.9. Maybe I think it's a bit high for teaching. It's pretty simple. You tell somebody to play a power card and then they pick an action card. It's not a complicated game to teach but the implications of those decisions when you might want to go low, so that in the next round you can be the first player to play your power card and you throw out the 13. So now you can move the king to the region where you already have the most presence and you're going to get that extra two points and another bonus you can get is the namesake. You have an El Grande and you also get two points if you are the winner in the region where you have your El Grande. If you don't, if you're not the winner in that region, it does nothing for you. So you're really it kind of like gives you a little bit of focus of like, all right, you know my El Grande is here, I need to try, and you know, win that region every time. So I'm not missing out on those two points and that kind of stays put.
Speaker 2:There are some action cards that let you move it about. I'm trying to think of some of the other actions. I mean, it's a mean game. You can move other people's caballeros around the map. You can take their caballeros off the map. So I think the action deck is split up into the five different sets, its own like unique flavor to it. So I think maybe the threes I'll let you place three caballeros out on the map and kind of have a scoring criteria. The fours, might, you know, let you do some special action. The twos are something mean. Usually where you can, you know you only get to place two out, but you can really screw somebody else up and um, yeah it's. It's just two very clever, interesting mechanisms in like auctioning for that turn order and then choosing the right action card at the right time to try and optimize your point scoring.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I just had a blast with this game the three times I played it so this game I've heard it discussed for years and years and years on every board game podcast there is. It's always been a blind spot for me. I have never actually played El Grande, okay. So now that you went back to it, after listening to the analyses from the Decision Space podcast, did you have a new appreciation for it? Like, what specifically were they hitting on that made you interested on going back to this one?
Speaker 2:They, I mean they really have an appreciation for the dynamics that come out in in those action cards and you know knowing when to play your. You know keeping that 13 power card around is a big deal because you can. You can assure yourself that you get the cards you want. But also, playing the low card, know that is going to get you a lot of caballeros into your court that you can then place out. So they just really love that, that tension there. And also you know just the interaction with players.
Speaker 2:There's nothing you're doing that is not completely engaging with everybody else you're playing with. You know every move somebody makes is reshaping the map in some interesting way that causes you to have to rethink what you might want to do. Okay, and I mean this is the giant, the shoulders that all area control games that have come after have stood upon, you know, and it does it purely and it does it well and for my money. Like this isn't. Area control Isn't like a genre of game that I was in love with.
Speaker 2:But after playing this a few times I really gained an appreciation for this, this mechanism and and just that, that jockeying and flow and you know, trying to eke out a point here or a point there by even. You know winning's great, but, you know, are you setting yourself up to get second and third in some of the other regions, or are you not considering that because you're too focused on winning this one? That is, you know, the highest scoring region and everybody's fighting over that one. But you know, meanwhile there's this one over here and now an action card came out that lets you place a new scoring tile on it. So that's another thing you can do.
Speaker 2:Like now, this region's worth, you know, worth six points instead of four when you win it. So, yeah, it's so simple, but it's so deep and it's mean and it's interactive. It's what I enjoy in a board game. Right now, I'm in a phase where the head the heads down, just like trying to build my own tableau or engine is. You know, it's not what I want to do when I'm sitting down to play a board game. I want to be involved with the other players like this, and you're involved with each other in the ground day. There's no avoiding it so I.
Speaker 1:So I feel like the actual mechanisms of the game, like bidding for turn order and the area control and the unique action cards that you're playing, all of that maybe it was new in 1995, right, this is like the big boom, the big bang for board games was right around this time. Right Like this is when publishers just started going crazy is like the. The big boom, the big bang for board games is right around this time. Right like this is when, like, publishers just started going crazy. I feel like these mechanisms have been done since, but this one seems to have the staying power. Right like everyone refers back to el grande as like the gold standard for this type of area control type mechanism. So what is it about this game specifically that makes it stick around, when others have come after this and iterated on this over and over and over again?
Speaker 2:I think I well, it's definitely not the artwork and theme, at least for me, even though this new version looks a little nicer and you get, you know, actual meeples instead of the cubes from the from the old version. I don't know. Yeah, like I, like I said, I heard about this game. I knew it was an important game, but I saw it on the shelf for years and I was like there's no way I'm playing that thing. It looks boring as hell. Um, but yeah, I think it's just the purity and simplicity of it, like they're.
Speaker 2:They didn't tack on a bunch of extra stuff to try and, you know, make it more complicated or you know, just mechanisms for mechanism's sake. They said we're going to do an auction for turn order, Then you're going to play a power card and put your people out, and there's enough meat on that that people can really get something out of it. And another thing that the decision space folks really talked about, that might have pushed me over the edge when I, when I heard him talking about it, I was like, oh, that actually sounds pretty fun. Was that castillo?
Speaker 2:I touched on it briefly in the gameplay, but it is such a fun piece of the game where you know it's a very knowable game 95% of the time. But then when you put those you know meeples in the Castillo and everybody is trying to think like where is Travis going to send his? Where should I send mine? Because you know you mess that up. You know you're forfeiting any number of points. You know you think you're going to go somewhere and get first and also have your grande there and have the King and you misjudge it and you Travis sends out you know more meeples there than me and now all of a sudden I wasted that huge opportunity to double dip from the Castillo and it can hurt. And so it's that type of you know it's not perfect information and I like that.
Speaker 1:It's a perfect distillation of game theory, right? Like I think that you are going to this space here, but do I send my space there? That do I send my people there? Do you think that I know that you're sending your people there so that you change and then you get like something completely uncontested? It's like this perfect distillation of game theory down into like a secret dial that you get to adjust to say I want to send my people here for control. So yeah, that's so clean. I love that that dial.
Speaker 2:That dial comes up too in some of the action cards, which is a lot of fun, like everybody has to select a region on their dial and then they have to remove all their people from it. So you're like, you know, like that's one of the mean action cards somebody can pick and you know, just to mess with everybody else. But yeah, I played this on board game arena too. Not quite as fun as in person and just the flow of the game. But why? Why on the? Why I didn't speak on board game arena? Because I've never once been like, yes, I love that play of a game on board game arena, yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 1:Fair that's. But it's.
Speaker 2:It's on there for anybody that wants to try this out if you're listening to this and you're like, uh, like me, and you're looking at it and think the theme looks boring and the art looks boring. I promise you the gameplay isn't boring and it's easy to get into and you will have a good time. I I mean, I imagine, unless you get really butthurt and don't like people messing with your stuff, because that that that's gonna happen and that's just the game. Like there's never a round where your plans don't get messed up. Yeah, and it's just adjusting and reacting to that and trying to compensate where you can. So El Grande certainly earned its place on my shelf and I've been itching to get it played again.
Speaker 1:When you played it. How many players did you play it at?
Speaker 2:Four every time we played it three. How many players did you play it at Four every time we played it three times in a row. Oh, dang, four players. Yeah, I brought it over to a little game day we were supposed to have. I was just like you know what.
Speaker 2:I was leaving Colorado this was like the week before I was leaving and I heard Decision Space on this. I had just listened to their deep dive in it. I was like, all right, I'm going to get it and I'm going to take it this game day, because this might be the last chance I have to play this game for a long time. And we played it once and everybody was like, whoa, that was fun. It was like maybe 45, 60 minutes at four players. And then we played it again and was, oh, that's really good. And then we played one more time and as soon as I left I had gotten a board game arena invite by all the people that played it. So I mean, it was, it was a hit with all those players. I mean they're, they're the type of people that like that kind of interactive game though.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you know, it's tough to say, your mileage may vary. But yeah, do you have it, travis? I don't. I don't have this. I've never played it. I've never had the opportunity to play it, like I've never shown up to a game night and it's been sitting on the table like, hey, you want to play el grande? And I've turned it down like just never had the opportunity. I've always heard people bring it up in conversation or bring it up on podcasts, but I've never actually had the opportunity. And now I'm very curious yeah, I you should do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm definitely have. I made you want to play this game.
Speaker 1:Yes, you have Games that have simple rule sets that are easy to learn and difficult to master are my jam. I love that and plus, if you can play it in 45 minutes, that's a bonus nowadays.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's probably generous.
Speaker 2:I think there's a short version version, like a quicker way to play. I think you only play maybe two scoring rounds, which is six total rounds then, um, but yeah, that that like three round act also just like keeps a nice game flow where it's like three rounds of doing stuff and then you score, yeah, and three rounds of doing stuff and then you score. So it's like that third round and every set is like kind of carries a little more weight, and so people are like man, am I holding on to my 13 for that one? So I can, you know, it's just there's just a lot of cool decisions and and rewarding feelings and yeah, it's good. But I will say, if, if you heard this and you're like maybe Clay did a decent job talking about it, I implore you go listen to Decision Space, talk about this game.
Speaker 2:Those guys, they love this game. They've played it hundreds and hundreds of times versus my four and they have the full depth, and hundreds of times versus my four, and they have the full depth and appreciation that a game that's in the board game geek hall of fame deserves.
Speaker 1:so, yeah, don't sleep on this oldie I feel like every time people online they start posting, they're like have you played these hundred greatest games of all time and it's a lot of the you know the hall of fame board games I always feel like I'm just left so wanting for my list of played games, because I there's some of these classics that I've just never gotten around to. Right like, for the longest time, I had never played agricola, I had never played El Grande. Yeah, you know there's so many of those games that are still out there that, and I I love that because I can appreciate all these new things for what they are. And then it's always great to go back and say, well, this is where that came from. And El Grande is one of those, like case studies, where you can go back and appreciate it for what it is and it still stands up to those new heavy, shiny boxes that are sitting on your shelf and it stands on its own and it can hold its weight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is interesting going back to games like this and it's just like you can feel it almost. It's like a whole different design philosophy that, like we've come up in the last, you know, 10 years or so in board gaming, which is, you know, it's a decent bit of time, but there's a whole history of board gaming back there, gaming back there and and we've been, you know, come up in this kind of like care bear era where you know you get bonuses every time someone takes an action. You know, things like that are kind of like the palatable design standard of the day. Yeah, and these games from the 90s, they don't care about that, they're just like we're gonna give you some tight mechanisms and let you interact with your other players and it's gonna, it's gonna be fun yeah, I love that they don't.
Speaker 1:And plus, like like the euros of old right, it's not relying on any sort of fancy artwork, that's for damn sure. Like. The mechanisms stand on their own and they're so distilled and pure that, like you can really get a sense of what makes this game shine, without all the fancy bells and whistles that you would normally associate with a game of this caliber today. Right, yeah yeah, that's awesome, cool. Well, thank you for sharing. I'm excited to play this one yeah, I hope you get to.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you want to, I I hate to even offer it because I hate people's experience of a game to be on Board Game Arena, but feel free to fire up a game with me on Board Game Arena and some randos.
Speaker 1:We'll give it a shot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can invite you and some of the guys I played it with before, because they know how to play, if you're into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm into it. All right, can I give a quick three-minute shout-out for another game? Yeah, I hate to hijack your debrief.
Speaker 2:Wow, I feel very hijacked.
Speaker 1:This has been burning in my heart that I need to tell you, as somebody that was a prior Marvel Champions player that has no longer played it and or sold the copy Talking about you oh, I thought you were talking about yourself.
Speaker 2:I did not.
Speaker 1:I need to give a shout out to this game published by Fantasy Flight Games, marvel Champions. It's been going on for 10 years plus now and they had this pretty big lull in the middle. Started off strong initial wave of characters, super thematic, great, awesome to play. Mechanics are relatively streamlined. I know that you got frustrated, digging the rule book a lot. Okay, how to dip right, like some of those expansions were of varying quality. Some people liked what they were getting, some people were not. These past two expansions, or three big box expansions that they've done, being Next Generation, mutant, genesis and Agents of SHIELD are phenomenal. They're so good.
Speaker 1:I have been high on this game for the past couple of expansions and it seems like the community at large is also very hot on this recent surge of this game. They've released great characters that fit in well with the old. They're doing this cool thing now where they're actually doing other iterations of the same characters they've already released. So, like Wave 1, you had a Black Panther that was released. That was like T'Challa doing other iterations of the same characters they've already released. So, like wave one, you had a black panther that was a really release. That was like cachala. Now they did black panther, that is shuri, that plays completely different. So you can potentially have like two black panthers that work alongside each other.
Speaker 1:And the big thing that they introduced was the uh aspects that you can assign to characters. So like in x-men, right, you have a team of x-men that are all fighting against the forces of evil and amongst those x-men they each fill different roles. So previously you had like your justice, your protection, your aggression, like those kind of suits almost, of characters. Now you can assign them roles, so like if I have cyclops, I can make him justice and I can make him the leader of the group, and that leader has different play between the different aspects of the different characters.
Speaker 1:It's kind of a lot, yeah it just sounds like more complicated than yeah, I even needed it to be, but it's a lot, it's a lot if you're in the world like that's cool, right that's I just wanted to give a shout out because this game, uh, it sometimes floats up into the hotness when they release these new expansions. But if you're looking to get into this now, these most recent expansions the x-men ones and now the agents of shield are like better than they've been since the beginning, and the characters that they are releasing are great if you have any reference for x-men. So I had to give a shout out, since we finished early with el grande for marvel champions wow couldn't be more different could not be more different.
Speaker 1:You want to get bogged down in a rule book. Marvel champions, uh is your, your path to glory. But uh, man, I I'm excited to play some el grande now. I I'm gonna fire that up right after we get off of this all right buddy let's shut her down. Let's shut her down for operation game night. I have been travis, he has been clay and we're out. Thank you.
