El Grande
The Big .... what?
If Settlers of Catan stormed the beachheads during the German invasion, El Grande secured them. Before this, Americans considered German (or “Euro”) clever and strategic, but also a bit … fluffy. Sure, you could send the robber to block your opponents’ settlements, or move backwards to the last turtle, but where was the “Take that!” Where was the conflict?
Of course, that absence was the entire point. You didn’t want your little brother/sister (or son/daughter) to throw a fit after getting attacked, then unleash a sea of tears that could drown the family. Designers were trying to avoid Louis CK’s vision of Monopoly with a six year old “not emotionally developed enough to handle her inevitable loss.”
Like Baseball … there should be no crying.
For somen, that’s a problem. Enter El Grande.
Wolfgang Kramer and Richard Ulrich’s El Grande doesn’t go full “Ameritrash” and let you murder the other player’s pieces wily nily… just their hopes. You can’t kill units, but you can kick them off the board, or move them out into the boonies. Thematically, you and the other Grandes (“big men”) are trying to influence the various regions of Spain. You have to move your units from the provinces to the court, which makes them available to be put into the board: on any unit adjacent to the king1.
But while there are no direct attacks, there are plenty of elbows thrown. Each player has an (identical) deck of cards used to pick special powers2, and no two players can duplicate them. Then you might gnash your teeth as the special power you want gets taken. One of those powers (or more) may send His Majesty wandering, which will lock (and unlock!) some areas. Each power also lets the player add influence to the board or castle.
Every few rounds, all the regions score and after three scorings you have a winner. This “Area Control” mechanism predates El Grande3, but it greatly extended the reach of the genre.
And some special cards would let you directly attack and remove your opponent’s troops. Maybe enough to cause a small tear to well up in the youngest’s eyes. But apart from allowing direct confrontations, El Grande simply is too complex for (most) young children. This is not a wargame with a 20 page rulebook and rules that look like the tax code; the game still could be played in 90 minutes like a family game, but El Grande melded the European sensibility with the aggression that (most) American games had. Even to this day, it is one of the most confrontational winners of the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award.
And it did it well. To this day, El Grande (barely) remains in BGG’s Top 100 Games4, a ranking ridiculously biased towards newer games5. It wasn’t the cultural juggernaut of Settlers of Catan, but inside the gaming community it was nearly as big.
El Grande’s influence (both in mechanisms and in blending a European sensibility with the more confrontational American style) and longevity both point towards it being an easy entry into The 100 Most Influential Games of the 20th Century.
Nothing happens under His Royal, Baleful presence.
Higher cards picking first, but lower cards moving more units to court.
The previous SdJ winner (Manhattan) also had it, but only a few hundred of the over 7,000 games labelled with “Area Control” predate it, and most of them are long forgotten.
Last checked on Nov 1st, 2025.
Literally 98 of the Top 100 are from this century. That fact (and others like it) formed part of the inspiration for this substack.
Another shoo-in. And a game I'm still playing from time to time.
It was a surprise SdJ winner at the time as it's much more a gamers' game than the SdJ jury's usual fare.