El Grande

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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.

El Grande rulebookDownload

Glasgow

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In Glasgow, players travel the city (in an abstract manner) to collect resources, take special actions, and most important of all construct buildings. Build a factory, and you’ll receive more goods from it when other buildings are constructed in the right areas in relation to it; build a train station, and you may or may not score from it depending on what else you build; build a monument, and you’ll merely collect a lot of points — and in the end, points are what matters.

In slightly more detail, to set up the game, lay out a ring of town figures at random, with two of them being removed from play each game. Whoever is farther behind in the circle around town takes the next turn, advancing to whichever town figure they want to visit. Most of them give you resources — brick, steel, or money — and you have a limit on how many resources of each type you can hold. Some figures have two random building plans at them, and if you visit one with the right resources, you can pay them, then build something. If you pay extra, you can then build something else, too!

The first building is placed anywhere in the midst of play, then each subsequent building is placed adjacent to something already built, with the buildings eventually filling in a 4×5 (or 5×4, determined as the game progresses) grid of the players’ own creation. As soon as the twentieth building is erected, the game ends and players score points for what they built. Who has contributed more to the current state of Glasgow?

Glasgow is a quick tile laying and resource management game by designer Mandela Fernández-Grandon. Two players of ages 10 and up compete to become the most successful merchant in the city of Glasgow. A variable setup and, at least in the beginning of the game, an undefined placement grid promise a lot of replay value. After approximately 30 minutes, the players score their buildings and the player with most points wins the game.

Players start the game with just one stone and one steel in their warehouse. The “game board” is a circle made of variable action tiles in the center of the table. They depict the river Clyde, or more precisely the architects and contractors who use the river to ship, sell and buy goods. Both players start with their merchant figure on the architect starting tile. Like in Patchwork, the player who is last is the one who does the next turn (or turns if the player stays last in the circle). The player takes the turn by moving their figure to a free action tile, using its action immediately. Contract action tiles offer different kind of actions, e. g., getting or trading goods, activating factories, or doubling the next action.

Architect action tiles feature the central build action, which is used to build the city center. In order to build, the player needs to pay the depicted goods of an available building and then place that building in the middle of the circle. New buildings have to be orthogonally adjacent to already-placed buildings. In the beginning of the game, the city grid is undefined and players can add buildings wherever they want. Once the dimensions of the grid are either 5×4 or 4×5, the city center is defined and players can only fill out gaps until the 20thbulding is built and the 4×5/5×4 grid is complete. Afterwards both players count their victory points and the player with the most points wins the game!

Basing Figures Using Steel Bases for Identification and Storage

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We use storage boxes lined with magnetic sheets and the figures with steel discs or squares attached to the figures bottom. These steel bases can be written on to identify the particular figure and game. This particular game is Dune: War for Arrakis by CMON.

This storage arrangement protects the painted miniatures, allows easy access and grouping, plus, avoids the miniatures from slipping around in the storage containers and is a lot cheaper than the foam inserts and their respective bags. The case below is at a 60 degree tilt and the various groups can be segregated.

The process is very simple – identify and separate the figures into whatever groups you wish (or just one group), write any description onto the steel base with a permanent marker, glue an appropriate steel base to the bottom of the figure and place in the case.