David Ashleydale
United States
Oakland
California
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I'm having people over for a 4- or 5-player game of El Grande this weekend because I want to try the Intrigue and King expansion. However, none of the players have ever played El Grande at all before.
Do you think it would be too confusing for new players to jump right in to the expansion? Should we just play the regular unexpanded El Grande as their first play?
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Gary Weinfurther
United States
West Bloomfield
Michigan
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I think you already know the answer. The base game is great as-is, and since your guests haven't played it before, that's what you should stick with.
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Mikael Ölmestig
Sweden
Halmstad
Halland
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I don't necessarily think the Intrigue and King expansion is that much more complicated, but I think there are two things you should consider before playing it.
1. There are a lot of decisions before the game starts, which can make it a rough start for new players. They can't really expect what cards are good and how the interaction between them works before playing it (ie. some cards that looks great might be hard to use effectively).
2. The cards you choose is hidden information and you choose all at once (to keep). That means that you have to explain every card before start. In the regular game you get five cards every round (four new cards) which is much easier to digest.
In any case, the first time you play with the new cards I recommend that only pick among the cards evenly divisable by 10.
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Dick Hunt
United States
Ovid
Michigan
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randomlife wrote: Do you think it would be too confusing for new players to jump right in to the expansion? Should we just play the regular unexpanded El Grande as their first play?
I think so, yes.
El Grande can be tricky to learn, particularly if your group isn't filled with Eurogamers, or at least folks with experience at some kind of boardgaming. It doesn't sound like that's the sort of group you've got, or else at least some of them would probably be familiar with basic El Grande already--it's quite highly ranked here on the 'Geek.
Therefore, I'd strongly recommend that you teach them the base game first and see how they receive it. If their reaction is enthusiastic, you might just get away with diving into Intrigue & King in your next game. I strongly suspect, however, that they would like the expansion a lot better only after you thoroughly hook them on the original. That will probably take a couple of games of vanilla El Grande first.
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Play Games - Interact - Have Fun!
United States
California
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randomlife wrote: I'm having people over for a 4- or 5-player game of El Grande this weekend because I want to try the Intrigue and King expansion. However, none of the players have ever played El Grande at all before.
Do you think it would be too confusing for new players to jump right in to the expansion? Should we just play the regular unexpanded El Grande as their first play?
YES - most definately!
It would be a huge mistake to try and introduce that expansion to a bunch of first time players. The whole deck selection process will not make any sense to them as they will not understand what any of the cards do or why they would want to pick (or leave out) any of them.
Intrigue and the King changes the way the game works fundamentally and to introduce them to more complication right off the bat means they'll be overwhelmed and you'll lose whatever chance you had of making them become fans of the game.
If there is one thing I've realized in all my years of teaching these games to people is that it has ALWAYS been a mistake to push people to a level of familiarity that they are not ready for simply because I want to try a new expansion or variant.
I did this with Settlers of Catan - I brought two newbies into a Cities and Knights game without them ever having played Settlers. The game was too complicated for them as they had no familiarity with the basic premise. Simple decisions for an experienced Settlers player were difficult and confusing for them as the whole overall picture was too much.
If you want to get a group to like El Grande, play it as a base game 3-4 times first and wait for the enthusiasm to be very high before switching it up a bit.
That's just my .02 but, I'm speaking from experience here.
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