Alhambra

Game of the Year at the Essen games fair 2003, yet 184th on the BGG website. There's a reason for this: it's a wonderfuly designed game with regards asthetics and mechanics, but lacks depth of strategy and perhaps relies a little too much on luck.

So when am I going to play this then? There are 3 senarios:

1. When I'm tired and I don't want to tax my brain too much.
2. If I want to introduce someone to Euro-games.
3. If I want a game that I can play in under an hour.

It's surprising how often the above 3 senarios are common. Therefore it deserves a place on any gamers bookcase (or should that be gamecase?).

A little about the game itself:
you need to build a palace. You each start with a fountain and buy bits to your palace which you expand. Cleverly, the pieces of palace have varying amounts of wall around them, making it challenging to fit into your own palace (and often impossible). There are always 4 different things to buy, each with its own currency. When they are bought, something new replaces it at random.

There are 3 stages when scoring. The scoring system is very beautiful. In stage 1, points only go to the players with the most pieces of a certain type (e.g. if I have 3 gardens and my opponents have 1 each, I get the points). In round 2 the people with the second most will now also get some points and in round 3 the people with the 3rdmost get points too.

That's it! And of course most points wins.

In summary:
A tidy little game, that's swift on time and gentle on cognition. It lacks depth though, which strategy and luck-elimination junkies will get frustrated by. But then even marathon runners enjoy a gentle strole through a park, right?