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Imagine you go for a meal at your local Indian restaurant. You could order your favourite curry and rice, or you could go for the manager’s special.
On the one hand you have a simple, affordable meal that you know that you’re going to enjoy. On the other you could splash out a little bit more for a lot of extra dishes. Some of these are going to enhance your meal, whilst others might leave you feeling bloated and maybe even a little queasy.
Undoubtedly the Special does represent excellent value for money. But, if you don’t actually eat or enjoy it all, does it justify the extra cost?
That, in a nutshell, is the Alhambra versus Alhambra Big Box conundrum.
So What's In The (Big) Box?
A lot!
You get the original Alhambra plus five expansions, each of which has four different modules. So that’s a light to medium weight game plus twenty extra modules.
For anyone unfamiliar with Alhambra, it’s a tile-laying game where the goal is to build the best possible walled city by purchasing buildings using four different currencies.
Scoring takes place at three different intervals and is determined by the number of each type of building that a player has in their Alhambra. Plus the length of their city walls.
The Modules
Each of the twenty modules is completely standalone, so they can be mixed and matched however you want. You don’t have to use any of them and, in theory, you could try and use them all. But you won’t!
Some are very simple. For example, The Diamonds is basically a currency wild card and Vizier’s Favour allows you to play out of turn to grab a particular building that you want. The Change is another simple, but very useful addition. With it you receive currency coin(s) whenever you end up ‘over-paying’ to buy a building. These coins can then be used alongside your regular currency and often enable you to pay the ‘right money’ when buying a building and thus gain a bonus action.
Other modules are slightly more complex. The City Gates, for example, allows players to place buildings in areas of their Alhambra that were previously unavailable to them. The City Walls is a useful tool for fixing holes in your city wall. This can be particularly beneficial later in the game.
Finally, there are some modules in the Alhambra Big Box which are a little more convoluted and cumbersome. For example, The Street Trader, which introduces citizens into your Alhambra and The Art of The Moors, which brings in culture. For me, these are a ‘step too far’. They add just too much complexity and take the game too far away from its core.
Making Sense Of The Modules
Although there are twenty different modules, they actually impact the game in one of six different ways:
- Turn order (Vizier’s Favour, Thieves, Power of the Sultan)
- Money (Currency Exchange Cards, Diamonds, Change, Caravanserai)
- Scoring (Bonus Cards, New Score Cards)
- Additional buildings (Workers Huts, Camps, Bazaars)
- Alhambra construction (City Gates, City Walls, Master Builders)
- Other (Characters, Street Trader, Invaders, Treasure Chamber, Art of the Moors)
Some of the modules add additional building tiles (eg The Camps) whereas others add in additional cards to the money card deck (eg Currency Exchange). Adding these modules will naturally increase the playing time. Other modules such as The Change and The Bonus Cards have no impact on game length.
Finally, the box itself comes with its own clearly signposted insert, which is excellent for keeping all the various bits and pieces separate. There’s even a handy picture in the box lid to help you pack everything away in the right order.
With So Much Choice, How Do You Decide Which Module(s) To Use?
The rulebook does a really good job of explaining the various modules, with each being given its own page. However, unlike in Dominion, there are no recommended combinations. This is a shame, because a little guidance here would have been useful. I’m sure that we’ve all made an a la carte card selection in Dominion and ended up with a game that either drags on for ages or is over in the blink of an eye.
Personally, there are certain modules that I would always include like Change and The Workers Huts. These are easy to understand, simple to set-up and don’t really impact on game length. On top of these, it’s probably worth adding a further three or four modules. Any more than that and the game becomes over-complicated and unwieldy.
I would always recommend choosing modules that impact the game in different ways. Don’t just pick modules from the same group. To continue with my restaurant analogy, nobody wants three main courses or three puddings do they?
Another determining factor is, is the time available to you to play the Alhambra big Box? As mentioned above some of the modules will increase the playing time, whilst others have little or no impact on game length.
A further consideration is how much of a pure Alhambra experience do you want? Some modules (Bonus Cards & Currency Exchange) are a natural extension of the core game, whilst others (Invaders & Treasure Chamber) are more tangential and take it off in a slightly different direction.
My recommendation would be to try all of the modules by playing each of the five expansions separately. That way you can see how each module works and which ones appeal to you and/or your playing partners most. Then whenever you play you can take it in turns to select your own personal favourites.
Is Alhambra Big Box For Me?
My daughter introduced me to Alhambra and she’s had the base game for a number of years. Whenever I visit her I’m more than happy to play it. I never win, but that doesn’t stop me from coming back for more. It’s a solid game with a good degree of natural variability – as you would expect from a Spiel des Jahre winner.
The Alhambra Big Box introduces a number of modules that actually enhance the core game experience and fit seamlessly alongside it. On top of these, you have a vast ‘pick and mix’ selection that you can use to tailor the game to your own personal preferences or time constraints.
If you don’t already own Alhambra, then you should definitely invest in the Big Box version rather than the core game. It does cost a little more, but it’s going to provide you with a lot more variety and replayability over the years ahead.
Would I advise my daughter to splash out on the Alhambra Big Box? Probably not. But that’s not going to stop her enjoying beating me with my copy whenever she gets a chance.
