First Impressions of La Granja

I got to play this at Mid Con, so this is not a review, only a first impression!

---

 

Is there any theme that says Eurogame more than farming? I don’t imagine so. Yet this is not some tacked on theme. In La Granja you will be managing your small Mallorcan smallhold farm, growing your olives and grapes, breeding your pigs and transporting these goods out to the shops and local landowners, as well as opening stalls in the world’s most aggressively passive-aggressive market ever!

The game is far from simple, with all its moving parts and paths to victory, yet when I played, it was not only my first game, but also everyone elses! We painstakingly went through the rulebook to learn the game and then played. This might have been a nightmare, and while this was a fairly long process (rules and game took maybe 4 hours), the game’s multi-layered components clicked into place smoothly, both on the board and in our minds. This is a testament to both a well-designed game, and a well-written rulebook!

 

 

This multitude of elements and game systems does make describing the game in detail here an impractical task. So instead I’ll focus on just one or two. The cards you have are brilliant if, like the rest of the game, intimidating to see staring at you from across the table. The four sides of each card represent the different things you can use them for, opening up new fields or hiring labourers, etc., and the player boards are strangely shaped in order for you to tuck the rest of the card away and show only the relevant sections, the side you chose to use that card for. It works really well, and you discover that this beefy giant of a system is actually quite shy and always helps little old ladies across the road.

There is a dice-rolling action selection phase each round, where everyone takes dice from a public pool to trigger the corresponding actions. Everyone gets to perform the last action. This is really interesting! Going first gets you first pick, but going last lets you decide what everyone gets to do. Trying to block people out of things they need whilst simultaneously doing something good for you is a key element of most Eurogames because it is always an interesting challenge. I have no idea where it fits thematically but hey, it’s still cool.

Then you have that market I alluded to at the start. Completing a delivery card lets you open up a market on a stall of the size indicated by the completed card. Basically, the bigger the better, because when you open that stall you kick out any lower valued stalls in the adjacent spaces, earning you points at the same time! I never want to work in a small village market in Mallorca!

I was very impressed with La Granja. Lot’s of interesting elements that fit together well, and I’ve only really scratched the surface with this first impression. I’m definitely looking forward to getting some more plays in at some point!