Alhambra The Red Palace 

• Designer: Dirk Henn
• Publisher: Queen Games
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 8+
• Time: 45-60 minutes
• Amazon Affiliate Link: https://amzn.to/3zh68Ph
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

The Red Palace is a standalone game set in the Alhambra Universe that provides a new style of gameplay and is designed specifically for more complexity in the base game. It features:

• The (3D wooden) buildings and walls are now separated.
• Guards as a new mechanic, which make choosing and constructing buildings more exciting and introduce new powerful extra actions that might bring you closer to victory!

Each player constructs their own Alhambra by taking money cards and using these to purchase buildings of different types. Which buildings you can build are displayed on the building market. Unlike the base game of Alhambra, the buildings are not printed on the tiles, but instead players draw a tile and then a chip which tells them which of the wooden buildings is placed onto the tile. In each of the three scoring rounds, players will receive points if they have the most of each building type, as well as points for their longest connected wall segment.

The game ends when the building market can no longer be replenished from the building tile supply, and there is a final scoring, whereupon the player with the highest score wins.

Note: All existing expansions for Alhambra can be added to Red Palace except currently the tile based expansions from the Mega Box are not compatible due to the different size of the tiles (45mm vs 50mm)

To setup, mix the 54 land tiles and stack them in the tile tower. Deal the first 4 tiles onto the building yard area of the board.  The next three tiles are placed on the Preview board just above.  Each of these tiles has a small round building tile placed on it (drawn from the bag).  The guard board is filled with guard placement tiles and guard ability tiles.  Finally, the score board is set up with one scoring tile being selected for each of the three spaces.

Each player gets a starting tile with a fountain on it and places their score marker on space 5 of the track.   The cash cards are shuffled and N sets of cards are made, adding cards to each until the value is 20 or more for the set.  These are chosen in reverse player order.

  Finally, a market of 4 cash cards is made on the table, and the deck is completed by splitting it into 5 pieces, shuffling a scoring card into the 2nd and 4th portions of the deck and then reassembling the deck. 

On a turn, the player can choose one of three actions: take cash, buy a building, redesign their Alhambra

If you take cash, you can take any one card from the display OR any combination of cards as long as the total value is 5 or less.

If you buy a building, you pay the cost (lower right corner of the building tile) with the currency specified by the board space it is found on.  You pay with your cash cards, and the game does not give change!  Take the tile and place it in your area; you do not add it to your Alhambra at this time.  If you were able to exactly pay the cost of the building, you immediately get another action (same 3 possibilities).

If you remodel your Alhambra, you can either add a building from your Reserve to your Alhambra OR remove a building from your Alhambra to your Reserve OR do both and exchange one tile from your Alhambra for one from your Reserve (no change in position).

During this portion of the turn (before adding newly acquired buildings to your Alhambra), you can use any of the guard abilities, once per turn each.  The cost is at the top of the tile, and if you do not have enough guards to pay, you can spend VPs. After you use an ability, flip the tile over.  The used guard is placed on the guard placement tiles on the guard board.

As your turn ends, you add any new buildings to your Alhambra or place them in your Reserve. If you add buildings to your Alhambra, they must all be right-side up and the edges must match. You must also always be able to reach the tile “by foot” from your starting tile.  You may not fully enclose a hole in your Alhambra. If there are any watchtowers on the new buildings, each gets a guard placed on it.

Now, refresh the board. Flip over any used ability tiles. Replenish the Building Yard with tiles from the preview board, and then refill the preview board with tiles from the stack in the tile tower. Replenish the cash card display as well from the deck.  If a scoring card is drawn, place it in front of the next player and finish replenishment.   

If a scoring round is triggered – three total in the game (two scoring cards and the end of the game).  In each, points are awarded for the player’s rank in the number of buildings in each color as well as the longest continuous exterior wall  of each player’s Alhambra.  In the final scoring, players also score for the guards located on their longest continuous exterior wall (points based on the number of finished guard placement tiles in the guard board)..

In the first scoring, only the player with the most of each color building will score. In the second scoring, 1st and 2nd place will score, and in the final scoring, the first three ranks will score.  If there is a tie, add up the tied ranks, divide and split evenly, rounding down.

The game ends when the building yard cannot be fully refilled. The remaining buildings are awarded to the player who has the most cash in the currency needed for that building. These buildings can be added to their owner’s Alhambra as usual. Then the 3rd scoring occurs and the game ends.  The player with the most points wins. No tiebreaker.

My thoughts on the game

OK, so let me start by saying that I am a pretty big fan of the original Alhambra, and perhaps even more so of Stimmt So! – the game which served as the inspiration for Alhambra.  Since then, according to BGG, there have been a LOT of expansions – and while I’m fairly certain I’ve played some of them along the way, I don’t think I own any – and when I play Alhambra, it’s just the base game. So, as I’m a fan of the original, I was interested to see what this new version had to offer.  This version was sold to me as a more gamer-y version of the game, so I was hoping it would suit me and my group better – and give us a good excuse to get a classic game with a proven track record back to the table.

First off, I like the addition of the Guards. As you are choosing your tiles, you now also have to consider whether you want one with guards or not.  These Guards can be spent on one of the four special Guard actions – and of course, these change with each game so you will have to plan a new strategy each time once you see what combination you are working with.  The guards also offer a nice end-game scoring bonus – where you’re rewarded for your longest stretch of guards on the outer wall; but their value increases with more guards spent during the game.  So, you’re tugged between wanting to save them for the end game bonus versus spending them in the game to both increase their value as well as taking advantage of the guard actions.

Second, I do like the new appearance of the player area.  The building tiles no longer have an inherent color, but rather you place a colored wood bit to place on the tile to determine the color.  The distribution of tiles has also been changed somewhat with an equal distribution of the colors and the scoring now changes based on a scoring tile which is drawn in setup (there were fixed unequal color distributions in the original with the scarcer color always scoring more).  It does appear that you can use the components in this game to play the original version as long you are OK with drawing buildings out of the bag… 

The bulk of the game is otherwise unchanged.  You still have the same challenge of managing the four different currencies to buy the right buildings at the right time, and of course, hopefully with exact change!   The unknown timing of the two interim scorings always keeps you on your toes and speculating whether you should splurge on something if you think the scoring card is about to come up.   This tension is what makes the game exciting throughout its entire time on the table.  As more places are scored with each successive scoring, you’ll have that many more things to be tracking as the game moves on.

Ergonomically, this version of the game definitely needs a bit more table space as you have a new Guard board to deal with, and for better or worse, it is a mite bit fiddlier as there is a bit more involved with drawing a tile, then a color chit then finding the right color building to place upon it.   To save time and fiddliness, we just draw one out of the bag – as quick as possible to not be able to feel around for a color.  That being said, I do like the way it looks on the table with the colorful bits and guard tokens populating the different tiles.

So, the big question that I’m sure you’re asking yourself – do I need this?  The answer is, of course, well it depends…

For me, I am not sure yet.  I personally like the more complex game offered here, and as I’ve mentioned, I like the way it looks.  I don’t have any expansions, so I don’t necessarily care if it does or does not work with previous expansions (though online research says it does work with all but the megabox ones). That being said, though I like this version better, I use the base Alhambra a lot with people new to the hobby because it’s a wonderful game, and one that has a great track record of sucking people in and showing them what is so great about these games of ours.  I wouldn’t want to lose that sort of game from my collection… though I think you can still play the original scoring rules if you just draw the buildings out of the bag.  We’ll see which version I play more in the next year or two, and I’ll end up keeping that version. If this had the bits to play the original game unchanged, it would be a slam dunk to keep this one.  That being said, I’d happily recommend this to anyone who doesn’t already own a version – this is a game that should be in everyone’s collection.

Amazon Affiliate Link: https://amzn.to/3zh68Ph 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!  Dale
• I like it. 
• Neutral.
• Not for me…