Moorish palace for sale

Alhambra, palace and fortress of Moorish monarchs. Alhambra, the board game in which one can compete with friends to build the best palace and fortress. Alhambra… (If you are wondering where you can buy a moorish palace, try elsewhere.) Lets get to it then.

The game at is core is simple: grab money then grab palace pieces and put them in your palace grounds. Here’s the rub: Everyone else is also grabbing money and palace pieces (tiles). And once one has a palace piece, placing it is a problem since the walls (those horrible big black borders) almost always get in the way. But let’s start from the beginning.

Players start with a fist full of money of which there are four currencies. These four currencies correspond to four positions on the market board. Each palace piece has a cost and the cost must be payed in the correct currency. This can be confusing as there are both blue and green palace pieces and blue and green currencies. It is not fun finding you have collected green money for a green piece that is on the orange currency space in the market. (How hard is it to use different colours? Light blue and light green is still blue and green.)

The market people are very nice. If you give them exact monies, they give you an extra turn. So one can buy up to 4 palace pieces and grab some money before another player has a chance to go. The money and market is refreshed only at the end of each players turn.

Once you have those palace pieces they got to go into your palace. but beware the walls. Each piece has a specific orientation (they know which way is up and they are all straight). This is very important for wall placement but basically the walls belong on the outside of the palace or against other walls.

So how does one win? The one with the most points. How does one get points? Players only get points three times in the entire game. There are two special score cards shuffled in with the money and one final scoring when the palace pieces run out. The one with the most of each palace piece colour gets points (while runner ups get decreasing number of points) and each player also gets points for their longest wall on the outside of their palace.

There it is. A strangely simple yet surprisingly fun game. I had my doubts the first time I heard of this game since it does fall under the “older” game category. Each player building their own palace? That sounds silly. But this is a game of buying the right pieces for both placement and colour. Waiting until one has exact monies for more extra turns is not always an option as some pieces one simply must have (for example, to get the monopoly on one colour). And opponents grabbing your pieces is always a problem.

Until next time: Build a beautiful palace in the sky…

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