The components of this game, made under licence by Rio Grande Games are to their usual high standard. All the components are full colour and die cut, except for the 4 Grande pieces which are wooden.

Each player takes a set of pieces in their colour. This includes a set of Power cards which will be familiar to players El Grande. If you are unfamiliar with either this game or El Grande, the Power cards have a priority number on them to determine turn order. However, they also contain a number of Caballeros that you will receive that turn, and the higher the number you play, the less Caballeros you get. Neat.

During a players turn, they can do any of several options:
Supply add Caballeros to your court equal to the number on your power card. (Caballeros are the units you play with in the game and your court is an area to store these units seperate from your stockpile).
Play 1 area card to the table. This is compulsory. Area cards must be played alongside other area cards with land at the side of land and sea at the side of sea.
Add 1 or 2 Caballero cards on the map. Caballero cards are played adjacent to land area cards.
Buy 1 or 2 Ships (at 2 Caballeros a ship). The ship represents trade and fishing and scores points depending on the size of the water area it occupies.
Build 1 or 2 Castillos (at 1 Caballero per Castillo). Castillos protect Caballeros and ships on that area card.
Return Caballeros cards or ships to your court. You may wish to do this to develop land or water areas, guard against a forced return of the card, increase your reserve supply.
Move ships or Castillos from one area to another

Scoring is done after rounds 4 and 7. Players score points for land regions and ships. These are recorded on the Score Pad.
The value of the land region is the number of cards in the region +1 for each Gold in the region. The player with the most caballeros in the region scores double, second highest scores the region.
Scoring ships is the number of water areas in the region +1 for each fish in the region. Each ship in the region scores that region.

Game end comes after the 7th round. Highest score from the two rounds wins.

SUMMARY:
This is a really enjoyable game if you like strategy games. Their is very little luck in the game. This comes from the selection of the area cards, but each turn 5 are available to choose from, so even this adds strategy to the game.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, and if you like this kind of game, it's one of the best of its kind IMHO.

See Kulkmans review for a more in depth review of this game.

Review by Brian