Simultaneous Action Selection

Players take on the roles of Grandes in medieval Spain. The king's power is flagging, and these powerful lords are vying for control of the various regions. To that end, you draft caballeros (knights in the form of colored cubes) into your court and subsequently move them onto the board to help seize control of regions. After every third round, the regions are scored, and after the ninth round, the player with the most points is the winner.

In each of the nine rounds, you select one of your 13 power cards to determine turn order as well as the number of caballeros you get to move from the provinces (general supply) into your court (personal supply).

A turn then consists of selecting one of five action cards which allow variations to the rules and additional scoring opportunities in addition to determining how many caballeros to move from your court to one or more of the regions on the board (or into the castillo - a secretive tower). Normally, you may only place your caballeros into regions adjacent to the one containing the king pawn. The one hard and fast rule in El Grande is that nothing may move into or out of the king's region. One of the five action cards that is always available each round allows you to move the king to a new region. The other four action cards varying from round to round.

The goal is to have a caballero majority in as many regions (and the castillo) as possible during a scoring round. Following the scoring of the castillo, you place any cubes you had stashed there into the region you had secretly indicated on your region dial. Each region is then scored individually according to a table printed in that region. Two-point bonuses are awarded for having sole majority in the region containing your Grande (large cube) and in the region containing the king.

Contains these expansions:

El Grande: Grandissimo
El Grande: Grossinquisitor und Kolonien
El Grande: König & Intrigant
El Grande: König & Intrigant – Unverkäufliche Sonderkarten
El Grande: König & Intrigant – Player's Edition (partialy, 3 of 11 cards)

Allows to play expansions:

Grandissimo
Intrigue & the King
Grand Inquisitor & the Colonies
The King & the Colonies (mixed Intrigue & the King and Grand Inquisitor & the Colonies)

8 track cards (from a total of 48 cards) are used to build a track.
Each player gets 5 tempo cards.
All players play tempo cards simultaneously and try to get in front of the field.
6 cars are NON-player cars - these are called "Alte Hasen" (old pros) and are controlled by a rule mechanism - the same rules are used when playing this race alone - there are always seven cars in the race (one old pro for example when 6 players are playing)
The chips are earned for good maneuvering and may be used in bluffing when attacking other cars.

Players represent various office holders in the ruling Junta. Depending upon his office and the various cards he holds, each player has a certain number of votes. These are important as they must first elect El Presidente and then vote on the budget that he proposes. Here's where it can get sticky. El Presidente draws cards face down from the money deck (which varies in denomination from $1 to $3) and must propose a budget for the year, distributing the money as he sees fit amongst the various offices. Of course, loyalty to him is usually rewarded, while those pesky "thorns in his side" are usually cut off completely. The beauty of all this, though, is that El Presidente can — and most always does — keep some of the loot for himself. And since no one but he knows the value of what he drew, no one knows how much he's keeping. Suspicion is always keen.

Players may attempt to assassinate the other players by guessing where they will be from among five locations. Players who successfully assassinate another player take that player's money, as the only safe money is the money that has been deposited in a Swiss bank account, and the only way to get to the bank is to survive the assassination round.

If the players are unhappy, and there is an excuse, they can call for a coup, where the opposition players seek to take control of a majority of the power centers. Rebel players control the forces of the role which they were assigned (e.g. army, navy, air force), and players loyal to El Presidente do the same, seeking to control the strongholds until the rebellion is quelled.

The goal is to amass the greatest wealth secreted away in your Swiss bank account.

From the publisher, Rio Grande Games:

Seehausen am See. For many years, more and more people visit this idyllic village during the annual summer fest. In these three weeks, the breweries and beer gardens in the village make more money than during the rest of the year. So, you and your opponents become hardened businessmen, who rush to Seehausen am See to invest in the businesses there with an eye toward the large profits that come during the festival. During these three weeks each will invest in the businesses and try to get his people in management positions in the breweries and beer gardens where he owns stock. The players also work to increase the size of their favorite beer gardens so that they can earn more money. In the end, it is not the size of the beer gardens or who is in charge, but the amount of money in the players’ pockets...

Description from BoardgameNews.com:

While Cyrano de Bergerac was a real person, Cyrano is based on the play Cyrano de Bergerac, written more than two hundred years after Cyrano’s death. In both the play and the game, Cyrano writes poetry to woo a woman for another man. The game Cyrano lasts a number of rounds, and each round starts with a player revealing a theme card and two rhyme cards ("-aid", "-ed" and so on with homonyms being acceptable). Each player then composes a quatrain (a poem of four lines) with two of the lines ending with one of the rhymes and the other two ending with the other rhyme. Players read their poems and score points Boggle-style, with each unique ending word being worth one point; these points are recorded by blacking out squares on a ladder, which represents the lover’s climb toward his object of affection.

Everyone then secretly votes on which poem he or she most appreciated, whether for its beauty, adherence to theme, or some other artistic qualification. Players reveal their votes simultaneously, and for each player who voted the same way you did, you receive one point, with these points being recorded by the maiden’s descent from the tower. Whichever player first brings the loves onto the same floor of the tower wins, with ties being broken by a rhyming duel.