Alhambra

Customer Reviews

Great Game Review by Jacques

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Because available tiles are on the market there is the excitement of competition. There is plenty of room for strategy as you decide which colors of buildings to focus on, whether to wait until you have exact change, and the layout of the city. My wife likes this game because while you have to keep an eye on the other players you are more or less free to build your own little space without interference. (Posted on 3/22/11)

Alhambra offers a hand management, building majority and tile building in a nicely combined package Review by TR

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Alhambra is a classic of the genre and in many ways, it strikes me as a perfect example of one of the earlier award-winning Eurogames. Its rules are very simple - buildings - i.e. tiles; can only be purchased using the right coloured money, which must then be placed legally on 'your' Alhambra to score points . Players can either take money card(s), purchase buildings or re-arrange their Alhambra in a turn, with additional actions given for player's who manage to purchase buildings for the exact amount of money.

Simple rules, easy to teach but with quite a bit of depth to the game. Later iterations and winners of the Spiel seem to have grown in complexity, sometimes seeming to rival Amertrash games; but Alhamba and its ilk really is a great gateway game.

There's nothing in it that is particularly hard to learn, each turn is relatively fast meaning 'down-time' is low but the multiple choices offered to a player means quite a few strategic choices are available. (Posted on 11/25/10)

Carcassonne-esque...Tile laying game where you build your own city Review by Austen

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I am still not sure how I feel about this game. I bought it based on reviews I had read and the fact that it is one of those games that you hear about all the time. My wife and I love Carcassonne and Alhambra seemed like a Carcassonne-esque kind of game.

I hate reading a rule book so rather than just explaining the rules I am going to review the game and then after there is you like there is a very brief overview of the rules below. If you want the full rules they are easy enough to find online.

What I like about Alhambra is that you have money involved and you have to buy tiles to build your city rather than drawing random tiles. I also like that you are building your own city rather than adding to a communal map. What I am still not sure about Alhambra is that you have to buy tiles and build your own map. When you are playing with new players you can get a lot of AP with players trying to figure out what they should buy and how they should build. I have played games where it has taken twice as long to play the game as it should.

The other thing that I find odd about Alhambra is the scoring. Because there are only 3 scoring rounds sometimes it makes the game feel slower than it is. As two of the scoring rounds are random you have no clue when scoring is coming and so you find your self over thinking what you should do as you don't want to miss out on scoring.

I have played it with 2 players, 3 players and 4 players. There is a variation for 2 players that plays well, but for the the verdict is still out on how many players plays best. We bought this game over a year ago and we haven't played it in 10 months, so I think that may say something. I can see it being a good addition to the collection if your group has grown tired of Carcassonne and is looking for a similar style game. All in all I would probably rate this game a 6 or 7 out of 10. It is not the first game I would reach for to play but if someone asked to play it I wouldn't say no.


This explanation is just to give you an idea as to the game play. It does not cover all the rules.

Alhambra is basically a tile laying game, but rather than playing on a communal map you are building your own city. The game comes with a scoring board, a building market board, reserve board, money cards, building tiles, starting tiles, and scoring cards.

In Alhambra you need to buy the tiles that become part of your city. The tiles either have walls on 1, 2 or 3 edges of the tile or no walls. All of the tiles you play to build you city must allow you to walk from one part of your city to another.

There are 6 different colour buildings. The buildings have numbers on them but these numbers are the cost of the tile and do not add value to the building. So a building that costs 11 is not better than one that costs 4. How you score points is by having the most buildings of a colour in your city. The rarer the building colour the more points you score

Instead of drawing tiles randomly you actually have to buy the tiles with money cards. The Building Market board has 4 spots with a different coloured coin beside each spot. The colour coin tells you what colour money card is required to buy the building.

What makes Alhambra both frustrating and interesting is the scoring. Unlike most games where you score as the game goes along in Alhambra there are only 3 scoring rounds. At the start of the game you split the deck into 5 even piles and in the 2nd and 4th piles you shuffle in the 1st and 2nd round scoring cards and then put the 5 decks back together.

When it comes to scoring there is a legend on everyone's reserve card that shows how many point are given our for who has the most buildings in their city of each colour. In each round the points awarded increase and in the 2nd round the 1st and 2nd get points and in the 3rd and final round the 1st 2nd and 3rd get points. Aside from building points you also get points for your longest continuous wall. When counting the walls you only follow the perimeter of your city wall.









(Posted on 10/9/09)