This is the start of a review series where I will cover everything available for the game starting

with the base game followed by the 12 modules over 2 further reviews.

Plays: 7 at player counts: 1 – 3

Appearance

The front of the box shows a farm in the background surrounded by fields with a farmer walking a
donkey. The back of the box shows a 4-player game in progress highlighting the games mechanisms
and theme with detailed descriptions of all the included modules. The box is huge, too big in fact with
plenty of empty space even with the tray system. The double sided main board is well laid out with lots
of detail in the market area and clear divides between the dice drafting areas. The player boards are a
little busier with lots of information laid out in quite a small area, they are high quality though triple
layered for cards to slot in and tokens to be stored on. The dice are light and the gold pips are slightly
harder to see from across the table. The farm cards are well laid out with clear divides between the 4
areas and a lot of information present but they don’t feel too busy. The craft markers, donkey and roof
tiles are screen printed wooden pieces that are a nice size and good quality. The player markers are
easy to identify from one another but not as quite high quality as the other components. The coins,
exhaustion tokens and victory point tokens are thick cardboard and acceptable quality. Overall,
excellent quality components.

Gameplay

The aim of the game is to have the most victory points after final scoring has taken place following 6
rounds of gameplay. Each round consists of 4 phases, some played in turn order and others
simultaneously. The first phase is the farm phase, which players play each of the 4 steps
simultaneously. First, players may play 1 card from their hand onto their farm board, except the first
round where players play 2. There are 4 possible locations to play a card onto a player’s farm board,
first to the left of their board as a field card for harvesting later. A card placed on top of the player
board in one of the three slots becomes a market barrow where goods need to be delivered. Cards
placed on the bottom three slots of the player board become helpers with the listed effect now active
as long as it remains there. Some effects activate in specific phases, whereas others will have a once
per round effect that can be used. The final location, the right side of the board, comes with an
additional cost based on how many cards are now present there. The first costs one farm good, the
second two etc. After playing a card, or drawing one instead, players fill to their hand size, 3 plus a card
for every farm extension. Players then collect income based on craft markers players may have
collected in addition to any coin income printed on farm extensions played.

Each player then receives new harvest good(s) in empty field(s) on the left of their player boards and
breed a new pig if they have at least 2 and room for another. Finally in turn order players can then
purchase roof tiles, for the first turn only tiles are bought in reverse turn order. These tiles cost a
number of silver based on the round number and have an immediate effect which can be activated on
a players turn by flipping it face down. When purchasing the roof tile if a player covers victory points on
their board they receive them immediately. A player can only purchase one tile per round and a
maximum of 5 tiles per game. Following the farm phase the game moves to the revenue phase where
the majority of a rounds actions takes place. Each player, in turn order takes a dice until all players
have taken 2 dice and only 1 remains, which all players can activate and resolve. When a player takes a
dice, they activate the action associated with that number including gaining goods, upgrading goods,
taking money, playing a card or delivering. Goods gained are placed into the corresponding barrow for
it and when upgraded, goods are moved from either fields or barrows into the corresponding
upgraded barrows.

Deliveries allow a player to place a good from their board onto a matching icon on either a market
barrow on their board or a craft building. Completing a market barrow will let a player place a marker
in the market matching the number printed on the card, also receiving that many victory points and a
trade commodity on their board. If it is placed next to a marker(s) of another player with a lower
number value it is returned to that player and the player that removed the token gets 1 point per
marker displaced. Filling a craft building gets the player a number of points matching the round
number and the corresponding craft marker to add to their board with an immediate bonus. These flip
over at the end of the turn and will offer either income or a permanent ability for the rest of the game.

After the revenue phase the game moves onto the transportation phase where players will
simultaneously choose one of their available donkey tiles and everyone will reveal at the same time. In
turn order, players will advance on the siesta track a number of spaces shown on their chosen donkey
tile and a new turn order is determined based on who is furthest up the track with markers on top of
others not considered to be in front. Players then in turn order perform deliveries based on the
number of donkeys shown on their tile to the craft buildings or market barrows mentioned early. Some
craft buildings are not available at the start of the game and must be unlocked by a player completing
one of the available ones, with an extra point rewarded for doing so. After free deliveries, players may
purchase deliveries based on how many are on their board and farm extensions with each one costing
1 silver again in turn order.

Finally, in the scoring phase players will receive 1 point for every marker they have in the market and
for where their siesta marker is. The siesta track is then reset and new roof tiles are revealed for the
next round. In addition to the actions described above players have lots of anytime actions available to
them which can be performed anytime on their turn. Trade commodities can be exchanged for 4
silver/2 different field goods (grapes/olives/wheat)/draw or play 1 card/gain 1 pig/upgrade 2 goods.
Players can sell any goods in their barrows for the sale price or buy them for the listed cost. Players can
pay the upgrade cost shown on their board to upgrade the good to its upgraded form. Several helpers
can be used at anytime as well. After 6 rounds the game ends with players selling all their goods and
trading each trade commodity for 4 silver. Every 5 silver is then converted into 1 point to give players
their final score with ties broken by most silver remaining.

Turns in this game can be very simple or very complex based on how many goods and/or helpers you
have on your board with the anytime actions letting you do a lot more on your turn than you would
expect. The turn structure of the game is very straightforward and luckily several phases can be played
simultaneously so this keeps downtime lower than it could be though it does exist at higher player
counts. The game can be prone to some AP as there are more ways to accomplish what you want,
more than you think especially if you have several trade commodities. The game plays 1 to 4 players
with some changes to the main market area with fewer spaces available with fewer places and less
dice to draft with lower player counts. The solo mode comes in two different variants, one simple with
it taking a dice away and placing markers in the market and being a beat your own score mode, perfect
for learning the game. The other included in this box is a card driven automa who drafts dice away and
competes for craft building spaces and displacing you in the market. It is a smooth system but has
rules overhead similar to the designers other work.

Theme and Game Length

In this game you are trying to be the best farm in Mallorca by completing orders and building up your
estate by attracting workers. Your markers to track goods in this game are generic and your helpers
are just text so a lot of the games theme is lost here. Ultimately it is very mechanical with you moving
pieces on your board and placing them onto orders to place other markers elsewhere. The craft
marker rewards make sense with the names of the buildings but that’s as thematic as it gets. The
average playtime of the game is about 40 minutes per player even with newer players to the game with
only 6 turns and 18 revenue dice activations each game. The game is good at all player counts but I
prefer it at 3 with lots of competition in the market and for the dice but keeping the game length a little
shorter. I would play it with 4 with experienced players though.

Strategy

You will be scoring points in this game during the game with very few points gained during the end of
the game. There are several ways to score points but the majority of points will come from performing
deliveries and ultimately this is one of the major limiting factors of the game. There are plenty of ways
to get goods using the anytime actions, even buying basic and upgrading to the premium goods using
money if you have enough and really need it. The one thing your free actions can’t do is gain more
deliveries and you need to play several farm extensions during the game that let you buy more
deliveries each turn. These cost increasing number of resources each time you play one but are
definitely worth it as they can also potentially get you coin income as well as space for pigs with a free
pig during breeding being worth 3 silver if sold if not needed for deliveries.

Having silver is important in the game for several reasons, including buying goods and deliveries
mentioned above. Buying roof tiles for more free actions whenever you want and additional points is
important and every game I try my best to get all my roof tiles for 10 points and these bonuses. They
get worse over the course of the game and more expensive so if you are going to buy only a few, get
them early. Being able to buy goods using silver is also great and sometimes it is worth taking a good
from an action just to be able to sell later for silver. You can’t sell goods in fields so to maximise the
fields output you want to consume these goods each round, the earlier the field is placed the better its
potential yield will be.

There are 2 places to deliver goods to, the craft buildings and your market barrows. The craft buildings
can give ongoing and income benefits so the earlier they are completed the better to give the best
payout for each craft marker but at the sacrifice of points. If you are focusing on market barrows its
best to get the craft marker which rewards this early and conversely if you are focusing on craft
buildings getting the craft marker that rewards you for that is better. Completing a low value market
barrow may seem a bad idea as it can be removed easily by opponents but getting it early will
potentially gives points for 1 or 2 rounds before it is removed making it worth it. If you are doing this
you want to place them as far away from each other as possible to make sure one placement by an
opponent can’t kick too many of your tokens out. Completing them also gives trade commodities which
are the most powerful element of the game as they are so versatile and let you do so many things early
game including playing more cards.

The more cards you get played early the better as your engine will get running that bit faster. Fields
and farm extensions will yield more and helpers will have more chance to activate whether they are
conditional or once per turn. These will give some guidance and build asymmetry from the players
around the table and you should make sure you know what the other players can do on their turn. This
is a dice drafting game so turn order is important but thanks to the mitigation with money and trade
commodities it isn’t essential to doing well. You may not get the goods you need but there are other
ways to get them using anytime actions if you plan appropriately leading to mitigation but not by
changing the number value of the dice. You should still block opponents where possible though to
make them have to work harder for what they want. Being later in turn order is great for the
transportation phase as well with you having more chance to kick people from the market for more
bonus points when doing the higher numbered harder market barrow cards.

The game has had some issues with runaway leader problems in the games I have played with
inexperienced players where they don’t block certain dice or remove markers from the market enough.
The games replayability is great thanks to the order of the cards making a huge difference into how
you build your engine and what orders you will be doing. You can also focus mainly on the market area
or on the craft buildings or mix and match in different ways. The order the craft buildings become
available also makes a huge difference to overall strategy. The game ends after 6 rounds have been
completed and is easy to see coming and plan ahead for, with careful play you will be able to achieve
most of what you want.

Accessibility

The game is medium weight with only a few actions that you can perform on your turn but plenty of
ways to do them with the correct setup. The games increases in complexity as you play it with more
helpers/commodities/money available to you so you can plan around the dice and still do what you
want. There is a lot of interaction with the dice drafting, completing craft buildings before others for
bonus points and the market itself so you can’t ignore other players and you need to keep an eye on
what they can do on your turn increasing the games weight overall. The game is heavily strategic with
the dice rolls being the only random nature and with careful planning you can mitigate it. The cards are
also random but generally help guide you rather than stop you. The game is a decent teach with lots of
small elements to explain, especially the anytime actions, but the iconography is pretty solid for the
most part and the player aids good at summarising the turn structure. The rulebook is a bit cluttered
with elements explained in a strange order and making it harder to reference than it should be. There
is an excellent appendix for the farmer cards which has been useful.

Final Thoughts

La Granja: Deluxe Master Set is an exceptional dice drafting order fulfilment Euro game with a great
game arc and satisfying turns. The games theme is a little pasted on and is aided by generic markers
being used for everything but there is still something satisfying about how your farm board builds up
with cards and markers. Every turn has great decisions with you often torn on where to place cards
and you want to place more than you will ever be allowed to do. The game is very permissive and lets
you do things you want in various different ways with anytime actions which adds to the puzzle-y
nature and the harder you have to think about it the more satisfying it becomes when you do. There is
plenty of variability in the cards and how the craft markets become available meaning no game has
ever been the same for me with some of the helper abilities dramatically changing how I have played
the game. The most satisfying multi-use card game I have ever played and the dice drafting can be just
as tense as any I have played.

9.5/10

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