Alhambra (board game)

Alhambra is a tile laying and currency trading board game designed by Dirk Henn and first published in 2003 by Queen Games in Germany under the title Der Palast von Alhambra, with the English language edition distributed in North America by Uberplay. The game casts its two to six players as rival builders competing to construct the finest version of the Alhambra, the historic Moorish palace complex built in Granada during the fourteenth century. On a turn a player may take money from a central display, buy a building tile using one of four different currencies, or rearrange tiles already placed in their own palace, and success depends on managing four distinct currencies at once, since a market square only accepts exact combinations of specific currencies for specific tiles. Building tiles vary in type, from gardens and pavilions to walls, and players score points across three scoring rounds spaced through the game for having the most tiles of each building type, as well as for the longest unbroken wall around their palace. Alhambra descends from an earlier Dirk Henn design, the 1998 stock trading game Stimmt So!, which itself built on his 1992 game Al Capone, and it won the Spiel des Jahres award for game of the year in 2003, a recognition that led to numerous expansions and several spin off titles carrying the Alhambra name.