El Burro: A La Granja Game - Board Game Review & Comparison

0:00 hello everyone this is Johannes and this is and you are watching board gaming ramblings and today we are taking a look at El burrow this is a new game from Mike and ODI published by spielworks it plays from one to four players in two plus hours Elbo is a l Granda game so we also have l Granda here because this is going to be a comparison video we are going to review ELO but by reviewing ELO which makes sense for us is to then talk about is it different enough what is different do we need them both we will see what the answer will be and and which one should you get if you want to get one of them so we are going to talk about it but just as you know we're not going to go into detail about all the stuff you're doing in Al burough we're going to think that you know a little bit about lrra if you don't hopefully it will also make sense so El burrow in this you are a farmer in mayorca and you're trying to do the best farming you can do by building the best form you can do you're going to have a f board you're going to have a stable board and around this Farm board you're going to play these cards these cards are multi-use cards they're going to have four different ways you can play them you can play them on the top of your board as a market Barrel you can play them at the left of your board to get a field which you get resources on you can play it at the right side of your board to have like an iform Administration to get more cards in your hand to have more income

1:32 or you can play it at the bottom of your board to give you different special abilities and workers that you can use to do bonus actions the game is going to be played over four rounds each round is going to be the same you're going to start off by playing a card every round you're going to be able to play one card for free there's different actions so that you play more and then you're going to draft some dice which is like a big Crux of the game you're drafting dice you're going to roll them boom and then you're going to draft them from around this little hexagon drafting range there not thematic reason why there is some drafting dice on top of this mountain but it's there because it's a Euro game and it's fun to draft things so you're going to do actions which let you upgrade Goods move your donkeys around this track and do all kind of different stuff then you're going to do deliveries this is kind of like the tree porch of eloro and also L Granda it is playing the cards upgrading your farm drafting the actions doing those and then delivering Goods so you will be able to deliver Goods to the market barrels that you did play earlier in the round or earlier rounds you'll be able to play to these different local markets depending on how far you have moved your donkey there are more things to the game but you're not going to go deeply into that because this is not a rules video it's a comparison and review video yes let's start talking about stuff for example something you can see with your face yes and I can see the artwork and component is pretty good I have such a good eye vision and I think it's a really good

3:04 quality I think the artwork by har Le is classic it's it's a Euro game style which I like and also the components are chunky and nice and the cards are of nice quality as well yeah and also all the player boards are double double sided I almost said all the player boards have two sides to them it's not like a one onedimensional thing so it's a it's actually not a two-dimensional thing it's a three-dimensional thing you can move it around it's double layer and it is I'm going to say this because I love the fact that now people have started doing these double layer do it yourself player boards the only thing I would love is that if people looked at CG's double layer boards where they Mark where you're supposed to place the sticky dots so it's easier to assemble them because here you kind of have to to guess and then also I found found out that there are these small things you're supposed to put on the UND side which we didn't do we have like a filth player playing game table so it's not like hard to slide them under but there's under there to make it just a tiny bit elevated but I didn't have enough of these sticky dots for that because I used more than I was supposed to on these ports because I didn't know how many I was supposed to do other than that there are a few uh printing errors there's like small things and the biggest thing is probably down here is that it says it's cost three coins to upgrade this uh pig to a

4:34 meat it's supposed to be four I don't think it's going to break the game if you play it like that we have played it just like this and I didn't notice it because I hadn't played like Granja enough times to remember that was the price and there's a few cars a few things that are a little bit of a misprint but not anything that's a huge deal so I would say the production is two thums up I agree uh the game also comes with a rule book wow it does it actually has two it has a glossery which is really good having all the stuff I almost put a glossery in your face the glossery is really good has all these uh things that you would wonder like it has um things explanations for the cars has things in it for for for everything probably everything you're going to wonder throughout the game the rule book is good the rule book is about 24 23 pages long the thing about this rule book is it's it's put together in a way which is not my favorite way of putting together with rule book where it just like shows you all the concepts in the beginning like it after the setup here it's going to have like all the general concepts it's like two four six eight pages and I usually get a bit Disconnected by that that's just like but you know if you are like me you're going to know that this is going to be a bit harder because you have to read these things and be like okay but how does this connect to the game play I think it was easier for me because we have Playa yeah because many of the

6:05 concepts are the same when that said I'm very happy I hadn't played L Granda just super recently because there are changes that if you are super into playing a lot of lja and then you get this you might be a bit confused but I'm going to give this rule book to donkeys in the air it also has a player which I really like it explains a lot of the symbols on one side on the other side it has a really nice overview of the game round and a final scoring which we used actively to like see that we didn't miss any steps during the round because it has a lot of steps in it and I would say that even though you will learn the steps pretty simply it's nice to just do it in this order like okay so we remember like these these things kind of go by itself but the scoring I think is the one that's more important to have this because that isn't said anywhere else I agree and all the symbols I think this is a great play right if you play with two or three players you can also just or four basically which we usually do is just put one the two in between the players so that you have both sides of the player board or the player Aid instead of having to do that do we did we play the game or are we just making up things as we play the game with two and three players and it has taken us 1 hour 40 minutes to two and a half hour so I think like round two hours that is that is right yeah but it has two plus so it's not like saying it's supposed to take 2 hours how do you feel about the length of the game I feel I that is a great length uh it goes quite Snappy

7:37 when you're two players and then when your three and I guess four is going to be a little um longer obviously sometimes you can get some thinking moments where you really especially with uh the the drafting of the dice you think like which action do I really need but also in the delivery part or when you're choosing some cards we're going going to explain that later you can have some AP moments so that's the length of the game what do you think about the width of the game it's a great width it's amazing width and also very good depth yes depth is better so the length and the depth is good the width could have been a bit better so now we're going to go into the deep dive of the different mechanisms as I said we're going to focus on what is here what is the difference and talking about them first off let's talk about Cards sua start off talking about these cards what is differences what is similarities I always said like there are a lot of similarities you go you play cards in a similar way as in l but in this game Elbo you start by playing four cards in to BL instead of two that kind of gives you a kickart and also the farm admin cards which you play on your right side of your board those are free in in eloro um and does not give you more deliveries like in lanja no because in L that was a big part of the game try to get more

9:08 donkey deliveries so that you can deliver more stuff obviously that's the same thing just said in two different ways but here you you you you everything is free except except for the special cards you play special cards to get those are final scoring basically and they stay on your player board so they take up space that you could have used for abilities or Market borrows for example um but those cost money to play and it depends on which round you are in so if you play one in round three you're going to pay three coins for it and like there's also there's they can also be played four different ways so you have like the market barrels you have a special scoring then you have scorings depending on what other cards you have played and the market barrels here are different because you can like there's a free action to deliver to them so you can deliver like at the end of the game to get those points sources and they're not going to give you like bonuses and they're going to be stuck there so even though you play one you could play a card we never done it in the first round like playing H you could like go for one of these or one of these in the beginning and then have like something to go for and that might be a strategy but going for like a market barrels but then again it's not often I have three Market barrels no that's true but early feels kind of weird because you play like one card each round it's wayte to play more but but you really need those other cards as well well but playing CS in this game feels also a little easier because in you had to choose if you wanted to play cards or Draw more cards

10:41 but here after you've played a card you always draw up to your hand limit yes so in lra you only Drew at the beginning of the round of your play cards so here is like every single time you play a card you get more of them and every time you get a card you get to choose if you want like a special card and a or normal cards like that's also a timing I really enjoy I age is that like when in the timing and I'm going to start drawing these special cards you going to have one in the beginning and not think okay I have kind of everything I need now I just try to draw the special cards to get the cards I want to score at the end of the game next up let's focus on the player board there is a lot of similarities here like we're not going to go into detail there's different of these Market bonuses um everything about the the the resources are the same the big change as you can see if you have played lron if you haven't played it you will also know that there is a change is there's no more space for roofs so there's no drafting of roofs in the beginning of each round which then like sometimes the player order is super important to be able to choose the roof that you want the roofs if you don't know are like a onetime bonus here you have these different spaces where you can place workers so you're going to get workers in different ways for example playing the cards down here there is a bonus to get a worker up here when you do the revenue Dice and there's different small ways to get a worker and the workers are kind of like the trade goods in in lja in lja you got the trade good for doing different things which

12:12 were placed in a space around here I can show you because I have the player board right here so you placed it over here and then anytime you could discard that to do one of the five different bonuses here it's kind of the same but you can only each of the bonuses and they're different one time yes so it's kind of tighter in that way and at the end of the round you have to pay for your workers and then they go back to the suppli you kind of have to choose how many do I want to use and then maybe I need some for deliveries so that is also like a it feels kind of tighter it might be a bit like feels pretty similar getting the trade goods or the workers but a bit tighter with only being able to use them once I think that is a really cool mechanism because you also can upgrade this so if you think like I'm going to do this action getting a pig a lot of times then I want to First make it cheaper and maybe later I can upgrade it again to get points for it so the more workers you have that's really good because you can do these things but you have to be able to pay them you also have personal achievements every time you play there's different things that you can achieve and if you can achieve those there or tree in like more difficult the lower they are you get bonuses and if you do all three of them you also get three money and three victory three points how do you feel about them do you feel that all the ones you have seen have been similarly hard to do uh some ones feel like the they are more like even out how how easy or

13:42 hard they are but sometimes you get like the first ones really is and the lower one are is really hard so they feel balanced but they feel different and I don't feel like it's in mandatory to do those but I look at them at the beginning and think like okay I should probably go for these because if you go for it they are very achievable and they give those nice bonuses every time I have played I have gone for all of them and done everyone and as I said like they feel I I agree I feel balanced some of them might feel harder for a player in the beginning because so somebody might be easier to get a few of them in the beginning but then later on you have build up if you choose to go for them you can do them later which I I really enjoy the dice drafting is similar like in L Granja the biggest change is that there's no this bonus wheel in the middle of course the actions are a little bit different but the bonus wheel is what makes the big difference it's going to be its two sided so you can just flip it at the beginning and place it randomly so this game for example the first round if I choose to move my donkey which we haven't spoked about yet I will also move on on the Siesta track and get a coin and the next round it's going to move so all these bonuses changes every time for me I felt this made the drafting more interesting what do you think I really like like it as well because uh when you draft your first two dies you will get the bonus but the last die that is left that everybody gets to do the action on though that doesn't get that bonus and those bonuses really good

15:14 yeah and it makes it so I feel sometimes in L Granda there are some that are obviously better than others and here I didn't feel that another thing I really like is that if you play two players you aren't allowed to have more than two of the same number so if you roll you run roll only five dice it's not a big chance of it happening but it makes it so that if I roll three once I have to roll one of them so that it it gets evenly distributed a bit more ACC let's talk a bit about the board because we're going to take a look at the main board for L Granda small it's so tiny because when it feels like and this isn't a big board I want to say that because sometimes we've spoken about recently games being so big yeah they get so big but I feel like this couldn't have been that much smaller because you have this dunky movement all around which you didn't have on the old board but that it's so typical for the older Euro games those tiny tiny boards and I think this is bigger and it might feel like oversized but I think this is kind of the same as the deluxe edition we didn't take it out to check but I think it's the same one um the biggest obvious change for this board is this main part and also this Market barrows so the local markets um in lrra these are going to be fixed and also the market bonuses are going to be fixed and you're going to have the market here where you're going to place your markers and you're trying to place them on a higher number so that you are going to score points so whenever you do a market Barrel which

16:46 are in lbo and also Lan the top part of the card you're going to get to place one here depending on how hard it is in albor you're going to score points depending on how hard it is and then you're going to score points at the end of each round so if L was only four rounds it would be harder to get a lot of points from this but that's like the the main way you're trying to get the higher one because then you can bumped out because if somebody goes on a two and then later somebody plays adjacent to that in a higher number they can bump you out to give you less points so there are some big changes and the biggest change is this road that you're going to move your donkey and that will dictate what markets are available to you so you see that we have two markets that we are have available to us at the beginning but I can't deliver anything to this Market before my donkey has reached this space and that is also true for this market and the furthest away which is that market over there and also the markets will uh you can change them out every time and the position so you have like those um those markets that you can place over here to have different things that you can deliver oh that was nothing on the other side there was something just gameplay wise and it's also changed the game quite a bit because the last time we played we ended up with two pretty hard ones in the beginning and that made us really want to rush with our donkey to unlock something a bit easier and also made the game feel quite different also the market bonuses are going to be laid out randomly on these

18:18 different places uh in the beginning the game is like recommended the first time you play to do like a specific one on each and play with the basic ones but also that is going to be I think there's eight of these so you're going to use use five of them each game so it's not just these ones that you do again let's talk a bit more about the movement of the donkeys because you don't only unlock uh the the the market bone the market stalls you also unlock different bonuses yes because when you get to a place where there is one donkey here it means that your first donkey has to reach this space and you will get a water water is a resource that you use to manipulate the your actions later uh so that feels really important so uh those with two donkeys that means your last donkey has to reach this base and this is a milestone which uh the more you have the more points you will score at the end of each round this is kind of like the markers Ina only some nobody can take it away from you there's three more things to talk about regarding the dunkeys one of them is that there's two places on the board or actually a tree where you depend decide which way you want to go and you're going to get like a worse bonus if you're go the the slower the faster route and a better bonus if you go for the longer route also when you get to almost like half par halfway through you're going to go to number 10 you can't move anymore because there's a landslide and you can only move that Landslide away theme when you do something in your farm you're going to have like an easy achievement

19:50 here at when you man manage to do that the first one's going to get a point you can move the long way or if you get to do the the the hard one you can go the short way which better bonus es and these are also going to be interchangeables they going to be different each time and then when you get to the end I'm going to cheat and move my my little donkey over here I can go into these different um horbor spots and depending on how far I if I end up here I don't have to choose do I want to get a point or do I want to hope that I get more movement maybe I get two more so I can choose to take that one I get five points and I get to choose one of these end of game scoring opportunities which is basically the same as an end of game Market parrow I can do like a free action at the at the end to deliver these we there and get more points also there's going to be these round markers going to give you like either a different uh little small rule breaking a scoring opportunity and these are going to be also interchangeable I think there's four of each so there's going to be a different each time you play I really like those because they also in similarities to your your achievement will change a little about you how you play so you see like here in round two we get extra uh points for doing like a goat delivery and that means that you probably want to utilize that to get more points what is a goat delivery you ask we will soon answer I'm just going to talk little little bit about the Siesta track because it's the same way

21:20 as in l Granda you are going to depend on how far people are that's going to be the new turn order for the next round but now you're also going to get some extra donkey movie movies donkey movies movements a really good donkey movie is probably Shrek and you're also going to get like bonus points if you manage to one time throughout the game get all the way to the top of the track let's talk about deliveries yes because this is cool this is one of the greatest changes of the game I'm just going to briefly talk about the Dunkey deliveries and then you can talk about the goat deliveries which is like the cool part donkey deliveries are boring they're like the same as in l Granda you are playing deling things to yourselves you're delivering things to your Market barrels or to the different local markets but wait there's a change instead of the donkey markers where you choose like oh do I want to move one two three places on Thea track or or do I want to have like one two three or four donkey deliveries and then they're going to be used up and you're going to get them back after three rounds now you're going to have cards so you're going to draw four donkey cards and then going to have numbers on them and they're going to have potentially a bonus so you're going to do four different things with these four cards we have already set up two of them so let's say I placed a card here face down a card here face down I'm going to place another card under my my my board and I'm going to discard a card and what happens with a card you discard you might ask Soo is here to answer that is

22:52 your like the three cards that you discard in rounds one two and three will be your hand for the fourth round so you will use all the cards and that is very interesting because sometimes I just like oh I don't like that card I really need those cards now and I look at my hand at the end of G like no why have I chosen these cards for my last turn so what is like I love this I really really love this I love that you are building your own somebody said online which I really agree with it feels like kind of like do your do it yourself biblos yeah like you are kind of the cards that you're getting and you're choosing like one card here one card out this is going to be in your hand this is going to be for the auction and it's kind of feels like a mini mini mini version of that just doing it for yourself I really like the card mechanism because you have to balance because higher numbers you really want that because the number actually dictates how many times you get to do these two things but what are the two things the two things is moving on the cesta track so in this case I could you moved forward the Siesta track I can also use water to do it one extra time if wanted to or more water H and this uh is the donkey deliveries that you starting to talk about so in this case I could do only one donkey delivery but I get a cool bonus so you yeah there's some things to to think about this is good in games because thinking about I love things to think about I have to say I love everything about this except for one thing which I'm kind of like about

24:24 okay and that is the cardio place under here which is a card that you don't get a bonus you only get a number and then at the end of the round the player who has the highest number like adding the cars under there in the later rounds he going to get some points mhm and it's not a lot of points well I I have often set myself in a position where I got the points there I haven't no but there what what it's it's 10 points during the game that you just get for for free that I feel like those are cheap points only person does it that that is true but then again like there's if I get like a two high numbers I going to get more points for doing dun deliveries than getting those points yeah but if I if I for example I'm I do not agree uh if I for example haveing a car a tree and a four for example I don't need to move one extra up on the Siesta track but the tree has a bonus that I really want I don't get the bonus when I put it down here so then I want to play like the four down there for example if I just havein force for example depends on like the order of the cards you get as well because sometimes you're going to get like oh this is obviously a one I don't really want that one even though the bonus is good bonus is great so so these things are lower the number the better the bonus yeah so the balancing there but I it's just like one thing that's like that doesn't really do anything for me so as you understand now probably is that how many donkey deliveries you get in elor depends on this number and also

25:56 if you use some water to the action and you have a couple of different ways like you can use a worker to get another one and you have like one of the market bonuses that gives you another one so there's different ways to boost it up so let's talk about the goats you're supposed to talk about it so let's do it because the goat deliveries are cool and awesome like a goat the goat deliveries is very different from L Grand you don't have the goat deliveries there so 100 because in the goat deliveries you don't deliver to yourself you deliver a good to a one of the other players or if they don't need the the resource that you want to deliver you deliver it out of the game the reason you want to do this you want to move on a reward track and those uh you move on uh the car the track that you do with the resource that matching what you deliver so the first step is getting these upgrades for your player board the second is getting water then you can upgrade once again so flip this tile over and then up here you get a super cool bonus you have to choose you could to explain the oper one place yeah you can play a card for free so most of the time you're going to get your pretty late in the games you get to play like a special card for free or you can choose to unlock one of the different end of game scoring opportunities which most of the time are going to get you quite a few points you have to kind of go for something from the beginning I feel like with this because it's it's hard enough to move four spaces up so it's it's going to be you're not going to go to

27:27 the top of many tracks maybe two maybe three if you work like very very hard getting extra go deliveries and it it's very cool because you are helping somebody but the the the the chances is that somebody's probably going to help you a little bit as well so it ends up Balan it itself out and you also even though one point isn't a lot in this game it's if somebody delivers to me with a go delivery they're going to get the point I'm going to flip it if nobody delivers to me at with gold delivery I'm going to get the point at here so that's a twoo swing yes it's like it's a kind of like a smallish thing with like especially especially when playing multiplayer it's like a small thing when I have to choose okay I I it's it's more helpful for me to deliver to you because I want to deliver this thing but you already delivered to that person so then you're going to get more points and these things it's not a big thing but it is a thing so what do you feel about the goat deliveries I think they're really nice I think like goat deliveries feel important in this game uh sometimes you can have games where you deliver a lot of different resources and move up on a little on each track to get all of these uh upgrades but also moving to the top with one or two of these uh tracks it feels also really powerful because you can get a lot of points that way so I'm going to just we're going to briefly even though we have like mentioned it the interaction in this game is different than in lagranja in Lona you

28:57 had the drafting of the roofs you had the bumping out in the middle and of course the drafting but that is kind of the same way I feel like here the go delivery is a different kind of interaction but it's not a more interactive game I kind of feel like it's almost a little bit less of an interactive game which then makes it better for fewer players how do you feel about the Interac I agree as well because they haven't taken the interaction away to just change it so feels interactive but in a different way than before but I feel like this is better for fewer players do you agree like with that as well the two-player game of L Grand was kind of because it's it's fun to do the things but the markets are the market placing on the markers there is not that interesting so I feel like there's much more stuff going on here that makes it work a lot better with with with two um I'm going to like is there any of the changes and any of the things in elb that you don't like like outright like I have a few things said that I think are like okay but is there anything you don't like about the game no I think I like every single change oh obviously sometimes like I I like also the mechanisms in lanja but this just feels different kind of so I prefer for example this interaction over uh the market in the middle ofan because that felt to me a little too direct like I could place on the tree stall over there but I would rather place next to you so I bump you out but that feels a little mean to me

30:30 points I'm going to say one thing which is kind of like a a pro and a con in a way there's going to be two Market bonuses placed out here so the first player who gets six and 12 points is going to get that in some games like depending on the setup there might be super good ones over there which is going to give you like a a big big big boost if you get that at the beginning it kind of feels like you then the the player order is very important in the first first round because then if you get to make a delivery and and finish enough stuff to move up there and you have to kind of rush it if you if you see like for example I was kind of almost got that one but you one game you got both of them and the other players really didn't have a way of getting it so it add that adds to the interaction in the beginning of the game in a kind of weird way because like it's like oh we need to rush to get this and then that kind of Dives out so I feel that the player order is of course important for the dice but it didn't feel as important than in many other games like of course with two players it's not super important depending on how important for you to get a specific die I felt like the inter player order is most important when it comes to doing the deliveries first basically yeah I agree I think this maybe is to balance out that because in the beginning it's very uh unlikely that you're going to fulfill these deliveries and there is such a little Point difference for for players who does that but when you're later in the game maybe you get to

32:00 fulfill like both this and this in the same round if you're the first player then you will get a lot of points so maybe it's to balance out that I'm unsure how much I like this I have rushed for them all the times we played so I like it but but but I agree with your point so we're going to talk about we're going to talk a bit about the weight and who is it for and we're going to go into final thoughts where talk about my feelings and I'm also going to talk about like my feelings towards L Granda and they still need both of that so wait and who is it for I think this is a heavy game but on the lighter scale of a heavy like a medium heavy game and I think this is a little step up from lanja it's not that much heavier but there's a little bit more more stuff just more stuff um and and I think that this is similar oh now I'm going towards like do we need both yes who's it for yeah and Euro Gamers I would say this what do you think I think that this is like if you like L Granda you're going to like this I'm pretty sure about that if you enjoy any of the kind of games that we like you probably going to like this because SP I love this game I think that this is a very clean it has a great flow to it it is like it's not it's not that rules heavy because when you go into it like the first time we played kind like okay I have to remember this and then the cards but then from the second time it was like oh we're already at the delivery part of the first round because

33:30 it's like you play a card you drop two dice and all the actions are very most of the time very small like I'm going to play a card or I'm going to move this up or I'm going to upgrade a resource and then you get into the crunch of delivering which is where some of the AP sometimes happen but you are it's a it has a great flow to it it's one of those that if you enjoy a longer is game but it doesn't feel long because it's not a long time between its your turns I highly recommend it so let's talk about the final thoughts but before that if you are new to the channel and you enjoy what we do here you can help us out in a big Way by giving us a WECT three points and we get Rory points when you click that subscribe button you can also click the Bell to get notifications every time we post a new video final thoughts you go yes I feel like I really like Goro I like lanja as well I really like gboro I feel like they have the similar DNA but they are different games like two siblings yes and I feel like if you can keep both Gia project and ter mystica or age of innovation in in your collection then you can keep eloro and lanja as well yeah and if you can compare those those things but I feel like h i i i really like the changes and I really like elor and laranja ass games in general I love the dice drafting I love the resource management to TR to have the right resources at the right time to deliver them I really like the balance between

35:03 okay I really need those deliveries but I also want to move on that Siesta track so so I like everything about this game I'm going to rate it a n elor is a fantastic game I think that the L Granja Deluxe moner Set and this is a good combination I don't know if I need to keep this L grer but with the expans I and all the stuff in the deluxe monster set it's going to feel like a different enough game and I really like l i really like the bumping of the market stoles and all of that so this feels a bit more like a even better with two because it it it doesn't have that like direct interaction that's needed from L Granda so so not that good with two I think that I'm we're going to keep both we're going to keep the the deluxe moner set and and this one and I I really like it I like for the reasons you said like it's just one of those games that makes my my my my mind sing it's one of those that makes me go like it's I am having fun everything like you're trying to squeeze out as many deliveries you can you're going to squeeze out as many playing these special cards as many as you can using the workers in a good way managing the achievements trying to move here wanting to do everything cannot do it all I love it to bits four rounds feels really good highly recommend it I'm going to give it a nine as well cool and that's going to be the end of this review thank you so much for watching I'm johanes and you've been watching

36:33 board gaming ramblings and byebye