Control the Hacienda, Si?

Your Hacienda Isn’t Very Important

Hacienda is a fun board game that has all kinds of things going for it. Tiles. Theme. Interaction. Double-sided board. Money not made of paper. Smiling animals. Great designer in Wolfgang Kramer. And more.

In a way, Hacienda is an area control game. You end up controlling spaces on the board as you take your animals – sheep, pigs, horses, and cattle – to market. The more spaces you control, the better your chances of winning.

You have a hand of both animal and land type cards that correspond to your supply of circular animal and hexagonal land tiles. And yes, all the animals on the cards have a smile on their faces.

Play your cards to place tiles on the board. Try to keep your land tiles together for more points. Place your animal tiles leading towards one of the market spaces on the board to collect money when you sell them at the market.

Watering your land and animals with the water tiles of various shapes and placing haciendas (a relatively minor part of the game) on your longer chains of tiles will also lead towards a victory.

As I hinted at above, one of the cool things about Hacienda is the money. The production value here is excellent. The money, which comes in denominations from 1 to 50 pesos, is made of the same high-quality linen (I think) as the animal and land cards.

Another great feature is the double-sided board. You’ll probably start with the “dog bone” side shown above. But you’ll soon want to try out the flip side (shown at the right) which is not symmetrical.

If you’re really interested in game board variations, you can find more user-created versions at Board Game Geek.

Check the price of Hacienda on Amazon.