A printable El Grande region-and-Castillo log lives or dies on the one claim nobody can prove from a finished table, because the whole game runs on one record nobody keeps: how many caballeros each player actually hid in the Castillo, which secret region each player actually chose at scoring time, and what each region's counts actually were before those hidden caballeros landed. The scoring round ended with Ana claiming first place in a region she had been losing, and by the time the table argues about it nobody agrees on whether Ana really had four caballeros in the Castillo or three, whether Ben really had five caballeros in that region or six, or whether Carla's two Castillo caballeros really went to the region she says they did. A log sheet that records each player's announced Castillo additions round by round, each region's counts before every scoring round, and each player's secret Castillo destination at scoring time is the only record that settles those arguments, and it is a record no one at the table is keeping, because the players are busy bidding power cards, the caballeros are busy hiding in a tower nobody may look inside, and the scoring is busy happening before anyone writes anything down.
El Grande, for the seller who has never played it: an area-control game for 2 to 5 players set in fifteenth-century Spain, played over 9 rounds with a general scoring after rounds 3, 6, and 9. Each player starts with a Grande, their large duke cube, plus 2 caballeros in their home region, and a hand of power cards numbered 1 to 13, each showing 0 to 6 cubes. Power cards fix both turn order and how many caballeros move from a player's provinces into their court, and each round's action cards fix how many caballeros the player may place. Caballeros may only be placed in regions adjacent to the King's region, or into the Castillo, and never in the King's region itself, which is taboo: nothing in the King's region may ever be changed. The Grande is never counted when working out who has the majority in a region, but it earns its owner a bonus if they control their own Grande's region at scoring time.
The log your buyer actually needs has one section per scoring round, not one row per game, because El Grande arguments are always about a single scoring round. Each section records every player's Castillo additions as announced, since players must say out loud how many caballeros they are adding to the Castillo and nobody may look inside it, plus each region's caballero counts by player before scoring, plus each player's secretly chosen Castillo destination. The Castillo column gets its own running total, because the Castillo is scored on its own before the regions: the player with the most caballeros in the Castillo scores 5 points, second most scores 3, third most scores 1, and only the top three score. The secret-destination column gets its own space as well, because the destination is chosen in secret and revealed only after the Castillo itself is scored, and a destination misremembered after the reveal is an argument nobody can resolve from the board alone.
Here is the worked round the log is built to settle, with every number checked. Before the third-round scoring, the Castillo holds 4 caballeros from Ana, 3 from Ben, 2 from Carla, and 1 from Dave, each total built from announced additions across the first three rounds. Castillo scoring pays Ana 5 points, Ben 3 points, Carla 1 point, and Dave 0, since only the top three score. Then the secret destinations are revealed: Ana sends her 4 Castillo caballeros to a region where she already has 2 and Ben leads with 5, so Ana's count becomes 2 plus 4, which is 6, against Ben's 5, and Ana takes first place in that region by exactly 1. Without the log, that single scoring round is three arguments at once: whether Ana really had 4 caballeros in the Castillo, whether Ben really had 5 in the region rather than 6, and whether Ana's destination really was that region; with the log, it is one section. Note the knife edge the log protects: had Ana's Castillo total been 3 instead of 4, her region count would have been 2 plus 3, which is 5, tied with Ben's 5 instead of beating it.
For the seller, the pitch writes itself, because the buyer is not buying a scoresheet, they are buying the end of the argument. An El Grande group argues about exactly this kind of scoring round every game night, and the game is famous for the hidden Castillo, which means the log gets used, argued over, and used again, which means the buyer comes back. Sell it as a pad of fifty, one scoring round per section with room for all three scorings of a full game on each sheet, with the Castillo running-total and secret-destination columns pre-printed and room for the King's region in the margin so nobody accidentally logs a change there. Price it like a strategy-game accessory, not like a board game, and show the worked round above on the listing images so a buyer sees in five seconds exactly which argument the sheet settles. The game has a loud, loyal audience, so the listing should speak to the table that just lost a region to a disputed Castillo reveal, not to the collector.
This log is an unofficial fan-made accessory. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the publisher, and El Grande is a trademark of its respective owner.
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