New Games

[shannon_a]

Ordered some new games from TimeWellSpent:

• Trias
• Babel
• Bohnanza
• Balloon Cup

A couple of 2-player games for K. & I (Balloon Cup because it's highly recommended and Babel because it's going out of print), a German classic I haven't yet played (Bohnanza) and one that's been catching my eye for months due to pretty pieces (Trias).

I have to say the experience was amazingly different from my last two very frustrating funagain orders. I had confirmation within an hour, along with an apology that they'd just missed the UPS shipping. I should have the games on Monday, which was pretty much my precise intention if their shipping & handling was as good as they'd promised in December.

I'll just have to make a note for myself that UPS doesn't deliver on Saturdays, and so if I want games for a weekend, I theoretically will get them if I order on Monday.

Comments

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Babel's easily my favorite in the Kosmos 2-player line. It takes a while (probably at least 3-4 games) to really get the hang of it, but I think it's worth the effort. I like Trias for the continental drift mechanism (and the cute little wooden dinosaurs), but my general dislike of spend-action-points-to-grab-majorities-at-the-right-instant games may eventually turn me off it. Unless I can manage to figure out how to win...

Glad to hear you had a good experience with Time Well Spent. I'm currently experimenting with my local game store's "25% off special orders" policy, hoping to get Attika, Alexandros, Bridges of Shangri-La, Scream Machine, and Warhamster Rally. Looks like I picked the right time, because my preferred mail-order place, Game Surplus, is on hiatus for a month. But we'll see how long it actually takes the store (Your Move Games) to get them in (and whether the final price is really comparable). I'm hoping it will also lead them to stock more board games in general, but, one step at a time...

[shannon_a]

Great to hear Babel's actually a good game too. Like I said, I picked it up largely because it's going out of print from RGG, and I didn't want a two-player Kosmos game set in the Fertile Crescent to slip away. (I'm too annoyed at a number of good games which slipped through my fingers while I was still getting interested in the German games, like Ra, Chinatown, and Through the Desert.)

Attika's right on my list too, and I might have purchased it this time around if a flurry of posts about miscut tiles hadn't gone across spielfrieks right when I was placing my order. Now it appears that was mostly noisy panic. I'm even more enthusiastic now that I hear that it plays well for two as well.

The Bridges of Shrangri-La looks quite interesting. I have a review copy sent my way by Uberplay, and I'm hoping to give it a try quite soon. But then, I really liked the one other Colvini game I've played, which was Clans.

[andrewducker]

Bohnanza is great fun. After 2 games where we played very simply, we suddenly started tracking favours owed to each other, ending up with almost a minor economy.

[shannon_a]

It's been on my list for a while because it's one of the few real classic German games of the last decade that I hadn't tried. I just had a hard time bringing myself to buying a game about ... trading beans.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Next you should get Flowerpower, a game about planting flowers, and Ad Acta, a game about shuffling papers. Both good games, really!