Knizia games: Blue Moon City, Tower of Babel, Through the Desert

I met Gargoyle and Laura for a session of Knizia games, as it turned out. We started the games with Blue Moon City, which turned out to be quite a sweet game. 40 minutes of fairly intense hand management stuff, with room for clever moves. We played twice in a row, and in the second game, I collected a huge pile of crystals and made four contributions to the obelisk on one move. That was fun, too bad I lost momentum and in the end lost, because I was one step too far on my last move...

It's a cool game, and has the sign of Knizia all over it. It's well designed, seems balanced and exciting. The need to help others (Laura lost the first game when she wandered a lot on her own, and didn't get involved in our buildings - that's a strategy lesson learnt), the need to keep certain cards for the end game, while there's the temptation to just burn through the cards right away... Excellent stuff. That makes it almost too good - I think I might have to get it. I like the Blue Moon world, so why not... Damn Knizia, too many good games.

Tower of Babel made a second appearance, this time with three players. I won hands down, thanks to previous experience, but it was still good. It's a clever game, indeed, and starting to look like a keeper.

In the other hand, I finally decided I don't want to keep Through the Desert. It's great in theory, but not that great in practise. Playing it isn't simply as much fun as it should be. Strange game, but I think I'll rather sell it and get, say, Blue Moon City instead. The fact that the setup takes almost longer than a two-player game is somewhat annoying.