Overview:
Balloon Cup is a steaming pile that leaves a nauseatingly bad taste in my mouth with every additional encounter.
Hi everyone, this is my first review. It's based on six plays of the game.
I picked up Balloon Cup as part of my ongoing quest to find games that my Special Lady Friend and I can enjoy together. Everyone talks about the Kosmos two-player line, so I started there. I'd picked up Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation(I love it, she hates it) and Lost Cities(we both like it), so I thought I'd try this and see how it turned out.
Theme:
You're racing hot-air balloons over two different types of terrain. You get trophies for winning various legs of the race. Best out of five trophies wins the cup.
Mechanics:
A very rough overview, as the rules are freely available in the Files section: There are terrain tiles representing various legs of the race. Randomly colored cubes are placed on the tiles in different amounts. You have a hand of numbered cards. You play "good" cards on your side of the terrain, and "bad" cards on your opponent's side of the terrain. If you have the best total on your side of the tile at the end of that leg, you get the cubes on the tile. Cash in appropriate amounts and colors of cubes to win trophy cards. First player to collect three cards wins the game.
Our Experience:
It started out okay -- maybe an eight on the BGG scale ("very good game, will often suggest it") for the first few plays. But for me, it crashed and burned amazingly quickly. Little things about the game started to grate on me, and then they became big things, and then I started to actively hate the game. I probably made the mistake of playing it when she would suggest it, just to do something together, even when I wasn't in the mood for this. She is a good sport and will try almost anything once, despite not liking long or complex games, so I feel I can certainly take one for the team on occasion. 386
But the main problem is that I quickly became "never in the mood for this, ever."
Strangely, she seems to like it and has suggested it in the past.
Critique:
Well, where to start? First, the relationship between theme and mechanics is completely nonsensical. What do the cards represent? Piloting skill? Then why can I play cards on my opponent's side? Or do the cards represent favorable winds, and I can give my opponent unfavorable winds? Let me assure you that if I ever get the ability to control the winds, "go race a balloon!" is going to be about the last thing on my list. The first thing... I dunno, maybe send a tornado into the Kremlin or something.
When I win a particular leg of the race, why do I get (e.g.) 2/7ths of the way to the Red Trophy and 1/4th of the way to the Blue Trophy? What does that even mean? There's not even an attempt to answer. It seems that the game was designed mechanics-first, which you can probably get away with if you're <PERSON>. ("And you, sir, are no Reiner <PERSON>!") I hesitate to even call Balloon Cup's theme "pasted on." "Paste" implies at least some sort of sticky adhesive. This theme is attached with a Post-It and some wishful thinking.
So can you just ignore the theme and treat it as a mechanical exercise? Sure, but there's not much there either. The tension mostly derives from "I hope I draw a good card." Most of the actual decisions are roughly equivalent, either due to the board position or because the opponent has almost a fifth of the deck concealed in her hand. Occasionally you encounter a meaningful decision, but you're still at the mercy of the draw. There's a player aid in the Files section detailing the card selection, so I guess calculating which cards are left in draw pile gives some advantage. But the deck is so small, and gets reshuffled at least twice per game, that any advantage conveyed by this would be fleeting. It seems like way too much work for such a small advantage.
Ultimately, you are at the mercy of the draw. You spend thirty teeth-grinding minutes of tedium moving cards and cubes around to find out who won.
What About the Designer's Intended Rules?
Supposedly the designer originally forbade you to play bad cards on your opponent's side until your side was completely full. This would force you to play more bad cards on your side. Some people swear that this makes the game tighter and more interesting, but I don't see it. The problem with the game is too much dependency on getting lucky cards. Removing your ability to deal with bad luck just exacerbates this. 755