At our gaming session this evening I got to try out two new games, Hacienda and Tower of Babel.

Hacienda - Wolfgang Kramer
An Essen release from last year, but one that I didn't try or look at. The buzz from those who I knew who'd tried it said it was OK, but not great. Now that it's been released over here it's readily available. I'd arrived just as they were about to start, so got the 45rpm version of the rules, which left a little bit unclear. In the end it's a pretty straight-forward 'do stuff to get stuff to allow you to do other stuff to get points' type game. Tim and Carrie had played at the GoF and it showed, as they were both way ahead of myself, Ben, and Doug, in that order. Understanding the scoring would have helped me, as well as being able to draw the cards I wanted at the right time, but it's solid fare, if not too exciting.

Tower of Babel - Reiner Knizia
An area control game, the area where control markers are to be placed is selected by the current player, and selects one of the chips (suits) to be bid on, which has a number from 3-6. All other players then secretly select a number of cards to offer to help the selected token. When revealed the current player chooses which other players' bids to select to help build the selected token, and they all place control markers, one for each card used. Any bids not selected score a VP for each card bid. A player may also play their Trader card, which means the current player may still select that bid, but the current player places control markers for the cards in exchange for the Trader player getting the token. Points are awarded for majority when a zone is evaluated (when the last of the 3 tokens is auctioned off). After every bid each player receives a single card from the draw deck.

And that's where the problems start. I managed to draw poorly and many times ended up with a lot of cards in just 1 or 2 suits, not the ones that other players were selecting. This means that you can't make a bid, and you're unable to score VPs or place control markers. Hmm, not so good. Also, when you the final token is removed from a zone that player also gets an action card which can give special actions or VPs. In our game all other players set each other up several times to select the last token, but the one chance I had was when I had no cards of the required suit.

So due to unlucky draws I felt there was little I could do to mitigate it. Of course it didn't help that the timing of these draws was just as a zone was closing and any good position I'd managed to gain was lost. I'd give it a second go, but so far it's thumbs down.