Although I am sad to be back from my trip home, one of the things that always cheers me up are the games I bring back with me from my parents' hometown (I was not able to bring all of them when I first moved to Ontario for school.) I was particularly delighted to find my relatively untouched copy of the classic Rail Baron which I thought I'd lost last year. Another one of the games I brought back is a luckless abstract strategy game from Leo Colovini called The Bridges of Shangri-La. And I forgot just how damn good this game is! With a set of simple, exceedingly elegant rules, Colovini has crafted a classic, vicious game of pure strategy for 3 or 4. The games itself reminds me of another great Colovini game Clans, although Clans feels much lighter and plays much quicker.
Sadly, BoS-L was printed by the now defunct North American company Uberplay and the original German edition is not in print by Kosmos at the moment either. I heartily recommend grabbing a cheap copy if you can as this game is just awesome. Now onto my reclaimed copy of Stephenson's Rocket....
tease.. I was thinking ohhh fun but it's all out of print like.. sigh
ReplyDeleteHey have you played Citadels? I tried it the other day and was pleasantly surprised. I played Stephen's Rocket once... it was fun but the rules and scoring evaded me completely. It was very entertaining because even the guy teaching us to play was a little surprised by the score. Honestly I was sure I had lost by a large margin turns out I was second.
I bought a very cheap copy of Bridges about eight months ago and I have yet to play it. Every time I look in my closet to pick out a game, I see it then dismiss it. It's more work to find a seller and it's not worth anything on the trade market either. It might have been the worst nine bucks I've ever spent.
ReplyDeleteNow I owe it to myself to at least try the game, so I've been waiting to get four of us to the table (I've had three or five for several weeks in a row). It's encouraging to read your take on the game, but I'm still not expecting to love it or at least consider it worth keeping. But we'll see . . .
@jacob: It's a brain-burner! You might be surprised. Definitely let me know how it goes.
ReplyDelete@mag: Yes, Citadels is a hoot. And the strategy for SR is so subtle I don't even know if it's there. But it's fun!