Balloon Cup- Be Smart In Landing Your Balloons!

Here we go with the 2nd game- Balloon Cup! Another 2 player light strategy game(though the word strategy should be very loosely associated). What I forgot to mention in the previous post for Lost Cities is about "Kosmos". Kosmos specializes in 2 player games and I have quite a few from their stable! Most of them play short and is a lot of fun. Balloon Cup is no exception.

Balloon Cup by Stephen Glenn

Stephen Glenn is a high school teacher and has a passion for strategy board games. This was his 1st game, post which he also designed a game called You must be an Idiot! a fun based trivia game.

Today though we are talking about his 1st game Balloon Cup, which was nominated for the Spiel Des Jahres award (you can say this is like a boardgame Oscar).

This is another game that is a very good introductory game. I played for the 1st time at my friend's shop Brew Haha with my wife and she loved it. It was only after this that I got this game. Now having played this game for more than 35 times, I can tell you that this game is pure fun. Very very light, fast, but definitely fun. In fact I would say most people I have played it with find this more fun than Lost Cities (that is because Lost Cities asks you to take some though decisions on discarding and playing cards). I'll come to the playing bot in just a moment, but first the components.

What do you get in the Box?

Really nice components. What you come to expect from any Rio Grande Games (who BTW is one of the most popular game publishers). Nice cards 45 cards with Colorful Balloons (5 different colors) 5 trophy cards, a cotton bag with 45 cubes in 5 different colors and 4 tiles (double sided tiles)

How does this play?

Really simple rules. Each player gets 8 cards and on their turn they can either play a balloon card on their side or their opponents. Well the 4 tiles are laid out with alternating diagrams- Mounts and Plains ( Each tile has a number 1-4 and cubes are randomly chosen from the bag and placed 1 cube on the tile 1, 2 cubes on tile 2, 3 on tile 3 and 4 on tile 4). Players need a high total to win cubes on a mountain tile and low total to win the cubes on the plain tile. The tile number is also the number of cards required on both the sides to decide the winner (Eg: 3 cards on each side to win 3 cubes on Tile three)

The fun element in the game is the fact that you can completely screw up your opponents plans as you can play a card on his/her side as well :-), so the game constantly changes after every card is being played and tensions rise as people start winning cubes. After a tile has been decided it is turned over- a mountain is turned over to get a plain and vice-verse, which means the kind of cards that you have in your hand might have to be used differently :-). So all in all it is really fast paced and people continue to play up until they achieve the required number of cubes for a particular trophy. Say 3 gray cubes for Gray trophy. The 1st to 3 trophies wins the game.

There is also another cool mechanic in that if there are cubes of a particular color for which the trophy has already been won, you could use 3 of those to make up for one short of another trophy. So is a person has 3 gray cubes (and gray trophy card has been won) and the player is having 3 blue cubes (blue requires 4 blue cubes), you could now use the 3 gray cubes as a joker to say so and win the blue cube. So all in all lots of fun!

How long does this play?
This typically takes between 30-40 minutes max. Though Lost Cities is more competitive I have seen that Balloon Cup hits the table more than Lost Cities whenever I give an option for players :-). I guess compared to Lost Cities the decision making is easier and the game is lot more forgiving (meaning even if you commit a mistake on one tile, you can make in the other, as opposed to Lost Cities, which can be very unforgiving.

Who would you recommend it to?
I know that this game is not really ranked high up on Boardgame geek, but who cares, I really like this game in fact over Lost Cities and highly recommend it for everyone. Lots of fun!

Any downsides?
As I said before this is a fast paced game high on tactics and low on strategy. Not deep at all an a lot of randomness as players can play on either sides, that makes planning almost impossible. Some people might not like this dynamism and randomness.

Final Thoughts!
Go get this one and enjoy landing your balloons. This game is for fun and not brain burn. I would say any casual/hobbyist should have this in their game collection!