Autumn Games - Balloon Cup

I had wanted to play something a little more complex next, but we had only a short time available and so pulled out a game we were both familiar with, Balloon Cup by Stephen Glenn.  For the record, I know Stephen Glenn and he's a good guy.

Balloon Cup is actually pretty similar to Heave Ho! in that the players are playing cards to either side of the board in order to win a prize.  In Balloon Cup, the players are hot air balloon racers, racing through either the plains or the mountains, represented by four tiles.  The tiles are marked with a value, 1-4, which is the number of colored cubes, drawn randomly from a bag, that go on that tile.  When cards are played next to a tile, they must match in color and number the cubes on the tile.  For example, if the 3 Tile has one blue and two yellow cubes, the players must play one blue and two yellow cards on each side of the tile before the race is concluded and a winner determined.

Winners are determined by the total value of the cards played.  In the mountains, you want a higher total value of cards on your side than on your opponent's side, and in the plains you want a lower total value of cards.  Whoever wins the race, gets the cubes on the tile.  The tile is then flipped over to the opposite terrain, more cubes are placed on it from the bag, and the next race for that tile begins.

On your turn, you play a card either to your side or your opponent's side, then draw a new card.  If this finishes a race, you determine the winner and allocate the cubes.  If after a race you are the first to have a certain number of cubes (3-7 depending on the color), you win the prize card for that color.  Once a color's prize card has been claimed, leaving you with cubes, you can also use three of that color as a wild cube to claim another prize.  Win three prize cards and you win the game.

The twist to the game is that there are fewer of some colors than others, both in cubes and cards.  For example, there are thirteen red cards (values 1-13), but only five gray cards (values 1,4,7,10,13) making some races more challenging to complete and limiting a player's options.

This was an unusual game of Balloon Cup as neither Carol or I collected any prize cards for the longest time.  We just went back and forth amassing a huge amount of cubes, but neither gaining enough to claim any prize cards.  Finally, I won my third gray and fifth green cubes (as above) in one turn to get their prizes and shortly thereafter collected a fourth blue cube for the win.

Final scores:

     Ipecac 3
     Carol  0