New Games

Ordered two new games today. First up is the Uberplay reprint of the classic Ra. I played this game at a SoCalGamesDay once and really liked it. It's a pure auction game but with some really cool mechanisms, and is one of the rare auction-based games that work really well with two players. The box art has changed so it won't match the other games I own in the Alea series, but who cares about that? The in-game art is identical, except with slightly larger tiles and some new symbol aids on certain tiles. The Ra piece and bidding suns are slightly different but look fine. Not sure if the excellent player aids on BGG will still work with the bigger tiles, but they're not strictly necessary, and I'm sure that someone will post an updated version soon enough. Oh, and it comes with a cloth bag for tile draws, which was noticeably absent from the original release. All for a reasonable price, and to answer my earlier "who cares about that?" question, there are morons like this guy who paid $86 just to have matching box art. I wouldn't have paid that amount even if there was no reprint, but come on, does a matching number on the spine really justify a sixty dollar premium?

In part to make the shipping worthwhile, I added Keythedral. I've almost added this game to an order a few times, and after reading the rules I decided to finally pull the trigger. The description of "Settlers on steroids" doesn't seem quite accurate but there are definite similarities. Beautiful art on this one as well. Definitely looking forward to playing both of these.