I bought Through the Desert today. I didn’t think there were still any copies around locally, but I spotted it in one of the FLGSs in town earlier, and grabbed it. I’ve known for a long time that “simple rules intersecting in interesting ways” describes many of my favourite games; but it’s taken me a long time to realise that this is also a description of a lot of the highly-rated “Classic Knizia” titles, and that it’s clearly a mistake that, in a sizeable games collection, I have almost none of them, as I now have a strong suspicion that I’d really enjoy most of them.
Edit: So mounting the 30 rider pieces onto camels was one of the most aggravating pre-game tasks I’ve encountered for a while – and even after trying my best, I’m very dubious that they are all going to stay put. I don’t know if it’s just the most recent edition which is troublesome, as it looks like every edition has used the same approach, but that is not a great design IMO. I can see how they are intended to click into place, and a few of them did, but there are so many tiny inconsistencies between pieces that, for lots of riders, I would just have to trial-and-error my way through a heap of prospective camel mounts until I found one that seemed like it might stick in place. I don’t want to use glue, but I think I might end up Blu-Tacking them together.