BOONLAKE (2021)
BGG Description
With a group of pioneers, you have left civilization behind to settle along the shores of Boonlake, a long-forgotten region inhabited by humans long ago. This unexplored area beckons you! Become part of a new community and commit yourself to the common good. Explore the landscapes, build houses and settlements, raise cattle, produce raw materials, and develop an infrastructure. Do your best to automate these processes. Seize the opportunity to make the best of your new life in Boonlake.
Boonlake is an expert game in which you are finding yourself improving your life — and your group's life — in this new territory...but how you accomplish this is completely up to you! Due to a novel action mechanism, each game progresses differently. Each action needs to be considered carefully since the other players also benefit from the action you choose. Besides this, the action determines how far you may move your ship — the further and faster, the better!
—description from the publisher
Weight 3.75/5
A Little More Info
The following is the opening statement from the manual:
“Finally, you have arrived at Boonlake. The abandoned region along the shore of the lake of the same name almost seems uninhabited; there is only a small group of people, watching over nature and trying to develop life according to their own ideas. The land has hardly been explored, but the gorgeous surroundings will provide valuable opportunities to improve the lives of Boonlake‘s inhabitants. On your turn, you have to choose one action, and all of you will benefit from it. Exploring, settling, breeding cattle, hiring, modernizing, building, sailing… What goals will you pursue? It‘s all up to you – in BOONLAKE”
Let’s see if I can explain this heavy game in a nutshell. The game is played over two rounds with two interim scoring in each round plus a final scoring period. The end right? Oh, you want to know more about the gameplay itself too? Okay here is my attempt to explain it.
Each players turn has three phases (A,B,C). Phase A is where you select an action from the action strip and carry it out from left to right (more on this soon). Phase B is where you move your ship down the river up to the maximum number of spaces allow by the position of the action you took from the action strip (more details coming). Phase C is the easiest of the three, all you do push the action strips up from the bottom of the action board and pass the turn to the next player.
More about Phase A: There are seven different actions strips that are constantly moving around. Two strips for each of the day (pioneer and cattle breeding actions), sunset (progress and region scoring actions), and night (hire and settle actions) and one strip (builder action) that is more specifically for playing cards. Each player selects one of the action strips, places it at the bottom of the action board, and then takes the actions from on it from left to right. Now I want to make this clear… players MAY take the eligible actions on the action tiles but can opt to not take them.
For each of the strips that correspond with a time of day, you begin by either playing a card (day, sunset, night) that matches action tile or discard a matching card to earn 2 coins. Then you take the main action(s) that apply just for yourself. Then every player takes the action(s) on the right side of the tile, except for the Pioneer strip (the active player doesn’t take the actions).
For the Builder action strip, you gain three coins and then can either play a card or draw two cards and then everyone may play any card or discard any card for two coins.
I will talk more about playing cards further down but for now let’s look into Phase B.
Phase B: Based on the position of the action strip you took, you can move your boat anywhere from one (lower part of the action board) to four (top spaces on the action board) spaces on the river. If you have more than one movement available you do not have to use all the spaces.
The river also provides you any one of six different rewards. Spaces on the river cannot be shared unless you are in a harbor space.
Once the first player passes one of the locks on the river, the interim scoring takes place. After the first scoring, you follow the river to the left (the head of the boat direction, towards the middle of the board); after the second scoring, you move all the ships back to the start area to begin the second round (except in a four-player game you move down the river a little further to start). The third scoring period (same location as the first) you take the right side (again nose of ship facing downward). After the last interim scoring is the final scoring. Just take note that leftover coins and card have no value in the final scoring.
Now the resources. You move your canoes around your player board to “activate” the resources, everyone starts out with one basic resource of each of the four types plus one of the +1 production sites upgrades giving you a second resource of one type (you decide which you want after looking at your cards). Throughout the game there are ways to acquire the additional upgrade tiles and also to flip them giving you up to four of each resource.
There are also lever tokens that you can use throughout the game that provides you various benefits as well. You gain these with by selecting the progress action strip.
What we like about the game
The biggest thing that we absolutely love about the game is that there is little player downtown. On each players turn all players will have something that they can do.
We love that wooden components and even the cardboard ones are well made. The players boards are dual layered (you put it together) so that the pieces are nice and secure and won’t slide around.
The variety of the cards in the game allows you to play different strategies to gain an upper hand over your opponents. What may work one game may not work the next; an aspect that we do like.
Next, the learning curve to play the game is quite low. Once you get the basics of the symbols down, the gameplay goes fairly quickly. As with all new games, just be prepared to take extra time to learn the game; after the first game, you can complete it within the estimated play time.
Last thing to point out is that we like how the resources are played out, you have them without having physical pieces to mark them. Your canoes do all the work for you keeping track of what you can use.
What we don’t like about the game
The one thing we don’t like about the game is that there isn’t anything we don’t like. Alexander Pfister had created a well round game that keeps all players busy. Most of the longer heavier games involves a lot of player downtime and this game does not.
FINAL THOUGHTS
For a heavy Euro and worker placement game, we found this to be one that we could play over and over and not get “board” with (pun intended). We have played the game at two and three player counts and found both to be enjoyable and are excited to try it four players, heck, I might get ambitious and try the solo play too.
A lot of people do prefer light to medium weight games to play and are turned off by heavy games, for us, this heavy game is fun and enjoyable and not a “big and scary” one such as the Twilight Imperium games.
Are you willing to help settle Boonlake and save humanity as we once knew it? Come take a trip down the river and see.
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