Boonlake
- Paul Devlin
- Jun 30, 2022
- 14 min read
Updated: May 11, 2024
Sail around the board, but not like Maracaibo. Get your cattle to where they need to be, but not like Great Western Trail. Actually, the lazy comparisons don’t do this game justice. Boonlake very much does its own thing. The question is: How well?
Boonlake
Designer: Alexander Pfister
Publisher: dlp games
Released: 2021
How to Play:
The main board is made up of four connected unexplored regions, (Southern, New Hope, Unknown and Boonlake) with a river flowing through them upon which sits your Ship.
Your player board holds wooden inhabitants, houses, settlements and cattle which you are aiming over the course of the game to gradually clear from your board and move over to the main board, populating the regions of the map. As each piece leaves your player board they reveal coins to spend or victory points - both of which are gained during 4 interim scoring phases.
Practically, turns involve you choosing one of 7 actions from a standalone action selection board that broadly speaking:
• Let you place landscape hex tiles on to the map and claim bonuses dependent on where they are placed.
• Once there are hex tiles on the map, allow you to place inhabitants or cattle on those tiles
• Let you upgrade your inhabitants to houses, or your houses to settlements.
• Perform other related actions (aka ‘do some other stuff’) that benefit your ability to do all of the above ‘better’. In particular a ‘modernisation’ action that gives ongoing bonuses such as ‘pay one less resource’ or ‘gain an additional worker if...’ which you can use once per round and then reset ready to be used again during the next round.
You take your chosen action, perform it, and then place it at the bottom of the action selection board when you are done. If you took an action from near the top of the selection board then when you have finished your turn you move your ship down the river on the main board up to 4 places and take the bonus on the boats resting position. Take an action from lower down then you would move the boat 3 spaces, then 2, then 1 and then eventually actions will actually cost you victory points to take, in effect stopping you from taking the same action tile over and over again in quick succession as no one really wants to lose VP.
So off your boat travels each time you take an action and eventually it (or your opponents) passes one of four points on the board which will trigger interim scoring where you will add up all of your coins and VP that you have gained so far depending on how much of your player board you have cleared.
Each action tile, in addition to letting you perform your main action, allows you to do two additional things:
• Before you take your main action: Firstly players start the game with 6 cards from a large shared deck. Each randomly drawn card will be one of three coloured categories; day cards, sunset cards and night cards. The action you select from the action selection board will let you burn it for a couple of coins or play a card – only of a matching type. For example; I may be looking at an action tile that lets me place cattle, see that it also lets me play a ‘sunset’ type card from my hand, I have one but I can’t afford to play it so instead I burn it for two coins. In a future turn, I choose an action that lets me play a night card and this time I can afford it so I play it in to my tableau and take its benefits. Those benefits might be immediate bonuses, ongoing abilities or end game scoring benefits. You’ll frequently gain more and more cards as the game progresses.
• After you take your main action: There will be a secondary action usually related to the main action that you can now also choose to take. But so can everyone else.
Choose an action tile then use it to play or burn a card, take your main move, take a secondary action along with everyone else, put the tile action tile back, move your boat the requisite number of spaces depending on when you took your action from, gradually clear your player board as you go, score four times as your ship passes certain points on the board. Gather some additional points here and there along the way. Try to be the person with the most VP after 4 interim scorings.
The End*
(*well, other than some separate tracks you can move up to get more gold and cards, some personal scoring objectives to try and achieve over the course of the game and a really nice mechanism using small boats on your player board to gain resources without actually gaining resources. I have one eye on my word count as I have a fair bit to say so I shall leave you to watch a playthrough or have a cursory glance at the rulebook for more detail).
General Headlines:
What is that dubious research that says that humans can only hold 7 bits of information in their minds at any one time? If true then this game tests that theory to its absolute limits. There is a lot going on here. In most mid-heavy Euros with more clearly defined strategic pathways I will definitely have a close eye on;
1) my immediate action.
2) another eye on any potential available synergies.
3) and then finally a glance at my overarching strategy in the distance to make sure I am headed in the right direction.
In this very tactical game (I’ll talk about that later) each turn has so many things needing to be considered that I find it difficult to focus on one thing well, and instead find myself focusing on lots of things quite probably less well.
As a (by no means extreme) example of a single turn:
• I choose an action tile. How far will that make my ship travel? What reward will I get from where the ship stops? Will the movement trigger the end of the round and bring about interim scoring?
• I get to play or burn a card first of all. Do I have the right type of card? If I have the right type of card, do any of them have any clear benefits / synergies? Do I have enough coins to play the card? Do I then have the right resources to pay the cards further resources costs? If I do, do I need to manoeuvre my player board boats to allow me to access those resources? And if so can I afford to move the boats?
• Once I have played the card, I move onto my main action and I want to upgrade a house to a settlement. Do I have enough inhabitants to do this? If so are there three other things adjacent to the house (a condition of being able to upgrade it)? Do I already have a settlement in this region or do I need to build elsewhere? Are there any cattle around so that I can get some bonus points?
• I have been ‘modernising’ on my player board to allow me to take recurring bonuses. Will any of them help me here? If so which ones and how?
• I take the main action and now move on to the secondary action which all players can take. Did I consider how giving the other player this action might impact on my game? And how am I going to take this additional action?
• Have I kept an eye on the personal scoring objectives? Am I currently meeting the requirement to have 5 cattle in play by the end of round 3?
• When the other player takes their turn, will I be able to benefit from their secondary action?
…now in fairness that might feel like your idea of delightful nirvana. And I confess, I do like a lot to chew over in a game. I think it’s just a heads up that these aren’t occasional climactic pinch points in the game, but instead considerations that you are making each and every turn. You are going to have to keep a significant amount of things in your peripheral vision at any one time – some may argue too much. The thing is though, I’d struggle to say ‘X,Y or Z should have been culled to streamline the game’ as in all honesty I think the individual parts are really excellent, well designed and just darn clever. This is more a note of caution that the sum of those individually excellent moving parts might feel overwhelming to some. And all of that said, as a solo player I do have time for space and reflection - no one is rushing me, no internal panics that other people are hating every fibre of my being as I take a leisurely mull through my every possible move. Regardless, there is a lot to keep an eye on at any given time.
I also feel at times that I am not fully in control of the game – rather it is in control of me and I am simply a passenger watching the game unfold and I’m stepping in and making more immediate tactical decisions as the cards and changing board state develop. Again, that isn’t particularly a criticism, more an observation for those that might prefer a clear “this is what I am going to try to do in this game, and I am going to focus on this particular strategy and nothing else” at the start of a game. Boonlake makes you go with it rather than it going where you want it to go. And some part of me likes this, even though it brings me out of my comfort zone of wanting to always feel fully in control of the direction of travel. I like how the game emerges. I’ve had games where I have ended up somehow playing a heavy card game, or a heavy populating game, or a heavy tracks game – and while I haven’t actively controlled the direction as much as I might have done in other games, it certainly has made me think “I wonder how the next game will play out.” So on one hand I perhaps question the games longer term replayability as I think you are largely just doing the same thing each game (namely, clear your player board) and then on the other hand, I just want to play it again and again to see how those subtle differences game to game pan out.
One particular area that I think has been unjustly criticised in some other reviews is the interim ‘scoring objectives’ mechanism eg ‘have X number of buildings built’, or ‘have moved up the track by X’. Admittedly, there is a little bit of fiddle to this interim scoring objective process as it isn’t just a ‘have you met the condition or not’ so while I agree that this element could potentially have been a little more streamlined, I think at its core the scoring objectives are essential for my enjoyment of the game and for replayability. They are the only part of the game that really give you a longer term focus other than ‘try to clear your player board’. The scoring objectives change game to game so offer a little bit of welcome, variable strategic direction. Fiddly, sure. But this fan of clear, long term goals appreciates having them around.
Not only is there quite a lot going on each turn but there is also a lot of symbols, and not necessarily immediately intuitive ones at that - though as ever a couple of games in and they quickly become second nature. That said, it all made for a very rough first game with almost everything needing to be checked in the rule book as I went along. It’s a mid -heavy Euro so I’m not going to give it too much grief for that but it felt wobblier than usual and I do wish there had been some sort of ‘for your first game use this setup, these tiles, this card, these resources’. Just a tiny bit of hand holding of the type I’ve seen in game such as Teotihuacan or more recently Golem - rather than feeling like I had been chucked in at the deep end. Something where the synergies are really apparent in the first game to help my mind’s eye more clearly. Just be prepared to buckle up for an extremely wobbly first play is all I will say. But it does get easier.
The card play is really fun in this game. Cards come into your hand at a good pace with lots of variety and possible synergies. I like those moments of burning frequently through them to get 2 coins and then seeing that one card that marries up with exactly how I am playing the game at that time and being able to play it and reap its benefits as well as the puzzle of figuring out if I can even conjure up enough resources to play the card using the games quite clever resource management ‘boat’ mechanism.
Perhaps the reason it sounds like I am on the fence with this game (if indeed it does sound like I am on the fence?) is the fact that I can’t decide whether I am enjoying playing it because it is technically a good game whose mechanics I am appreciating or whether I am actually having fun playing it. Not that the two things are always separate considerations of course. The fact that there is barely a theme here doesn’t help. I’m building settlements and placing cattle and moving a boat down a river for no particularly thematic reason - more a case of ‘just because’. I’m not suggesting that every game should have me saving the world, getting the girl / guy, stopping a nuclear detonation and being on the edge of my seat with as I traverse a heart pounding theme (if even such a game exists). I don’t play Euros for that. I play Euros to move bits of wood around to get me stuff so I can use the stuff to get some more stuff to then get some points. But equally, here I am playing an excellent game and at the end even though it’s a satisfying enough play, I am thinking “ok, I built a few buildings”. I suppose there is some tension built into your sail down the river as it may or may not trigger interim scoring or end game. But it’s a very gentle theme this one. The game is clearly a technical masterclass in board game design, there is no doubt in that. I’m utterly impressed at how good the game is – it has my full applause. I just can’t decide whether I am actually having fun whilst playing it. I certainly feel that I have a good brain exercise though, so I suppose all told, it’s done a good chunk of what I wanted (or needed) it to do.
Solo Headlines:
A potential complaint about Boonlake solo (as could be the case with the designer’s previous game Maracaibo) is that the solo opponent moves very fast indeed – much faster than a human player - leaving you very little room to breathe. You have to make sure that you are quickly achieving as much as you can or face getting literally left behind. That said, solo games here still take 60 – 75mins, but nevertheless they do feel like you are being rushed by the solo opponent. I didn’t particularly find that too much of an issue in either game, but I personally find it less of an issue with Boonlake. I like being against the clock on this one. I do wonder though whether there might have been a “For a short game, play like this or for a longer game, play instead like this” option just to satisfy those that like to play solo in an hour and enjoy the pressured race and those that might want a deeper 90 -120 minute solo game at a slower pace where they feel they have been able to accomplish more?
That said, I thought the solo opponent ‘The Wise Eminence’ was absolutely superb. Big comparisons for me in some respects with a firm favourite, Praga Caput Regni, not just in that both games have similar action selection mechanisms but mainly that the solo opponent doesn’t just remove options from you, it also regularly presents new options by adding to the main board and building in areas that might be of benefit to you and more specifically in this game, letting you take its additional secondary actions. It’s not the quickest ‘flip a card and do what it says’ solo mode, but it’s really not too far away. I never felt its turns were overstaying their welcome or needing more than some cursory glances at the state of the board to be able to take its move. There are some rule exceptions but not an onerous amount. Very easy to manage – most moves taking about 20 seconds if that to work through. Nice.
Other than the speed that the opponent travels, the game plays the same as it would in multiplayer (I had a gripe in my review of Maracaibo that the solo and multiplayer games felt different to each other largely due to the way the automa in that game scores its points, or more crucially how its scores more for things you may not have done). That said, while the ability to copy another players secondary action is also replicated in the solo game, I feel that element of the game is more suited to the multiplayer game to most likely help fill the gaps during the inevitable downtime as opponents tackle the complexity of their own turns. In the solo game there isn’t any downtime to fill. I’m not moaning there though, a free turn is a free turn! I just think this ‘get to take the same turn your opponent has chosen’ is more a USP of the multiplayer game than the solo game.
The automa has 5 levels of difficulty and scoring doesn’t feel at all unbalanced as you progress through the levels – though people who are winning this on the highest difficulty mode are simply superhumans that should have their genes saved for future generations cloning use. Medium and Challenge difficulties provide a good challenge for most mere mortals exploring this game.
All told, I really enjoyed how this solo mode plays.
At a Glance:
+ Excellent action selection mechanism
+ Enjoyable and easy to learn / manage solo automa
+ Much like the designers other games, the use of cards is nicely interwoven to the other parts of the game.
+ / - Quite a lot to have to keep in your eyeline every turn – maybe too much?
+ / - A reactive tactical game rather than a proactive strategic one.
- Lack of meaningful theme perhaps takes some of the fun away from playing and leaves things feeling quite mechanical.
Final Score:
an admittedly confusing and contradictory...
• The Game: 8.5 out of 10
• My enjoyment of the game: 7.5 out of 10
Reviewed after 7 plays. Thank you for reading this review. Feel free to leave any comments, suggestions and questions as well as any of your own thoughts about this game.
Edit: November 2023
A brief update to this review which was originally posted in June 2022 after 7 plays. Here I am now in November 2023 with 24 plays under my belt – admittedly some with the new expansion ‘Boonlake: Artifacts’ which I may or may not review at some point but if I don’t then this ‘its great, well thought out, adds very little bloat, adds zero new rules to the solo mode and I very much recommend it”’ will have to do.
Reading back on the content of this original review of the base game there isn’t anything particularly that I want to correct – I still think there is a lot going on at any one time, I still probably think that with or without the expansion the theme doesn’t particularly pop, there are probably more than a few fiddly rules to wrap your head around (I’m looking at you cattle placement in the solo mode)….
But clearly I kept playing it. Returned to it. Picked up a copy of the expansion. Boonlake dug its claws into me and 24 games later revealed itself to be a deeply satisfying game and quite a treasured one in my collection. The clever action selection that links to how quick you travel down the river; that race down the river that isn’t too fast but fast enough to keep the pressure on; card play that doesn’t feel too heavy and is more of a light side salad albeit one with some salty resource management to have to juggle, careful thinking through of timings of when to populate and build and when to hold off; tactical decisions aplenty to react to, strategic goals to chase – and crucially the realisation that even though the game emerges and develops sometimes with a mind all of its own, you can indeed control the direction of that wind.
I would like to correct my final score in light of these additional plays. Boonlake I suspect has become my favourite Alexander Pfister game…
Final Score:
9 out 10 (reviewed after 24 plays)
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