About Boonlake
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 ...Read More
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Reviews
Artifacts
A non-thematic, card driven game with definite shades of previous games (Maracaibo, Great Western Trail) where the goal is to score the most points.
Players are settlers(?) in a new undiscovered territory and use the same type of action selection mechanism innovated in Puerto Rico (the active player chooses an action, does it, and the other players, along with the active player, get to take a somewhat lesser secondary action, so there is a slight variation on the original mechanism). The first part of an action involves (optionally) playing a card from hand (provided you can pay the money and cover the resources) or discarding a card for a small amount of money ONLY if you match the icon for that chosen action. This is followed by the main action, and then the secondary action for ALL players. The chosen action then gets put into the bottom of the queue where it could, but would be costly to choose again. After that, the active player moves their boat downstream up to the number of spaces allowed by the chosen action strip. Like Great Western Trail's moving the train, if you move where another boat is, you skip that space, also you gain a small bonus for where you end your turn.
Also similar to Great Western Trail and Maracaibo, the further along you move your boat, the faster the game will be, and the game has two distinct circuits. Each circuit has two intermediate scoring phases (triggered by the first player to move past a certain point), and the second circuit also has a final scoring phase. Each intermediate scoring allows for opportunities to play more cards and/or upgrade your player pieces on a shared map, collect income (which could be improved over the course of the game), and an opportunity to trigger a minor scoring event. Some basic refreshing also occurs (of tokens on the board, and of personal techs each player may have acquired).
The game comes with a huge deck of cards, but many are straight duplicates of each other, and draws are random, so card luck can be a significant factor. You can score points in a multitude of ways, and most things will be opportunistic and dictated by the types of cards you draw. The ability to diversify your own player boards/abilities is interesting, and if you like other Pfister games, this should also be something you enjoy, although it's not as fresh as previous offerings. A solid midweight game that plays well at 2, but can go overly long with more players.
Own the [boardgame=398052]Artifacts[/boardgame] expansion.
The action selection/shared bonuses system is the highlight of this game - it's clever, keeps players more engaged, and makes some choices (like to use the obviously very powerful exploration tile actions) more interesting. However, that's the one real standout feature of this game, and it doesn't really do enough to carry the rest of an otherwise underwhelming package. There's almost zero theme, the components/production aren't anything special, and the rest of the mechanics are things that you've seen a hundred times before in other mid-weight euros. For the middling amount of depth/interaction the game delivers, the playtime needs to be quite a bit shorter than it is - the game just feels oddly paced and like it overstays it's welcome, even after multiple playthroughs shortened the overall playtime. There's a huge plethora of cards, but many of them are carbon copies of each other, and they simply aren't very interesting most of the time. All in all, it's something I would play if it was what the rest of the group wanted, but I would never suggest it or seek it out.
Fun game, took us a couple of tries to get the play-time under 2 hours, but we understand the push and pull of the game better now. It's tough to use your hand of cards to full effect while still getting the actions you need. When to discard for money, when to pay up for a permanent bonus, it's all a very delicate act with the final implications of any one action being heavily obfuscated by the end of the game. Why do I keep losing by 20 points? I may never know.
Card benefits are just boring, so the rest of the game ends up feeling very meh after about 3 plays.
too clunky for us, not a solid theme
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