Boonlake Review

boardgamequest.com:

“Are we there yet?” The small voices rise from beneath the heavy blankets that keep the children warm on this journey. It’s been months of grueling travel through inhospitable land, the promise of reaching the fabled uninhabited Boonlake seeming more like a tall tale with each passing day. How did this rumor emerge? Did someone find it and run to gather others? Would we be the first?

The wagons reach the rise of a grassy hillside, and our eyes are temporarily blinded by the sun reflecting off a brilliant blue snaking river that cuts through the terrain. A vista slowly materializes and the rumors shift from baseless fantasy to an exhilarating truth. The fabled land of Boonlake is before us. It is real. You turn to the children peering from behind your shoulder, their excitement as palpable as your own. Then the smallest asks, “Where’s the lake?”

Boonlake is an action-selection euro strategy game from designer Alexander Pfister and publisher Capstone Games. One to four players can join in the hard work of inhabiting this new world in sessions that last approximately 90-120 minutes.

The main board of Boonlake features four regions with hex spaces that are improved upon over time. These regions are split by a river that each player’s ship traverses. The river is effectively the game’s timer. When the first ship crosses a blue dam along the path, this triggers an interim scoring phase. There are two scoring phases in the first round, after which ships reset back to the beginning of the river and traverse the path again down a new branching path. After the fourth interim scoring phases, the game ends once all players have taken an equal number of turns.

Players start with their own player boards that feature inhabitants