Review of Boomtown

Boomtown is a new game of mining in the Wild West by Bruno Cathala & Bruno Faidutti.

Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 30-60 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

The Components

Boomtown comes with:

• 60 cards
• 5 mayor pawns
• 10 boomtown tokens
• 2 dice
• Poker chips

Cards: The cards are slightly larger than full-sized, printed full-color on sturdy cardstock that has some sort of weird, smooth finish.

45 of the cards are "mining concessions" which each feature: a color and name representing a town; a number representing its production number; and a number of gold dots, representing its production value. All the iconography is simple and easy to understand. There's also some repetitive artwork of a mine on each card that's unfortunately a little murky.

The other 15 cards are "event cards". Each one features a name, some nice and colorful full-color artwork, and an explanation of what the card does. The explanations are overly terse, requiring reference to the rulebook through a first game. In addition, there's no nice iconography for which cards must be used immediately and which can be kept; there should be.

Unfortunately, an unpleasant chemical smell lingers around the cards which gave me a headache my first game through; I left them to air out for a couple of days before my second game, and they're better now. I've seen other references to this unfortunate byproduct of the production process in other comments.

Despite complaints, the cards are clearly above average on both beauty and utility.

Mayor Pawns: Five huge pawns in the five boomtown colors (green, purple, yellow, red, and blue). They make it very obvious who's mayor of a town. Two of my five pawns had the paint notably flaking off and another two had imperfections in the paint, neither of which I've ever seen on wooden game pieces before; unfortunate, as these are otherwise nice bits.

Boomtown Tokens: Ten large wooden "pills", two in each of the boomtown colors, used to mark the locations of saloons. These didn't have any of the paint problems of the larger mayoral pawns.

Dice: Standard white dice with indented black pips.

Poker Chips: A set of poker chips in white, red, and blue, for use as victory points in the game. They handily come in a little clear tray, which lets you lift all of the chips out of the box and set them beside your play area (although I've also accidently dumped the chips a couple of times because the tray isn't rigid enough).

Rules: A four-fold rulesheet, printed in full color with some graphics and a card listing; the event card listing was very useful during play.

Box & Tray: The game comes in a small square box which is a fair size for the components. The tray is also pretty good, with spaces for each of the components.

Boomtown is one of the first Euro-style games to be published in Asia (China, to be specific). Fantasy Flight Games has been doing some publishing on that side of the world too, and Uberplay is planning to. The result has generally been German-style components, though at slightly lower than German-level quality. This is the case here, as described with the painting problems on the wood and the smell of the cards. Nonetheless, the quality remains higher than American publishers have been able to offer.

Overall, Boomtown is a high-quality game with pretty cards and nice components. Despite the production problems, it still ekes in a "5" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Boomtown is to purchase the most valuable mines and to use them to produce gold and take control of Western boomtowns.

Setup: The game starts with each player being given 10 "gold" in poker chips. The cards are shuffled and the first set flipped up to begin the game.

Order of Play: Each turn a new first player initiates the order of play, which all players participate in.

1. Flip Cards
2. Bid for Cards
3. Pick Cards
4. Roll for Production

Flip Cards: Each round of play begins with a number of cards being flipped up from the deck equal to the number of players. These could be mining concessions or events (though on the first turn events are returned to the deck).

Mining Concessions. Each mining concession card has 3 features: a location (one of the 5 boomtowns); a production number (from 2-12, a number rolled on two dice); and a production value (from 1-7 gold). In addition a couple of cards are marked "Danger!". They tend to produce more gold on better numbers, but explode on a two or a twelve production number.

Event Cards. A quarter of the cards are events, which have various effects on the game. The most important are probably: the saloon (which is placed in a specific town and causes anyone who produces gold in that town to pay you 2 gold, or 4 with saloon girls); and the dynamite (which blows up a saloon or mine). Others let you steal gold, gain gold, get more value from a mayor, steal a mine, go early when picking cards, improve a mine, or change a die roll.

Bid for Cards: Next the players go around the table bidding on the cards using their gold until everyone but one player has dropped out. Here's the important bit about this auction: you're bidding for the right to select the first card, not for a specific card.

The bidding system is entirely unique; after someone has successfully won he then gives his money to the player to his right, who takes half of it (rounding up), then gives the remainder to the player to his right. The money continues around the table until it can't be halved anymore or until it gets to the player to the bidder's left.

(This is offset by the fact that the player to the left gets second choice on cards, as we'll see momentarily; thus it's not too bad if the person to the right or left of you wins an auction, but you can be in a poor position if you're across from the winning player, as then you won't get much money or a very good card.)

Pick Cards: Going in clockwise order from the winning player each player then selects one of the cards. Every player will get one card. Mining concessions are placed in front of you. Event cards are (for the most part) used immediately.

If a player selects a mining concession in a boomtown where a player is mayor (more on that in a second), then he must pay the mayor for that right--one gold per mine the mayor has in the town. (This can be doubled if the mayor has the Governor card.)

A player can get the mayor token if he is the first player to take a second mining concession in a specific boomtown; or if he gets more mining concessions than than the previous mayor. (He still has to pay the previous mayor first in the latter case.)

Roll for Production: Finally, the first player rolls the two dice for production. He sums the number and every mine with that value produce the gold shown on its card. The money goes to the owning player, though sometimes money will then go to a saloon owner.

Ending the Game: The game ends when the cards run out.

Each player gets a score equal to his gold plus the gold value of his mines plus 5 points per mayor token he has. The player with the highest total wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Boomtown is an auction game with majority-control and logistical elements.

The auction is an entirely simple system of turn-based continuous bidding found in games such as High Society. Where it shines, however, is in its interlocking payment & selection systems. With players to either side of a bidder benefiting, there's often multiple reasons to stay in an auction, or drop out, and not winning auctions can sometimes be as important to victory as doing so.

The majority control system is likewise very simple. Such systems have been found in any number of games from El Grande on; the only thing really rare here is that the system is entirely winner takes all, rather than offering gradiated rewards as most majority systems do.

Finally, the logistical production system is straight (and admittedly) out of The Settlers of Catan; the notable thing here is that there really aren't enough die rolls to average out the luck of the production, but more on that shortly.

What Boomtown does do uniquely (and well) besides its interesting auction system is the blending together of these three different gameplay elements into a cohesive (and pleasing) whole.

The two Brunos had previously collaborated on Queen's Necklace.

The Game Design

I've just mentioned Boomtown's game design strengths: it meshes together three classic game design systems well; and it has a clever and innovative auction system. Also, not yet mentioned, the western mining color is really nicely done.

On the downside: there's repetitiveness in the game (an issue with almost any pure auction game); and the dice aren't rolled enough to offset the randomness of the different production numbers, leaving some of the strategy up in the air.

Nonetheless, in the two games I've played of Boomtown, just about everyone really enjoyed it, and at least two or three players said they wanted to go buy a copy. I think the bottom line is that it's well-designed and fun. Thus, Boomtown earns a solid "4" out of "5" for Substance: well above average.

Conclusion

Boomtown offers up an innovative auction system and sets it firmly in a well-colored western setting. Production & majority-control help flesh out the game. Boomtown does have both chaos and randomness in it, but what Bruno Faidutti game doesn't? If you like Faidutti's designs, this is definitely one of the better ones, and recommended as a filler.