Last week, I had promised to play a game that John wanted to play. And John brought over his cart of possibilities: Gloria Mundi, Big Kini, Sienna, Himalaya, Factory Fun, Midgard, and Traders of Genoa. The group settled on Bootleggers. I had played it once and didn’t have a particularly fun time. But I was willing to give it another shot.
This is a game that has a lot of dice in it. Dice determine your production of moonshine. And dice determine the demand of speakeasies. You can mitigate the poor dice rolls with special cards (an extra still or extra dice at a still). But these cards are in a big deck with other cards and are subject to the random shuffle. You get to pick one card from a row of n+1 cards in player order. Your order is based on what card you choose at the start of the round. The cards range from 1 to 70-something and are dealt out at the beginning of the game. So, the net of it all is that you rely on getting good cards to go first. But you are waiting for the extra dice cards to show up in the display. In order to mitigate poor production dice rolls.
There are a lot of links in that chain to try and make a better experience for you… Too many.
Whatever you produce, you ship in truck to bars. The bars have three waiting lines each. If you have majority presence in a bar, you get to use the first line. If you have presence in a bar, you get to use the second line. Otherwise you are forced to use the third line. These lines and your order in the lines determine what goods are accepted by the bar. If your goods were accepted, then you get paid. Otherwise, you are screwed. You get nothing and have to get rid of the unused goods. Also, if you have majority influence in a bar, the bar will pay you extra for each good that it bought.
At the end of the game, whoever has the most money wins. Simple and unpleasant.
To end out the night, we played Mu. Its a great trick-taking game that not enough people love. We had to force Doug and John to play it. But, eventually, they will come to love it…