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November 21, 2005
-- Game review --
Ruthless game of gold, greed, power
By Stefan Koski
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Finally
there's a game that combines our love of gold with our love of nineteenth
century mining. Face 2 Face Games presents Boomtown, and blowing up saloons has
never been so much fun.
In
this game for three to five people, players are trying to amass a fortune by
owning various mines.
An
initial number of mine cards are dealt to each player, one card for each person
playing. At the start of each turn, two dice are rolled.
Anyone
with a number on a mine matching the roll of the dice is paid the amount of
gold, represented by white, red, and blue tokens, shown on the card. Less likely
dice rolls, such as a two, usually pay out much more gold than more common
rolls, such as eights or fives.
After
players collect their gold, a card from the top of the deck is turned over, and
players start bidding gold to acquire the card. The card is often another mine
card, with the incentive of getting gold on a different roll of the die, or more
gold on the same roll.
There's
another reason why players will want more mining property, though. The mines are
from five different towns: Coyote City (red), Cactus Junction (green), San
Narciso (blue), Dry Gulch (yellow), and Cold Mountain (purple). Whoever has the
most of one color, or town, becomes mayor.
Being
mayor means that anyone else who purchases mines of your color owes you an
additional sum of money equal to the number of cards of that color you own.
However, if someone else acquires more mines of the same color than you, you'll
lose the mayor’s office.
This
makes for some intensely competitive mine bidding – even more so because the
money for the winning bid doesn't go to the bank, but instead is passed to the
player to the right, who takes half and passes it to the player on his or her
right, who takes half and passes it on. Even if you win the bid, your money is
fed into your competitor's pockets.
A
number of different twists lie within the cards. Some mines are labeled
"danger," and collapse on a roll of two or 12. In exchange, they
are marked with more common die rolls and pay out much more than the average
mine.
There
are a number of different cards besides mines that are up for grabs.
Thievery
cards, such as Hold-Up, Stagecoach Robbery, and Cardshark, allow you to steal
gold from other players, or force them to pay money to the bank.
The
Governor card doubles the amount of gold players have to pay you for mines that
belong to your mayor's color.
Mustang,
featuring a proud miner on a horse, and Expropriate, featuring a not-so-proud
miner wearing nothing but a barrel on suspenders, allow you to steal other
player's mines. Other cards allow a player to change die rolls, or make their
mines pay out more gold than usual.
For
additional cash, players can bid on the Saloon card, which allows the player to
tax another mayor's mines whenever they produce gold. The tax increases with the
addition of the Saloon Girls card.
And
then there is the Dynamite card, which effectively destroys anyone else's mines
or saloons.
Once
all the cards in the deck have been turned over, the game is finished. Players
total the amount of gold they have, adding in the gold payout of their mines and
an additional five gold for each mayor’s office they hold. Whoever has the
most gold wins.
Boomtown
is best played with a full five people, which makes for more competitive bidding
and keeps the process of stockpiling gold much more difficult. While the game
states that it takes more than 30 minutes, with five people it's lengthened to
an enjoyable 90 minutes or more, depending on the competitiveness of the
players.
The
artwork on each card is colorful and beautifully detailed.
The
governor pictured on the Governor card stands in front of an American flag with
dollar signs instead of stars and wears a sash that proudly declares "In
Gold We Trust."
On
one of the Danger cards a hapless miner sits in a mining cart with a look of
shock as the cart wheels off the side of a cliff, and the lascivious women on
the Saloon Girls card will certainly raise some eyebrows, justifying the game's
10 and over age recommendation (to say nothing of the Native American vixen
wielding dynamite).
The
game could actually benefit from more relaxed rules. While the process of
bidding on mines, opening saloons, and stealing gold is certainly absorbing,
some cards such as the Dynamite card state that the player must use it
immediately. It would be much more interesting
Other
cards, such as the Hold-Up card, have minimal use because the bidding process
often makes them cost more than the amount of money they steal. The game could
definitely improve by having set prices for some cards instead of bidding for
them.
Also,
even though there is a 60-card deck, the game could be greatly improved by
adding more cards, with more variety in each type. In theory, buying two sets
and increasing the card count could improve the game.
These are all minor complaints, though. The game is highly entertaining and engrossing straight out of the box. And at $22.95, it's half the price of the average PS2 game.
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