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Bayushi Sezaru
Boonlake is another heavy euro designed by magister Alexander Pfister. It has a weird theme: it is about settling in an unexplored area, but seems set in a kinda sci-fi future. Anyway, the theme is definitely obscured by the mechanics. And there's a lot of them, for sure. The game lasts just two "mega"-rounds, each with two scoring. After the fourth scoring, the game ends. The duration of each round (in a similar fashion to Maracaibo) is determined by the speed of the fastest player. The novelty, and the thing I like most, is the action selection mechanism: the turn player chooses a tile from a display, performs the depicted action, and then everybody gets a secondary action. This is also linked to the speed of the boat on the river (essentially the clock of the game), with action tiles higher on the display (for not having been chosen in a while) granting faster movement. Then, the action tile is moved at the bottom of the display. There's a bonanza of cards, with various different bonuses (in game or for final score): these feel less interesting, with not much variation in costs and effects. But there are also: - player boards with a panoplia of pieces to put on the board, unlocking various forms of income (à la Terra Mystica). These are not novel, but work well; - common goals and buildings to pursue/build. These feel kinda arbitrary, and seem to award too few points (in a game that feels very "point-salady" where scoring is in the two hundreds); - a separate part of the player boards with levers for "automation" of some in game bonuses. This works, but feels kinda detached from the rest. In the end, the game is very interesting to play, while a bit long (especially with 4). Not the best Pfister, in my opinion, but a solid game for heavy eurofanatics. UPDATE, APRIL 27th, 2022: when the game is played as it is meant to be played competitively (with everybody moving fast), everything clicks and it’s tighter. Even the four objectives’ significance raises to the top (the game probably can’t be won without scoring most or all of them). Rating raised to an 8. Still not the best Pfister, but definitely engaging an pleasant to play.
bneffer
This took all the good things from Maraciabo, stripped them of theme and meaning, removed one or two, and added buildings. The buildings are too generic and there are multiples of each, for balance I assume, but this further limits the replayability and interest I have in this game.
4Corners
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.