At Gen Con Indy 2008, I spoke with someone who said that Eagle Games’ “Bootleggers” was one of the best board games she’d played in a while. I wasn’t able to play it there, but I did manage to schedule a game at Origins this week.
Bootleggers is set during the Prohibition era of American history, when making and selling alcohol was illegal. In the game, you play a crime family boss who tries to profit off bootleg alcohol. Each player starts the game with some cash, a truck, and a still. With these, you attempt to earn the most money possible. If you reach $100,000 before turn 12, you win.
On each turn, the players roll a die for each still they have. This represents alcohol production for that turn. If a player has enough space in his trucks, the player can haul the alcohol to a speakeasy and sell it. If the player has more alcohol than the trucks can haul, deals can be negotiated with other players who have available truck space. The exact nature of those deals is up to the players.
After the production and hauling phases take place, the selling begins. One speakeasy will buy all the alcohol the players can produce, but pays a low price for it. In the beginning turn, this is the only speakeasy that’s open for business. To open others, the players have to spend “influence” tokens they receive as they play. When enough influence tokens are in place, the speakeasy will begin buying alcohol from players. A speakeasy will buy first from the player with the most influence tokens there, then from the one with the second-most, and so on. Just how many units will be purchased depends on one or more random die rolls. The smaller speakeasies may only purchase one die roll worth of alcohol, while others may purchase four or five die rolls’ worth and pay more for it. In true mobster fashion, if you have the majority influence at a speakeasy, you collect additional money for all alcohol sold there – no matter which player sells it.
That’s the basic mechanic, though there is a lot more to it. There are cards which give players more influence, allow them to upgrade their stills to produce more alcohol, acquire additional stills, more trucks, etc.
It was a pleasant enough game to play, and at a current retail price of $20, it’s a relatively inexpensive hobby game to acquire. That may explain why it was sold out at last year’s Gen Con and at Origins this year. My quick take on it is that if you have some unlucky die rolls during the early phases of the game (which I did) it can be almost impossible to recover. By the fourth turn I was in last place and just couldn’t make and sell enough alcohol to compete with the other players, who had multiple stills and trucks in play. Other players had better die rolls early on and were able to leverage that early income very effectively in later turns.
