Yesterday was Australia Day. I spent lunch with my family, then the evening with my friends. Our intentions were to play Settlers of Catan + Seafarers of Catan + Cities and Knights of Catan on a 'large island + explore open sea' scenario. When I arrived ahead of my other friends I found that James had already set up the whole board.

But, James had also bought a new board game called Bootleggers. Instead of playing Catan we ended up playing the new game instead - all night. Two games. I won the first game by conning James in to buying my two trucks for $20g (leaving me with only $1g left to win the game) and James won the second game by having the most influence in the only good bar in town.

This game is rather light hearted, not nearly as serious as Catan is. So it was a good romp. Basically, it's set in the racketeering days of prohibition. Each player is a mobster and you are basically doing whisky runs. The phases in the rounds have funny names like 'Send in the Boys', 'Whisky Run', 'Fire up the still' and 'What's the Password?'.

You deliver your whisky to the bars, roll the dice to see how thirsty the patronage is and then based on influence and muscle, each mobster sells their booze.

The game rules actually state that you are allowed to make deals with other players for -anything- including futures and they even say you're allowed to go back on your word. There was a classic moment in the game where I was about to lose all my influence in my bar due to David and his three thugs. Instead, I convinced him to go to each of us to pay us $2g per influence to all open up a new bar.

ALL of us took the money and NONE of us put our influence in to a new bar. My bar was saved, David wasted three thugs in a bar that couldn't open. Hilarious :)

So I'd recommend this game, it's a fun one.