Bora Bora Review

Number of Plays at Time of Review

Two: one four-player game and one three-player game.

Why Did I Buy the Game?

The fact that Stefan Feld designed the game got me to look at it. Reading reviews and watching videos got me to buy it as I think I would like the mix of mechanics and how it seemed the game played.

Aesthetics

Pretty darn nice. The game is very colorful and is full of imagery and iconography that is suitable to the game. Even the back of each player board is adorned with a unique and thematic terrific graphic.

Component Quality

Superb. The board is of excellent quality as are all the tons of the thick cardboard chits (that punch out cleanly and easily). The God cards are of the small variety but are of good quality.

Mechanics

Dice Rolling Worker Placement. Your three dice are your workers that are placed in Round A. The strength of the die roll is tactical in both blocking other player’s workers and the amount of activity your worker will produce. For those of you that dislike the randomness of dice, there are mechanics that are used to mitigate unfortunate die rolls – but you must prepare for that eventuality by doing the things necessary to use those mechanics.

Set Collection. You collect “men” and “women” that produce various useful items and actions during Round B. You also can collect other things like completed tasks and jewelry.

Area Placement. You build your awesome little wooded huts on the various island areas. Doing so earns you a one-time resource and the one-time option to score a few victory points.

Resource Collection. Resources are not a huge part of the game but do play a role in building simple ceremony buildings.

What Makes the Game Stand Out?

The dice/worker placement mechanic is the finest of the three Feld dice games (Macao, Castles of Burgundy and Bora Bora). You really can get tactical with the placement of the dice to make things less comfortable for your opponents.

The game also gives you a “Trajanesque” palette of options to choose from on your turn. This is something I enjoy.

The use of the five different God cards is very well done to aid you in your quest to score points but does not make it easy on you, Gods demand offerings, naturally.

Lastly, many Feld games have a “penalty” aspect to them (In the Year of the Dragon, Trajan, Macao) but this game does not. Maybe not being penalized is not an item that makes most games stand out, but in a Feld game, it does.

Replay Value

Pretty high, there are enough different Tasks and Men and Women as well as paths through the game for a good deal of variance.

What is the Best Part?

I really enjoy the tactical nature of the game’s worker placement aspect. I enjoy the God cards effects on the game too. Also, the Men and Women tiles offer a lot of customization to your approach in a given game. Given the way that these tiles can interact to get combination bonuses is a nice touch to the game. Of course, having too many important choices for my too few important actions is always fun for me!

What is the Worst Part?

When I am done I have not done anything. What I mean is you’re not really building anything, like, say, a Cathedral or something. You’re not really building a “game engine” that improves or produces things each turn – although collecting Men and Woman tiles is close to engine building. You’re doing things every turn to maximize your scoring and having more than one option is a good thing given the tactical placement of workers. Sort of a points race through the game.

So, this is not really a bad thing to be considered the “worst” part of the game.

Final Thoughts

This is a very good game and I enjoy it. I think if offered a choice between playing Trajan and Bora Bora, I might say that Trajan gets the nod. But I would happily play Bora Bora if I was out voted!

Current Top 10 Board Games

I will maintain a "Current Top 10" list to the right side of this blog. But I will also make a blog posting on that list whenever it changes to keep a running record of how my personal opinion changes over time.

As mentioned on the right, this list reflects my current rankings based on my own reasons. I will from time to time share those reasons in a review, but the appearance in the list could be subjective. I see no need to scientifically analyze each game and produce a "rating engine" - how can you hope to quantify a measure so elusive as that special magic that happens when people enjoy a board game?

So, for the first list, I offer the following:

1. Trajan - Love the Mancala. Hate the Mancala. Love the choices of actions.
2. Bora Bora -The "dice as a random-strength worker" is well executed and has mechanisms to alter the fate dealt (rolled?) you. The myriad of choices presented you is in line with Trajan - there are plenty.
3. Castles of Burgundy -Another excellent "dice as a random-strength worker". Compared to Trajan and Bora Bora, this game feels lighter to me - but in a most excellent way! Superb game.
4. Agricola -Yes, I understand the comments made about the cards and the possibility of unbalanced cards and all that. But, holding a "card draft" for the game can help to minimize that. I really enjoy the game immensely.
5. Village -I enjoy this game a lot. The mechanic of the generations of workers passing away is really neat. It really makes you plan for the investment of your workers.
6. Macao -My first plays were a two- and three-player game, after each I said, "Meh, is that all?" Sorta dry. After my third play, a three-player game, something started grabbing me. My fourth play was a four-player game and I thoroughly enjoyed the game. It plays fast and has all those Feldian elements.
7. Lancaster - Good game. Nice worker placement mechanics. I like the voting for laws too. I actually feel like the Henry V expansion weakens the game by placing too many more options into the game. Which sounds really weird for me to say since I like having a lot of options. More plays with the expansion will prove me right or wrong in my own mind.
8. Goa -I was really pleased when this got reprinted. I really like the auction mechanic. This was one of the first Euros I ever played years ago.
9. Alhambra -A favorite for the family. We have a few cherry-picked expansions that we enjoy. The fact that it plays six is a big help to get it on the table too.
10. Caylus - Ah yes. Caylus. I like it. A good friend of mine also enjoyed it with me - but since he moved away, this gem gas not made the table. I vow that it shall soon.

So, the list is pretty Stefan Feld heavy at this time with four titles in the list (including the top three). This is in part due to my recent introduction to some of these games and the recent introduction of some of the games themselves. Also, I really enjoy Feld. I like that he gives you some elements of control and that he reserves other elements of control for the game itself. In so doing, he causes you to not only make plans for success, but to deal with intrusions to that plan. Rather like many of my favorite miniature wargame rules.If I wanted perfect information and total control about my path through the game, I could play checkers.

Assumptions About the Future
Troyes (and the Ladies of Troyes) is arriving on Wednesday...so...I am guessing that this will make its way into the current top ten soon. We'll see where it lands and who it bumps.

Honorable Mention
Well, the games that meet my rule and did not make the current list are:

1. In the Shadow of the Emperor.
2. Pillars of the Earth.
3. Puerto Rico.

AAR - 03/11/2013

OK, the first of my AAR's (After Action Reports). I'll have a few more to post retroactively and I'll get to those...

Tonight, we have possession of "Castles of Burgundy" by Stefan Feld - on loan from my friend Edward (thanks man!) I am really enjoying the Feld series of games and am looking forward to his 2013 releases.

In tonight's game, Robin and Jessica and I played our second session of this terrific game. Robin and Jessica used boards that came with the game, I used the board from the 2013 German Board Game Championships. It is available as a high definition pdf file, so I downloaded it and printed it up. I mounted it and lacquered it, so it looks pretty good.

Anyway, I am not going to be posting scores in my AARs as a general rule - who cares really, it is about fun. So, with that in mind, I'll sorta break that rule on my very first AAR! I scored 241 points - which, judging from this picture of a 4 player game on these boards, is not too bad, that would have been third place.

Here is my ending board...


I do enjoy the game, thanks Edward for the loan...and...thanks Stefan for the game!

Inaugural Post

OK, a new blog - this one on board gaming. I have always enjoyed a good "Euro"! I also enjoy a little "Ameritrash" now and then too, of course. But the Euro is what I really enjoy the most. I like being asked to make difficult choices every turn and I like limiting random factors (like dice).

Over the last couple of months, I have essentially shifted my hobby focus to board gaming. I'll explore why over some of the posts on this blog...but...a couple of thoughts are in my mind. They are:

1. Buy the game, say $30 to $80, and you are ready to play with zero to four or five or even, sometimes, six other people. There is no painting, no building terrain, no collecting hundreds more miniatures.
2. Set up the game, and play and you faced many challenging decisions over the course of 90 minutes to 3 hours. 
3. Depending on the game, there is zero randomness or some degree (low to high) of randomness. The thing I enjoy about that is being able to build an "engine" during the game to compete with the engines built by other players based upon what I think the best choices are.

That last one has my mind spinning a little. Almost every wargame uses dice or cards or something to remove control from me - which I adore. Combat often has a pretty high degree of randomness in it. Sure there are modifiers based upon tactical conditions, but in the end, it may come down to a D10 versus a D6. But, I think that's terrific for trying to model the myriad of potential combat outcomes within the fact that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

So, I guess I have a lot of things to hash out on this blog! This is in addition to posting some game play action and noodling on game reviews.

Now, let's not get ahead of ourselves and think that "I have essentially shifted my hobby focus to board gaming" means that I no longer am interested in miniature wargaming. To the contrary in fact. I have a group of people that I still regularly wargame with once or twice per month, and I enjoy the hell outta that and them!

But, I have not painted a miniature since early December and have not purchased a miniature since the end of September. The purchasing hiatus is largely due to the fact that I purchased a fair amount of Three Kingdoms Chinese to finish off that army - about half of those miniature still are to be painted given the painting hiatus.

I think that all of us miniature wargamers hit a painting wall, and I certainly have. Frankly, I am enjoying the challenges of the Euro very much these days...so...onward with the board gaming!