Base price: $25.
2 – 5 players.
Play time: 20 – 30 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 3
Full disclosure: A review copy of Botswana was provided by 25th Century Game.
Okay, being real, I don’t think I’ve ever attempted to actually write a full review on a plane before, but I got sidetracked with a few 2AM nights and, you know, the usual stuff, so here we are making up for lost time on a transcontinental flight across the United States. Is paying for my irresponsibility any way to spend a Sunday evening? Likely no, but it is at least an appropriate punishment for my largesse, I suppose. Either way, be home soon and am still relieved that I wisely did photography on, like, Tuesday. I’ll clean these bad boys up and still post by midnight. In the meantime, you’re reading this after I’ve already finished all that work, so hello from the past! Let’s check out Botswana.
I’ve actually been interested in Botswana for a hot minute, for three solid reasons. Knizia games are as diverse as the planets in the galaxy, but he is a good designer, so it’s at least worth checking out. Weberson Santiago is an all-timer, as an artist, so if you’re going to go through the trouble of putting his art on your game I’m going to look into it. I also just like photography-themed games? And that’s what you’re doing here; taking photos on a safari to earn points. Just be careful; the last to submit often determines how much something is worth, and that won’t always help you…
Contents
Setup
Not a ton. Set out the board:
Each player gets a set of player tokens in the color of their choice:
Set out the animal tokens in five piles:
Then shuffle the cards. At 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 players, set aside 3 / 3 / 2 / 0 cards and then deal the remainder out evenly to form players’ hands.
You’re ready to start the first round!
Gameplay
Not actually much to tell, here. You’ll play one round per player where the goal is to score the most points.
On your turn, play an animal card and then take any Animal Token. It’s very specifically important to note that you don’t have to take the one matching the card you played. At any time, your Animal Tokens are worth the most recently played value on their corresponding Animal Card stack. Splay the cards, though, so everyone can see what’s been played.
A round ends when the sixth card of any Animal type has been played. Every player scores their Animal Tokens and then you reset! Take all the cards, including any set aside, shuffle, and redeal for the next round.
It is worth noting that if there’s a tie at the end, you play one final round and the player (not necessarily a tied player) with the most points after wins!
Player Count Differences
The major difference is that you lose a certain amount of control as the player count increases and things get a bit more cutthroat and semi-cooperative simultaneously. You’re trying to expand your collection, but if you (foolishly) take all the tokens of one type, everyone else will crush the value of it with the lower cards they have. What you need to do is get them invested in your success, like Downforce. Too many people investing in one animal type makes it also somewhat worthless, though. Ideally, you’d have a a high-value set that nobody else has, or you’d have significantly more of the highest-value set. That’s going to be tough to do with only five of each type, so get creative. With different players, you also leave different amounts of cards out (3 / 3 / 2 / 0, specifically). This means, dangerously, all cards are in play with five players, so you know all the 5s and 0s are out and about. That might be more worrying than not knowing at lower player counts. No big preference otherwise, though; I might lean towards smaller player counts but that’s just because the game proposes you play one round per player, so games with more players have more rounds.
Strategy
- Don’t overcommit. Unless you have all the cards of one animal type, taking all of those tokens is likely an extremely bad idea. Other players can play cards to reduce the value of your stock of that animal, and if that’s your entire holding, you’re screwed. A little diversity can shore up a bad investment. This does not constitute financial advice from What’s Eric Playing?; I am not a financial advisor.
- If you see a good thing happen, decide: do you want to join it or kill it? If a lot of players are all grabbing one animal token type, it might be good to grab one too! You can ride their coattails or essentially render it moot if every player gets one. You could drop a 1 or 0 to reduce that entire stack’s value, but I imagine players are taking those tokens because they can bring the value back up, so save that rage for later in the round.
- Generally, I recommend being everyone’s friend. Players can dogpile you if they have cards that affect your tokens. Building up their value makes them less likely to lower yours, I suppose? This doesn’t apply to everyone.
- Dropping a 0 on someone’s stack is a fantastic way to piss them off, though. If you see someone with four animal tokens of one type and you have the 0, it’s not a bad idea to teach them the important lesson on Why We Don’t Recommend Overcommitting Here At What’s Eric Playing?. They won’t be your friend after that though, especially if it keeps its 0 value for the round; you might have knocked them out of the game.
- Keep in mind that at most player counts, there are some cards left out. If you’re waiting for your opponent to be forced to play the Hippo 5 that will boost your holdings to the moon, it may not be in play. This means that the 4 might be the best you can do, so how you set up your opponent also matters a lot.
- You know what cards you have; use them to your advantage. Don’t play your 5 super early if you have other cards! You’ll be forced to reduce your own value. Play the 4 to hedge your bets and then use the 5 as a late-round turnabout if someone else rudely lowers the value.
- Be wary of the round’s end condition! Depending on player count, a round can really get away from you. With 5, it’s possible that once you play the second card on a stack, the next four players will play the remaining four cards of that type, ending the round. Unlikely, but try to have given that some thought when you’re building up your strategy.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- Apparently this game’s been getting published since the 90s? Look, I know this is a bit of a logical fallacy (bonus points if you can name which one), but I’ll at least concede that if a game’s been picked up and published by a different publisher like, five times over three decades, it’s probably fun. Not everything has to be complex to be a good time.
- Obviously, Weberson Santiago’s art is the highlight here. There’s one particular Meerkat card where he’s going through it emotionally (he looks like his wife just packed up and left) but they’re in general excellent. Dude’s a true artist.
- The wooden animal tokens are worth mentioning though! They’re big and you can stand them up to make it clear which animals you’re planning to score, which is pretty cool. It’s less cool when your opponents, seeing them, decide to nuke that animal to 0 points, but you can’t have it all.
- You can play this as cutthroat as you want, to some degree. If you want to have a close and wholesome game of trying to essentially guess which cards are left out during setup and not really go after things your opponent is trying to score, you can. As soon as one person drops a 0 on your highest-scoring set of animals, however, I believe all bets are off and it’s time to throw hands instead. It’s the way of the beasts.
- Pretty portable. Just a bunch of cards and some tokens; you don’t even really need the board.
- The scoreboard has both the useful scoring side and the silly scoring side. I’ll let you decide which one is which, but I appreciate when a game prints both. I know it cost you extra money to design both and print both, but you should know that I see you.
- I think it’s funny that the game costs ~$25 and is published by 25th Century Games. Is it actually funny? No. But it’s a fun coincidence, I suppose, though having a line of $25 price point games for the company would be nifty?
- Very simple gameplay loop. There’s not a ton to actually figure out; it depends so much more on the players to figure out that since everyone knows immediately how to play, how will that affect the strategy and the outcome.
Mehs
- Why Botswana, specifically? I feel like there could have been stronger ties to the actual location if you’re going to use the name as opposed to Wildlife Safari or what it’s been called in the past. That said, I understand the desire to have a name that’s distinct and easy to search.
Cons
- This has another one of those “play a bunch of rounds to ease out the randomness of certain draws” thing and, well, it’s just okay. I never quite understood number of rounds equal to the number of players versus just playing three rounds, but I suppose with more players that the individual rounds will be shorter. It’s fine here, but again, I never end up feeling like the randomness gets completely washed out; I just end up not caring if I lose a round here or there.
Overall: 7.5 / 10
Overall, I like Botswana! It’s had a storied history and I can see immediately why 25th Century decide to publish it. It’s quick, simple, and a fresh coat of paint courtesy of the fantastic Weberson Santiago really spruces it up. I think there’s something to the simplicity that suggests its age, but honestly, it’s still fun, so why mess with a perfectly good thing? I think cutthroat players are going to enjoy trying to lay in wait to play an Animal Card that completely ruins the value of one of their opponent’s tokens. More collaborative players will enjoy the dance of not knowing what will be worth the most when and trying to navigate the tension and uncertainty. And more generally, players are going to love how easy it is to learn and play. It’s a great intro game, further elevated by fantatic presentation, which is pretty much exactly what you want out of a game like this. Is it going to be an all-time favorite for me? No, but I’m a bit jaded and prefer either slightly more complexity or significantly more whimsy. But is Botswana a game I’ll happily return to? Any time. If you’re looking for more games with great animal art, you enjoy a bit of cutthroat play, or you just want a game you can convince your family to play, Botswana seems like a great one to try out! I’ve enjoyed playing it.
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