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It's January 1921. Prohibition has been in effect for a year, and it looks like the 18th Amendment is here to stay. The problem, however, is that outlawing the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors" hasn't done anything to reduce the demand for booze! As a result, illegal stills dot the countryside and secret (or not-so-secret!) speakeasies are popping up all over in cities large and small. Local law enforcement may look the other way (especially if they're properly motivated) but Elliot Ness' G-Men are harder to convince. With this much money at stake, organized crime is sure to take an interest.
In Bootleggers, players take on the role of enterprising bosses seeking to make a name for themselves in the illegal alcohol trade at the height of the 1920's prohibition era. Deceit, lies, and alliances of convenience are the norm as players attempt to control distribution through money and corruption by muscling in on the competition, paying off the local law authorities, building underground speakeasies, and shipping trucks of "hooch"!
- Evokes gangster theme well
- Good components for its age
- Clever card play
- Still fun
- Don't play it much anymore
- Another game does what this game does orders of magnitude better
- Bootlegging liquor during prohibition
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Area Control — Placing goons at speak easys to gain control and benefits.
- Area Majority — Competing for control in different locations.
- Card Play — Used in conjunction with area control.
- Pick-Up and Deliver — Placing trucks to move crates of liquor.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- This is a category which before I started the list I thought would be um relatively wide ranging and and uh I came to find throughout get actually doing the research and getting ready for this list that maybe it's a little bit narrower than I actually expected.
- Now, that makes sense thematically because, you know, a lot of the gangster movies or uh just cultural uh elements we've seen of mobsters involve like, you know, combat, fighting for control over areas and things along those lines.
- The theme is probably not terribly integral to the game design itself.
- those tend to be the games that I think best evoke a gangster or a mobster type of a theme.
- This is such a cool take on this theme.
- Speak Easy is a heavy Euro game designed by Vatital Lera who is known for heavy Euro games primarily and this is one that for a Euro which is usually considered Euro style games are usually considered to be you know not anti-theatic but the theme is usually not a huge element of them.
- what Speak Easy does so brilliantly amongst many things is integrate the theme beautifully into the Euro style mechanisms that drive the game.
References (from this video)
- High theme integration; entertaining
- Earlier Euro design; may feel outdated
- Speculative control and cargo delivery
- Prohibition-era bootlegging and racketeering
- High-spirited, thematic humor
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Area control and route building — Control roads and crates of moonshine; delivery to speakeasys.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I want to start a new series here where I'm going to go through my original top 100 list that I did 21 years ago
- Katan is an amazing intro to the hobby.
- I've soured on it a bit mostly because of the dice rolls.
- This is one of those milestone games
- I’ll be making nine more of these videos