Cowboy Bebop Boardgame Boogie

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I might have to put this on my birthday wish list.

@hotseatgames

I'm good to go then. I have a couple of Seatbelts CDs.

We have played Cowboy Bebop Boardgame Boogie twice now. Once was a 3-person flail through, where we screwed up some rules. Once as a four player game. I feel like I still need to play it a few more times to make a final decision on it, however, after two plays, I will say it is surprisingly good.

It seems to share a bit of DNA with Knizia's Lord of the Rings, having a similar mechanic of discarding cards that represent skills or qualities, individually or as a group, to overcome obstacles or achieve objectives, creating a tension/trade-off between personal goals and the well being of the group as a whole.

It also seems to share a bit with Battlestar Galactica, having events (like crisis cards) forcing you to lose resources, and giving you choices between discarding cards from your hand or losing resources from the group's pool of food, money and fuel. Again that tension between what is good for you vs what is good for the group.

It has this neat thing where you collect leads (cards) as a group and then use them to create melds which allow you to locate bounties. Having played a lot of Arkham Horror where clues are just another resource to be spent, it was cool to have "clues" that had in-game meaning that came together to direct the action.

Despite being somewhat abstract, it manages to be evocative and capture the essence of the show, especially feelings of desperation and of living on the edge - there is real concern when food and fuel stores are running low, as you can all starve to death, or get yourselves stranded and then starve to death.

The art is better than expected from Jasco.

Right now my main concern is that the four player game seemed a bit too easy. I don't know if that is just because we were lucky with how the cards came out, if we got a rule wrong, or if it is actually that easy. We will have to play a few more times to determine that. Also there are spoilers in the game, so it probably shouldn't be played by people who haven't watched the show but intend to do so.