Benny Sperling
United States
Arlington
Texas
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Botswana was a game I had played previously as a 3 player and so when I sat down to demo it for a couple of different players, we used the two player rules where you remove two cards from the deck. Both player enjoyed it, but it seems like the game lacks the tension when playing with more players.
Botswana is a fairly simple game. Each player is dealt a hand of cards, the cards represent animals that can be found on the safari, Lions, Zebras, Elephants, Rhinos, Leopards. There are also plastic animals figures that correspond to the cards. The cards are numbered 0 to 5, 6 cards for each animal. When playing the game, players place down a card and take an animal, the animal does not have to match the card played. This continues until one of the piles of cards has all 6 corresponding cards. Then the players score based on the last number card played multiplied by the number of animals they have claimed. The game plays out over the number of rounds equal to the number of players.
The first set of games I demoed was with Jay. We played two games of two rounds each. Jay got his competitive juices flowing and quickly picked up on the strategy of holding onto high numbers to score 5 points for each of the animals he had collected the most of. In the first round it was Elephants and Lions. In the second round, Jay went for a rush strategy and quickly played down the 6th card for the Lions and ended the rounded grabbing a large pile of points for his Rhinos.
The second game saw similar results with Jay mastering his strategy for a second win. He noted that he liked the challenge of trying to guess what cards had been removed and it kept him thinking and engaged the whole time.
The second demo game was with Stephen. After the first round saw me jump ahead by 19 points, the second round saw Stephen grok the strategy and quickly amass a pile of points that not only met my lead, but exceeded it. The problem I ran into was I was unable to make the Lions and Elephants that I had diligently collected worth any points at all.
Stephen seemed to enjoy it. He thought it was a quick and fun game.
Botswana while it has a great deal of family appeal, can be a game with some vicious tactics that seems like it would be an interesting filler between heavier games.
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