Boitas
- Board's Eye View
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Boitas is a colourful trick-taking and set collection game from India. It's designed by Sidhant Chand, and published by Kheo Games. It takes 2-4 players and is played over three rounds (12 tricks). The winner of each trick gets to choose an 'Import Goods' token, and it's collecting sets or synergistic combos of these that contribute most to players' end-game scores.
Players start off with a hand of five cards in four suits, numbered 0-9 (plus there's a wild card suit). For each round, the four tricks correspond to the 1, 2, 3 and 'market' tokens that are placed out. These determine the trump suit for the trick. You don't have to follow suit, and there's a tricksy trump suit hierarchy that makes the number of the trick (1, 2 or 3) the master trump card (which means it beats higher numbered trumps). In addition to the Import Goods tokens rewards, players can earn Cowrie Shell tokens. Every pair of these is worth a point in end-game scoring but they can also be used to buy more cards from a market display or to buy an 'Elephant' card... Elephant cards trump trumps, except that they are beaten by a 4 of trumps. Oh, and some cards, when played, let you immediately take a Cowrie or let you swap a card from your hand with one from the market.
This all makes for a tricksy trick-taker where, depending on the Import Goods tiles on offer for that trick, it can sometimes be better to lose than to win. In part, that's because there's also a tricksy element to the way in which the Import Goods tiles are scored at the end of the game. Players are forced to make an election either to score only the highest valued Import Goods tile they have of each type (there are five types), or to score all the tokens they have for just two types of Import Goods. Any tiles not scored on this basis are worth 2 points. And high-ranking cards left in hand (those numbered 7, 8 and 9) are also worth points...
The melange of rules for ranking cards in tricks and for scoring tiles may not be intuitive but we've found in our plays at Board's Eye View that they are quickly assimilated, and they make for a game which starts off being all about the tricks but where players increasingly focus on optimising their set collection. We've especially appreciated the catch-up mechanics in the game, with players dealt weak cards able to use compensatory Cowrie Shells to bolster their hand.
