Boreal Review – A pyramid scheme for two

A review copy of Boreal was kindly provided by Hachette Boardgames UK. Thoughts & opinions are my own.

Sometimes a game is good enough to stand on its own. It has a theme, but that theme is like a dog wearing a bumblebee costume – it’s cute, but it’s not fooling anyone. Some games are excellent, despite the theme not really coming through, Faraway, for example (read my review here) is superb but you never feel like you’re on a journey. Boreal from designer Masafumi Mizuno is a similar beast. I know I’m drafting some beautifully illustrated location cards to add to my tableau, but what am I doing? I’ve got a bad habit where I jump straight to the rules for a game without reading the lore first, and Boreal compounded this by having TINY text in the rulebook.

I’ve read the background now, and it turns out that I’m a female explorer, setting out to discover what’s out there some time after the end of the world. So that’s fun. The way I do this is by building a 10-card pyramid in front of me. Boreal is a duelling game, with a ‘river’ of cards between my opponent and me. On my turn, I can either take one of the cards in range, pay for it, and add it straight to my pyramid (Discover), or take one for free and reserve it for later (Locate).

The range concept is pretty cool. If you picture the row of cards running directly between two players sitting opposite one another, each player’s range runs from left to right, going from one to eight. A cardboard token on each player’s side of the track not only shows them which cards are in range (the card directly above, and everything to the left), but also how many compasses – the game’s currency – they have. So if my marker is on the 5 spot, I can Discover any card from spaces one to five, as long as they cost no more than five compasses. Then I slide my compass marker to the left to show how much I spent, thereby setting my range and available funds for the next round.

If I’d chosen to Locate (i.e. reserve) a card in an earlier round, I can spend my compasses to place that one instead. Regardless of where the cards come from, there’s got to be a reason for choosing one in the first place. Each card you place might give you some kind of instant reward, but mostly you’re trying to place cards in places where the conditions on the card mean you’ll score points at the end of the game. This might mean placing a particular coloured icon adjacent to your cards, having a colour in a certain row of the pyramid etc. If this sounds familiar, you might have played the recent game Castle Combo, which uses a very similar scoring process.

A marathon, not a sprint

Boreal forces you to make some tough choices. There isn’t a set number of rounds, the end of the game comes about when one of the players places their tenth card. You finish that round, take one more, then it’s time to see who comes out on top. It adds this really interesting layer to the game, which only becomes obvious after you’ve played once or twice.

Sometimes you’ll see a card in the river that you really want, but it’s not within your range to immediately buy and add to your pyramid. There are a bunch of things you’ve got to weigh-up and decide upon right there and then.

Just how good is that card I want? It’s in range of the other player. Would it work well for them too? Are they likely to take it just to spite me? Is there a great card for them on the river that I can reach before they get to it? How far into the game are we?

While you’re trying to make these decisions, the other player is doing the same thing. It’s a real balancing act. You can try to rush those ten cards and catch the other player off guard, meaning they only get seven or eight built, but at what cost? How good will your scoring be? You can stockpile those amazing cards and use some clever planning to place them optimally, but will you have the time to do it?

Balancing income, chosen cards, and the time remaining in the game is central to Boreal, and it’s a really enjoyable experience.

Final thoughts

The first time I played Boreal I thought “This is like a cross between Castle Combo and The Hanging Gardens”, and I think it’s a fair comparison to make if you happen to have played both of those other games from the past year. The careful placement of cards to make sure they all ping off of one another, while building a base of cards to support the cards that come later, feels immediately familiar and reassuring, but yet different enough to mean that I’ll be keeping both Boreal and Castle Combo in my collection for the time being.

The artwork and presentation are absolutely gorgeous. Yuko Iwase’s illustrations are just beautiful, and I especially like the icon on the back of the box, which proudly proclaims ‘Illustrated by hand’. It shouldn’t have to be something to boast about, but in the current world where AI-generated, plagiarising crap is everywhere, it feels good to be able to support something hand-made and special.

So who will like Boreal? It’s a great option for couples or people who regularly only play with one other person, as it’s a straight-up two-player only game. No solo mode, no extra things where you can squeeze in another player in a bind. So if that’s not your thing, there’s nothing special here for you really. It’d be like buying a chess set. If you do regularly play as part of a duo, though, Boreal is great. It’s less than 20 quid, takes 20 minutes to play, and gives you plenty to smile about throughout. Fans of games like Castle Combo, Faraway and Forest Shuffle will really enjoy it.

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