It's the roaring 20's and prohibition ("the great experiment") is in full swing. The business of illegal alcohol is growing bigger and getting more dangerous by the day. Illegal stills dot the countryside and secret underground speakeasies are popping up all over big cities. Local law authorities carefully look the other way for a price, but G-Men are harder to convince and can wreak destruction on a budding enterprise. With this much money and corruption, organized crime is sure to follow.

In Bootleggers, you take the role of a "boss" making a name for yourself in the trade of illegal alcohol. By muscling in on the competition, paying off the cops, and shipping trucks of "hooch", your aim is sit on top of the world, see?

Sound easy? It ain't kid. Bootleggers is a supply chain game based on the production, shipping and consumption of illegal whiskey. Start your "family business" and build it up to an empire. Deceit, lies, and alliances of convenience are the norm as you attempt to control distribution, any way you can! You'z guys have what it takes to be the big cheese?

As you probably know, Eagle has been known for big box games with huge boards and tons of miniatures. They have also been known for games that relied on the American school of game design - games with lots of theme but tend to run quite long and have lots of dice rolling. With Bootleggers, Glenn is moving away from these types of games and toward games that look and feel more German. Bootleggers does feel like a German game but it also has quite a bit of theme - something that Glenn likes about American games. When the game is published you can expect beautiful art and cool miniatures, which have become hallmarks of Eagle's games.

In Bootleggers, players take on the roles of mobsters controlling the flow of booze to a town's speakeasies (bars, for those unfamiliar with the term). Each player produces whiskey at his own distilleries, loads them up on his trucks, and tries to sell the booze to the speakeasies for the best price. Of course, the speakeasies only need so much booze and players are competing to get their booze into the bars. Players can also try to take control of the speakeasies to force them to buy their own booze or to stop them from buying other player's booze.

Here's a quick summary of the sequence of play (and note this is from a prototype, so things may change in the final production version):

Phase 1: Muscle In this phase, a number of action cards are turned face-up. These action cards can give you more influence over the speakeasies, more production, more trucks, etc. Players bid for turn order using numbered cards (sort of like El Grande) and each takes and uses one of the action cards.

Phase 2: Distillery Here is where you roll for production from your stills. The higher you roll, the more whiskey you produce.

Phase 3: Whiskey Running In this phase, each player in turn order loads their trucks with their whiskey and moves them to the speakeasies.

Phase 4: "What's the Password" In this phase you roll to see how much whiskey each speakeasy consumes. They buy whiskey from the players that have their trucks at the speakeasy and the players get cash for the sale. The higher the roll, the more the players will sell, however, if you roll low some player's whiskey may not be sold.

Phase 5: The Heat Here is where the Copper (the fuzz, the police) move onto the player's still with the most production - sort of like the robber in The Settlers of Catan. Players then move onto the next round.

The game ends when one player reaches as certain amount of money. The game is fairly straightforward and has a number of mechanics that make it fun. Most of the fun comes from the negotiation that happens during the game - you can offer other players your trucks to use or sell them your surplus booze if you don't have the truck capacity to move it yourself. There is also a 'take that' element to the game - some of the action cards are Thug cards that allow you to hammer other players.