Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
“You can get syphilis.”
Those four little words, three non-events followed by a crack of thunder, sparked my interest in Bohemians. I love a game with a sense of humor, and the inclusion of la maladie française in this game about 19th century Parisian artists suggested that the creative team was out for laughs. As well they should be. I get tired of games from the broader Euro family taking themselves so seriously.
As hoped, Bohemians is at times overflowing with comedy, provided you play with a group that’s inclined to take advantage of the storytelling latitude designer Jasper de Lange affords you. Every round represents a day in the life of your artists as they pursue their craft, with the cards in your hand your Habits, the things you did with your day. The humor comes from quiet moments, like immediately following a card called Get Focused with another called Wander the Streets Aimlessly.
Mechanically, Bohemians is dry as dust: play three or four cards from your hand, trying to match the symbols on the edges. Matched symbols gain Inspiration, which can be spent on better Habits, Muses that pair up with Habits to make them stronger, and Achievements, which ultimately win you the game. Inspiration can also be banked in the Atelier, where it can be spent on a variety of simple ancillary actions.
Where it takes off is in the narrative flavor. In that regard, Bohemians is a deeply thoughtful design. When you plan out your day at the top of the round, you can either play three Habits and go to work, or you can play four Habits and dedicate your day to your craft. If you do the latter, you take a Hardship, these pesky cards that make your life harder. Get an Opium Addiction, find yourself paralyzed by Perfectionism, or pick up a nice case of Syphilis.
Hardships are a pain, but they’re uniformly clever in execution. The Opium Addiction card forces you to do less on your turn. Perfectionism requires you to have matching signs between all of your cards. You either spread Syphilis to another player or gain an additional Hardship. These are very good.
The emergent storytelling can be wonderful. “I spend the morning Writing in My Journal with Alex, then Write to a Lover—probably Alex—while with Valery. Then, Francis helped me kick my Opium Addiction.” “Oh, that’s wonderful! I’d hoped she’d be good for you.” “Yeah, she’s really incredible. Changed my life.” It’s easy to get carried away with that kind of fun.
Here we hit an issue, though: If you have too much fun, the game draaaaaaaaaaaaaags. The box says 45-60 minutes, but my first 4-player game broke the two-hour mark less than halfway to the finish line, and we decided to pack it up. We hadn’t even been getting that carried away. As the game progresses, the storytelling falls away. People start doing their next turn ahead of time, itchy to get a move on.
It’s at this point that the game hits its fatal flaw: Bohemians without the storytelling isn’t fun. It’s not a satisfying puzzle, nor is there any real sense of growth in your engine as you buy new cards and throw old cards out. Compare this to something like Unstoppable, which has little if any ability to conjure a story, but makes you feel exactly as the title promises. With Bohemians, across five games now, each and every one has hit a point about 30-40 minutes in when it started to feel like grueling, repetitive work.
That’s not a great sign, and it’s especially noticeable given how strong the start is. Game after game, I’ve watched players begin fully absorbed, only to lose all interest by the end. If Bohemians truly lasted the 45-60 minutes promised by the box, it might work. If it were half an hour long, it would be exquisite. As it is? Buh.
I think there’s an issue here with “balance,” a word I try to stay away from. The whole game feels under-tuned, as though a round of necessary maths was never done. It is rare that you end up with a turn producing more than 11 or 12 Inspiration, and you start the game regularly making around 8. There’s just not enough growth. Three times now, my games have ended up beached on the shoals of the Achievement that costs 15 Inspiration. Have that come up early in the game, and none of you will be going anywhere for a while. The Muses too are wildly imbalanced, to the point that even players who don’t care about balance—Hello!—start to notice.
It’s tough. There’s a promising idea in Bohemians. I’ve played it with enough people now to feel confident that we aren’t bloating our decks. This isn’t a skill issue. There’s something under the hood that doesn’t quite work. That’s an absolute shame given how good some aspects of the game are. As a deck and engine builder, Bohemians is lackluster. As a frame for telling stories, it comes tantalizingly close to being a work of art.
Bohemians details
- Designer: Jasper de Lange
- Artists: Hanna Kuik, Mateusz Kopacz, Roman Kucharski, Tomasz Jedruszek
- Publishers: DSV Games, Gém Klub Kft., IELLO, Pegasus Spiele, Portal Games
- Release Date: 2025
- Player count : 1 - 4
- Age range : 14+
- Time range : 45 - 60 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Deck, Bag, and Pool Building, Pattern Building
- BGG Geek Rating: 6.63223 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.5.
- More articles about Bohemians.
