It’s the fabulous ’50s in America. Hometown pride is in full swing, everybody likes Ike, and the baby boom is exploding all over. What those growing families need is something fresh, something local, and something healthy, and you’ve got just the thing – milk!

In Milkman, you’ll take on the role of a local dairy farmer, doing your best to manage your farm, keep the cows happy, process and deliver whole, skim, and chocolate milk, and persuade local customers that your milk is definitely the freshest and tastiest around. Each round, all players roll a certain number of custom dice with all the actions available to do what’s mentioned above. They may press their luck and re-roll those dice a couple of times, or match up sets to get the result they want. The active player will have a few more dice to work with which, unfortunately, can’t be re-rolled, but can be manipulated with cash on hand.

Throughout the game, players will have to decide how best to manage their time, either expanding the farm for more flexibility and output, grabbing valuable customers before others can, or shipping out that delicious milk to customers for pride and reputation.

Milkman plays quickly, is easy to teach, and comes with great components like custom dice, personal farming and neighborhood boards, cow meeples, and much more.

Review:

Overview:

Milkman came to me through word of mouth and a great deal from GameNerdz Deal of the Day. My collection has been growing in games that are quick to the table, easy to learn, not overly lengthy and has just enough strategy to keep us engaged. Milkman checked all of those boxes.

Components:

1 Order board
1 Round marker
4 Dairy Farm Player boards
4 Milk Truck Player tiles
4 Lock tiles
45 Double-Sided Point tokens
75 Money tokens

1 Cardboard First Player marker
1 Wood Start Player marker
4 Player Aids
8 Event cards
8 Goal cards
8 Achievement cards
34 Order cards

4 Milk Trucks
20 Cows
29 Raw Milk tokens
15 Whole Milk Bottles
15 Skim Milk Bottles
15 Chocolate Milk Bottles
8 black dice
4 white dice
Rulebook

Milkman does a great job of leaning heavily into the theme. Every action feels very on theme from generating raw milk to bottling the milk and loading it on the truck to delivery to the customer. Every action available in the game is precisely on theme.

Dice rolling, set collection and pick-up and deliver mechanics are presented in a way that flows within the theme. The game does a great job of staying thematic enough that the mechanics blend into the background.

This was a fun, lightweight game that was easy to learn and filled a small time gap. While my personal preference leans toward heavy and lengthy games, these shorter fillers that still have a bit to chew on.

The strategic play can feel fairly solitaire. There is a lack of “take that” in the game, with the only real strategy against your opponent lies in the order market. Using your spills to remove orders that your opponent is uniquely positioned for or racing to get a high-valued order before your opponent is really the only direct competition.

There are games that are a bit more direct and lengthy but every collection needs some games that can fill a shorter timeframe and a good palate cleanser between longer sessions.

Milkman has found a home in my collection. It may not be the first game I reach for when I sit down but it will find itself in my game bag when I go to game nights as a fun, quick game that I can teach quickly and can be played between the meatier games I bring along with it.

I would give this one a 7.5/10. Good enough to own, fun enough to teach to friends but not the first game I reach for when I sit down.

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Bill Ivie Reviewer

Bill has been an avid gamer most of his life and is always willing to pull up a chair and play a game. He works in IT and has for the past 25 years. He has six kids and an amazing wife, all of which are willing to play games of differing difficulties and mechanisms. He serves as the Board Game Director for Meeple-A-Thon, a charity in the Kansas City area that runs an annual convention to generate funds. His favorite games are Ark Nova, Terraforming Mars and Dice Throne. When he’s not playing games, you can find him watching baseball or football or traveling with his family.

All of Bill Ivie‘s reviews can be found HERE.

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