by alxamp21
I got in a game of this over the weekend.We played 5 players ranging in age from 13 to 45. All of us were new players. I explained the rules in detail to them before we started. They had lots of questions. After getting everything explained, we started the first game.
The red spaces on the country board of course did not force negatives in the first round so player's teamed up as they wanted. But then all teams researched rather than blend. After researching player's spent their performance points for extra research. We had one player drop all the way to zero. This was the player who got the +2 performance points to start so he had a big research lead. He focused though on investment and flavor. I took the two blend abilities, select and brew. Everyone else sort of took a variety of abilities.
We dropped the farthest slate out of play degraded the current flavors one bean and started round two.
Now the red spaces were mandatory. The first player's immediately took the brown spaces they could. The final 5th player took the swap places to get the bean color they wanted. This round we had the player who focused on researching investment and flavor research again. I brewed with my team mate. The player who had trained investment invested in our blend. He then played a flavor card that allowed him to move his investment token to another blend. He did this and moved his investment token to the bold starter blend. This scored him the 3 points.
We ended up with a Half-Calf. The starting blends at this point were still a regular and a bold so they beat our starting blend. But we did all score 2 performance points from the blend. The rest of the teams I believe also researched.
Degrading flavors at this point we had two regulars in front of our Decaf. No one at this point had yet scored the blend of the day. I understood these only scored if brewed so we did not grant these points to flavors that degraded to them. We also did not discard this as I believe it has to stay out this way until blended. Since no one in our game blended anything less than half calf this took no effect.
Next round was a big brew round. We had teams of 3 and teams of two. The team of three had the player who was focusing on research. He wanted to research some more but was out voted. He also didn't want to draw beans. So they put him last on the draw and drew theirs first.
Our team had a blend with a free bean so we blended as well. At this point my back was a bit light but we made it work to get out a regular with two kicker beans. The other team though got out a 4 bean bold blend. So now the player focusing on research had points in the 4 bean bold at the top of the flavor track, the 3 bean regular at 2 points, and in our decaf with a kicker one point when it came to score. He shot ahead in points. I was in last place at this point.
The next round I took the extra bean space to help replenish my bag and also took research to get myself up to the next two levels in brew and select. I now had a very powerful roasting power but I needed more beans to brew again. The other players also took this round to regroup except for the player who was focusing on research. He had only contributed one bean to the blend that was at the top of the chart and still had a bunch of beans. He brewed again with his current teammate this round. They had another 4 bean bold. This knocked down the current 4 bean bold to the 2 point. My flavor was knocked off the board since the stale spot was not used in the 5 player game.
We had another round where I gathered beans but this time I blended. I managed to get a four bean out in play but it was a yellow 4 bean so it did not beat the current 4 bean bold. But the previous 4 bean by this point had degraded to a regular blend so it was at least scoring two points.
The next round I had to rebuild beans again. It was at this point I wished I had spent some research on grow. I had great brewing capabilities to control what I drew but I really needed a way to get more beans in my bag. I was forced to take the double bean space almost every round. Meanwhile the player who had focused on research was shooting up the scoring track thanks to his early investments. The other two players were doing ok but I wasn't paying much attention to them.
I should have though the youngest player was sneaking up in points. She had been in on some strong blends and her latest blend this round secured the other two point position behind my two point bold blend.
At this point the game became a bit of blur because we all had it down and the game picked up speed. I apologize I can't be as detailed from this point.
I'll give a few highlights. The player who had focused on research was still trying to research for end game points. Notable was maxing out his investment track meant that anyone who paired with him had to do what he wanted. He used this a few times to stop one of the other player's from blending and researching instead. It was during this point the youngest player though snuck in on two more bold blends capturing the top spot. One was with me and another was with a different player. She shot up in points. The game eneded when she crossed the 21 point line before the player focusing on research. In the end she was by like 4 points over him.
Talking about it afterward we believe that his focus on research would have worked but he kept eating his performance points in order to maximize his research. This ate up his lead that he had early on. Yes he had lots of flavor cards but at game end they were only worth one extra point. We figured those were wasted since there were couple in there he bought with performance points. So that's 3 points for 1 point at game end. The flavor cards were powerful but only if used during the game.
In the end we all had a good time. We all agreed that early investment was very powerful and in the future we might not work so hard to blend really well if a player in the lead invests in our blends. We figured there was nothing in the rules that said we had to do our best when we blended. It would be a loss of beans but that might keep someone from taking off with it.
I also felt that I had focused on being able to blend really well to the detriment of everything else. Next time I'll probably do one of the blend powers and the grow power. That way I can just blend every turn rather than taking two turns to rebuild my roaster.
Overall a good game and I look forward to playing it with more people. Once you get the hang of it it isn't that hard and it can move quickly with everyone talking and trading and working on blending. There is depth here and it is a very social game. I can imagine it being very crazy with eight people.
I'm not sure we did the daily blend cards correctly. That decaf card was never scored because no one blended less than a half calf and we did not discard it at the end of each round.
The flavor cards got a lot of play and almost everyone had one at some point. Although some of them are very situational. And if you get two of those on your draw your stuck sticking between two cards where neither might be that great. But if you can make a flavor card work it can really be a game changer for you.
Like I said, I really liked it but once we had it all under our belts it moved a bit fast to keep track of what all the teams were doing. I'll take notes the next time I play for a better session report.
Have fun roasting!
