Coffee Roaster: A Dicey Walkthrough!

[Music] hey everybody how's it going i'm paul i'm with the dicey review and tonight we're going to be learning how to play coffee roaster a solo game released by stronghold games in the us now coffee roaster has two different game modes a single game challenge and then a roast challenge where you play three games one after the other in this video we're going to be focusing on how to play a single game so with that let's get to the table coffee roaster comes with all of the components that you see here including a double-sided roast board an overview card 22 double-sided coffee cards a double-sided thermostat and roast counter board a cloth bag a cup testing board a score pad the game also comes with a variety of tokens that you can see organized in the game box we'll go over these tokens in more detail later i do want to highlight the box organizer which helps keep all of the tokens in their correct place to begin setup lay out the large roast board in front of you on the table it's important to note that there are two sides of the roast board there's a side with a single weight this is the light side and on the reverse there's a side with two weights this is the standard side in your first game it's recommended that you play on the light side of the board next place the thermostat and roast counter board above the roast board please note that there's also a standard and a light side for this board as well for the first game use the light side then place the cup testing board so that it fits into the recess on the right side of the roast board next put the roast marker on space zero of the roast counter track then find the five square cup effect tokens mix them face down and then place them randomly on the empty square spaces of the roast board that match their shape then turn them face up next place the wild flavor token on the empty space in the center of the roast board next put smoke tokens on the thermostat spaces that are highlighted in red on the standard side you put two and three tokens on the light side place one and two respectively when you're done it would look like this next you'll need to choose a coffee type from the coffee cards there are two play styles in this game a single choice game or a roast challenge where you play three different varieties of coffee one after the other for the purposes of this instructional video we're going to just play a single choice meaning one game for the first game the rules recommend choosing a coffee card of roast level 1 with a beginner difficulty in our example we've chosen the sao paulo blend the coffee card will show you which tokens need to be taken out of the box for the current game take these tokens out of the box and place them face up in front of you it's also important to note that on the light side of the roast board you'll take one flavor token of each type from the ones that are lying in front of you and place them in the spaces in the top left of the board these tokens are automatically available to the player during the following roasting rounds which we'll detail in a moment players are allowed to use them leave them on their spaces or put them into the bag at the end of the roasting phase all of those terms will make more sense as we explain the game rules next place all of the tokens into the cloth bag the players can place the overview card near the play area if they would find that helpful and then the players will place the game round marker on the thermostat board depending on how many moisture tokens are in the coffee type so for instance the sao paulo blend has three moisture tokens so the players would find the round marker space that says 4 and 3 and place the round marker there this is where the player will begin and finally it might be helpful to place the game box nearby to easily access the different tokens during gameplay in coffee roaster the goal is to create the perfect coffee in this one player game the player has to roast coffee beans and make sure to screen out unpleasant pieces after repeated processes of roasting the coffee beans player is finally faced with cup testing where the true quality of their blend will be judged gameplay in coffee roaster is divided into two phases in the first phase roasting of the coffee beans will take place over several roasting rounds and each roasting round will follow the same pattern when a player has completed as many roasting rounds as they wish or if the game round marker has reached the final space of the track the cup testing will happen where the player's coffee roast is judged let's look at the roasting phase first multiple roasting rounds will take place one after the other throughout a game of coffee roaster and in each roasting round the same steps are followed the first step of each roasting round is to increase the temperature on the thermostat it's important to note that during the very first round of the game this step is omitted the number on the thermostat will also indicate how many tokens are drawn from the bag in each round so in this first round eight tokens are drawn from the player's bag as the thermostat increases throughout the game more tokens will be drawn each round it's also important to note that if the thermostat moves to a space with smoke tokens these smoke tokens will immediately be placed in the bag with the other chips the next step of each roasting round is to draw tokens out of the bag equal to the number on the thermostat in our first round example the number on the thermostat was eight so the player would mix the tokens thoroughly in the bag and then draw eight chips out of the bag once a player has drawn chips from the bag the third step of each roasting round is to remove any moisture that's drawn from the bag any moisture that's drawn from the bag in any of the roasting phases is immediately put back in the box and then you move to the fourth step the fourth step of each roasting round is to use the tokens in your pool for effects if you want to it's important to note that flavor tokens can be used for either immediate effects or to unlock bonuses at the end of the game there are some requirements to using flavor tokens in one of these two ways and we'll go over that in more detail in a moment players can also potentially use some coffee bean tokens to unlock certain effects during the round as well we'll look at that in a moment after a player has potentially used any tokens that they want to the player would then complete the roasting step of the roasting round during the roasting step coffee beans increase their roast value by one so for instance both of these zeros would become level one coffee beans the player would return those to the box and then replace them with two level one coffee beans since the roast value in the player's bag has increased by two the player would increase the roast counter by two to indicate this it's important to note that the hard bean token would be replaced by a level zero coffee bean it's also important to note that flavor tokens defective beans smoke tokens and burn beans are not affected by the roasting step of a roasting round if the player would have to resolve a roasting step for a level 4 coffee bean this coffee bean would then be burnt and would be replaced by a burned bean token in the player's bag this is bad you want to avoid it if possible it's also important to note that if the players are in one of the rounds that has a red stripe on the round symbol this is a red zone on the thermostat and during the roast step each bean is increased by two levels so for instance if this player was in round 10 each of these ones would become a three and this zero would become a two but it's important to note that even if the player is in a red zone any hard beans still become a zero they wouldn't increase to level one after the roasting step has been done it's time for the cleanup step of the roasting round any unused tokens are gathered up and placed in the black bag for the next round after each roasting round the player then has a decision to continue the roasting process by completing another roasting round or by stopping and moving on to the cup testing phase in our scenario the desired value of coffee beans in the coffee cup is 14. since the roasting level is only at two this player would most certainly want to continue roasting their coffee beans the player can continue to evaluate this and make this decision at the end of each roasting round if the player decides to complete another roasting round they would begin the process over starting at step one increasing the thermostat marker now that we've looked at a general overview of what a roasting round looks like let's look in more detail at the different actions that a player can take using their tokens during a roasting round we'll do that before moving on to the cup testing phase let's say for instance that we're going into round two we would move the round marker to nine then nine tokens would be drawn from the bag first any moisture that might have been drawn would be removed from the game now that that's done we're left with these tokens that we can potentially use for the round you can use tokens for immediate effects on the left side of the board or for flavor effects on the right side of the board that will unlock special in-game bonuses to help with the cup testing phase let's look at the immediate effects first during the round players can unlock the wild flavor token to do this a player would need to place a level 0 bean and a level 1 bean in the two spaces provided once a player does this the flavor token would immediately be unlocked the flavor token could be used in the same round or it could be saved for later rounds by placing it back in the bag during the cleanup step it's important to note that these coffee beans can be placed here in the same round or over the course of multiple rounds it's also important to note that once any token or flavor token is placed on these spaces they're there for the rest of the game if a player wants to use one of the flavor tokens to unlock an immediate effect they have to place a flavor token of the color matching the space so for instance they would have to place a red flavor token here or a blue flavor token here if the space shows all three colors they could use a flavor token of any color it's also important to note that a player could use the wild flavor token to activate any of these spaces if a player activates the two additional token space they would immediately draw two more tokens from the bag and add them to the pool of already drawn tokens it's important to note that if there are less than two tokens in the bag this effect can't be activated and if a player draws a moisture token as part of this effect it's simply removed immediately and a replacement token is not drawn if a player activates the two new tokens space they could immediately select two of the tokens that they'd previously drawn for the round put them back into the bag and draw two new tokens once again if a player draws moisture tokens as part of this action it's simply removed and they don't draw a replacement for it if a player activates the two out of five immediate action the player would draw five additional tokens out of the bag they would then remove two of these five tokens from the game the three remaining tokens would be placed back into the bag it's important to note that with this action you can remove any type of tokens from the game and you have to remove two tokens you can't choose to remove one or no tokens it's also important to note that if there are less than five tokens in the cloth bag this effect can't be used and moisture tokens are removed immediately and you don't draw any replacement tokens for them and finally if a player were to activate the removal action they would get to remove any burned beans smoke or defective beans from their pool of tokens from the game it's also important to note that there's a specific order to activating immediate or flavor token effects in the game you always have to activate immediate effects first so for instance if during the round you placed a token here to activate one of the flavor effects and work on unlocking this token you wouldn't be able to take any immediate actions after activating a flavor effect you have to activate any immediate effects that you want to use first and then you can use flavor effects you're also free to just use flavor effects if you want to now that we've looked at all of the immediate effects let's look at using tokens for flavor effects and how to unlock in-game bonuses when players place flavor tokens in these spaces they have to resolve the token's flavor effect ability we'll look at those in just a second in addition to using the flavor effect of the token that they place here placing tokens in these two spaces will unlock this cup effect token which will give the players advantages during the cup testing phase for in-game scoring let's first look at what each of the flavor effects do when placed here to place a flavor token on these spaces you have to be able to activate and complete the flavor token's action each of the flavor tokens triggers a different action during the round it's also important to note that you have to place a flavor token that matches the color of the space where it's being placed any spaces that show all three colors can have any flavor token placed there but if you place a particular color a flavor token you have to activate that color's action once a player has placed both flavor tokens and activated their action on a single line the corresponding cup effect token is immediately unlocked and placed on the corresponding space in the coffee cup for the end of the game it's also important to note that one of the tokens goes on this space at the bottom of the board if a player places a red flavor token they have to activate the concentration action this action tells a player to combine two bean tokens to create one bean token of a higher value so for instance the players could take these two tokens and combine them to make a bean with a value of three it's important to note that the bean is immediately placed into the bag and isn't roasted during this roasting round's roasting step it's also important to note that this action can only be used on beans with a value of 1 2 or 3 so for instance players couldn't combine a level zero bean with a level four bean to skip a roasting phase if a player were to place a green flavor token they would take the preservation action this would allow players to take two bean tokens and put them back into the cloth bag unroasted with this action you can prevent things like a token with a value of four being over roasted it's important to note that hard beans defective beans or burned beans can't be preserved but any other bean value can be preserved even level 0 beans if a player activates the blue flavor token they take the dispersion action this action allows a player to remove one bean token from the game and put it back into the box in return the player can take two bean tokens out of the box with roast levels that add up in total to the bean that was discarded so for instance since we discarded a level four bean the players could take this level three and level one bean and put them into the bag or they could take these two level two beans this action can only be taken with beans of a level two three or four now that we've looked at all of the actions that you can take during the roasting phase and all of the steps of the roasting phase let's look at the second phase of the game the cup testing when a player has decided to stop taking roasting phases or if they've reached the last space on the thermometer track they go through phase 2 cup testing during cup testing players are trying to get the perfect value to achieve the highest score possible so for instance with the sao paulo blend this player is trying to get 14 value worth of beans in their cup in addition to gaining the perfect value the player is trying to get these flavor tokens in their cup as well this will give them additional bonuses you can also earn additional bonuses for having beans of the same value in the cup during the cup testing scoring and we'll look at that in a moment during the cup testing phase the player will draw tokens out of the bag one at a time and they'll decide whether or not they want to place this token in their cup or discard this token to the tray players can continue to put tokens into the cardboard tray until all four of the spaces are filled if all four of the spaces are filled in the cardboard tray every token drawn has to be placed into the cup players will continue to draw tokens out of the bag one at a time and place them either in the cup or in the cardboard tray until the cup is completely filled or until the bag is empty and it's important to note that placing the tokens into the cup is done from left to right and top to bottom it's important to note that if any moisture tokens are drawn they're simply immediately removed from the game it's also important to note that only one token can be placed on each space once all of the spaces in the cup are filled the player will then move on to the cup scoring phase during cup scoring a few things are checked first the roast value is checked the roast value is equal to the value of all of the coffee beans in the cup the perfect roast value in our example scenario is 14. in our example we've achieved a value of 13 coffee beans in the cup a value of 13 would give us 6 points for this scenario the player would indicate this by writing it in the first space of the score pad then the player would check to see how many of the flavor tokens they had matched up in the cup in our example the player has a wild token which can be any color a blue token and a green token in this instance the wild token can count as a blue this can count as another blue and finally a green matching all three flavor tokens if a player matches one flavor token they gain one extra point if they match two they gain three points and if they match 3 they gain 6 points it's important to note that there are some scenarios with 4 flavor tokens if a player is able to match a 4th flavor token they would gain 10 additional points in our example with our 3 matched tokens we would gain 6 points which we can indicate once again by writing six in the score pad finally players would receive a bonus if they've used three or more of the same value bean these are known as skill points if a player has matched three of the same value they would gain an extra point if they've matched four of the same value they would gain two extra points if a player manages to match five six or seven of the same value bean in their cup they would get three four or five points respectively in our example we would gain one additional point for these three beans of level three we would indicate this on our score pad and finally the players would receive negative points if a few different things happen for any beans with red x's on them the players would receive negative points for smoke tokens they would receive one negative point for over burned beans they would receive one point for defective beans they would receive two negative points and for a hard bean they would receive one negative point as well in our example we have one smoke token for a total of one negative point it's also important to note that if any spaces of the cup remain empty the player would receive five negative points after totaling all of our scores together we would end this game with a score of 12. the last thing to discuss are cup effects these cup effect tokens will allow players to have special abilities during the cup testing phase and during scoring the cardboard tray token is placed on the existing space down at the bottom of the roast board if this space is unlocked it gives players extra spaces to discard unwanted tiles when drawing during the cup testing phase so for instance after filling these four spaces the player would then have these additional spaces to continue discarding tiles if they wish the extra bean token is placed on the first space in the cup board this space counts as being occupied by a level 3 bean and can't be filled by any of the beans drawn from the bag during the cup testing phase it's included in scoring as if it were a bean of a level 3. the sweetness token is placed on the space designated in the cup this space is considered to be occupied and can't be filled during the cup testing phase as with the extra bean token some cards require the sweetness token for obtaining flavor points but for all other coffee cards this sweetness token acts as if it's a wild flavor token the selection token is placed on this space in the cup on the second row of empty spaces this token only affects the spaces to the left of where the token is placed so just these two spaces on this second row if this token is present in the cup when drawing for these two spaces the player would draw two tokens out of the bag decide which one to place in the cup and then the other token would be placed back into the cloth bag after making this decision and then drawing for these spaces this token's effect would no longer apply and finally the exchange token is placed on this space in the designated spot on the cup this token's effect doesn't have to be used but if the player chooses to use this effect it has to be executed in the following way the player would first choose any two tokens in the cup to remove these tokens would be placed back into the cloth bag then mix the contents of the bag thoroughly and draw three new tokens from the bag from the three new tokens drawn select two of those tokens to put back into the cup in this way players might be able to change a bad cup into a very good cup scoring this is everything you need to know to play a basic game of coffee roaster there are also rules that detail how to play a roast challenge playing three games after the other once you've mastered the basics you can take on this challenge for even more depth alright everybody that was our video we hope that it was helpful and we hope that it was informative and if you still have any questions about how to play the game please comment below or email us directly at thediceyrevue gmail.com if you want to read our written reviews you can check out thediceyourreview.com and make sure and connect with us on social media or at our board game geek guild now if you want to see how this game plays in real time with all of the different rounds and actions one after the other we do have some live streamed gameplays on the channel already and we are planning on playing this game again on the channel so that you can see us play it and see all of the different rounds and how a game would fully resolve so make sure and check back for that as well but until next time we'll see you at the table

Channel: The Dicey Review

Views: 1,505

Rating: 4.9322033 out of 5

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Id: d2TgjdDEzSA

Length: 22min 21sec (1341 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 17 2020