Coffee Roaster: Which edition is better?

[Music] hey gamers this is Liz Davidson from beyond solitaire and today I just want to do a comparison between the two existing editions of coffee roaster so this one on the left is one that I imported from Japan several years ago and it has the old art this one on the right is the reprint from stronghold games that came out in 2019 so I thought it might be kind of fun to do a side-by-side of all of the contents and stuff so that you can see the ways in which the games are very similar but they have a couple of minor differences the first thing you're gonna notice of course is the art so depending on your aesthetic preferences you might like this kind of quirky art from the original edition which I actually really do like or you can have this more kind of luxurious premium looking stronghold version of the game so let's go ahead open up the boxes and see side-by-side we're working with so as you can see the contents the boxes aren't pretty similar both of them will have a bag this was like a little bit longer and taller it's also a little thinner flimsier this coffee roaster bag I actually do like better it's a little bit thicker it's a little it foxier and easier to reach into that I do like that the name of the game is printed on the back so bad comparison I'm going Japanese edition for sure didn't you have these two envelopes with the different beans I'm actually gonna talk about those last so let's put those aside for now and then we'll have a little showdown then of course we have our rule books so the coffee roaster that I imported has of course in English and a Japanese edition of the rule book which is pretty cool even though I don't read Japanese but let's have a quick chat about which of the rule books is better and how they differ so while I did originally learn the game out of this rule book so it feels familiar by now I do think that the new rule book is better so in that sense the stronghold version wins it has a better rule book you can even tell the difference by looking at the goal of the game here versus the object of game here so this goals game kind of gives too much information so as beings in the background they are roasted after rusty is complete points are awarded through a cup test players earned points by roasting to the target roast level retain the natural flavor of the bean and evenly roasting beans keep in mind the moisture trapped in the beans in the amount of smoke from roasting skillfully place the body is sitting aroma took this is confusing so when I first read this I was like is this game on hard and I thought I was gonna be I thought this is like a cute little 10-minute bag builder dear God so when you look over here you have a much shorter version of that so to begin with it's important to roast the coffee beans that are still hard at this point evenly and screen out unpleasant pieces then the freshly roasted beans are processed and finally the decisive Cup testing takes place will you be the next master roaster find out okay this is a lot more concise it's easier to understand I feel like that's generally true throughout these rule books like this one will give you too much text with too little payoff this is a little bit tighter a little bit easier to understand that said it's completely possible for the game from this one so if this is the Edition you get you're gonna be fine what a youtube video alright so now let's jump board setup this is the original coffee roaster play setup it's just two pieces of cardboard they fit together actually really nice if you pay attention the lines actually align lines on line and you give the cup over here on the left for your cup test you can count your roast right here and then on the right you have your you know different flavor tokens special effects combos and a turn tracker with your smoke tokens here there is a slightly easier cup test on the back of this one but I never really used it so I guess I can't really comment just a simple side-by-side couple of boards I actually really like the efficiency of this and I do love the art and the kind of chunky font and I like that the flavor token areas actually tell you what the flavor tokens are for so you can get into the theme of body aroma a city I think is very charming they definitely tried to step it up with the stronghold layouts which I will show you momentarily but before that I want to point out so in this version of the game these special effects tokens that you can get by place different flavor tokens on the board are in a fixed order and a fixed combination so you'll always need a body and an aroma flavor token to get an extra tree for example and that's not true as you'll see on the stronghold edition board all right so here's our fancy-schmancy stronghold edition board it's got three pieces instead of two so you've got this little cup that fits right here for the cup test and then your roast and turn counters are up top like a little like meter up here so as on this board you do have a combination of a 0 and a 1 to get that wild flavor token so it's just Express a little bit differently up here and then you have the same four sort of draw to redraw draw and then get rid of some means I actually do like this board better because I like that it gives me a text indication of what's going on as well as just the symbols I kind of suck at reading symbols and games so give me a word it makes a lot easier for me but yeah the other thing that you can notice is that here you're actually distributing these special effects tokens randomly whereas here they have a specific place on at the board so you're gonna get some different gameplay elements by doing it that way although I suppose if you really wanted to you could just randomly place tokens out here if that was how you wanted to play like it's a variant or something but I've wondered and I haven't played enough to be sure whether they're balancing reasons why this was arranged the way that it is and I'm not sure whether flexibility is a good or a bad thing for the outcome of the game I'm sort of curious about what repeated plays would reveal about that so between these two play areas I mean it's really gonna be a personal choice they work the same and they have the same basic spaces but I actually really prefer the original version and here's why I like that it has words that are telling me what things mean so I don't have to rely entirely on looking up symbols and I like actually there's only two pieces it's not these like three different pieces that you know kind of come together and also I hate having to reach up and adjust my roast I can just do it on the bottom here and it's right by where I'm sitting and it makes a lot more sense for me as a player to just do it that way because like you don't really do the cup test until the end it's perfect here and you can just do your rows counter on the side while you're working on this part of the board so a lot of is just how do you like things arranged I personally do prefer this kind of quirky art but I can also see somebody wanting something that has a more classic you know coffeehouse look to it as we understand coffee like if Starbucks was gonna produce a game it would look like this and it would not look like this but I really have a fondness for this one all right so here the two boxes side by side the coffee roaster original box in the new stronghold edition box so as you can see there's like actually little clues for how you should organize stuff in the bottom although obviously I'll follow the rules I don't put the threes in here I do what I want but basically there are little sections for each type of token there's a little bit more sharing in this box your version because there's not enough boxes for everything so all the flavor tokens and the moisture tokens go together in one section for example and then you're also doing some combining over here whereas in a stronghold version that there's like a little copy for everything so every single being type has its place except you do kind of dump all the flavor tokens down here in one spot in the bottom actually really don't mind either way although I suppose because there's more spaces for everything and things are a little bit more separated out that the stronghold version of the box is maybe a little bit better but for me it's not really a big deal if you are like one of those people who doesn't like their food to touch then this one is probably the box before you here we have little campaign tracking sheets this one's from the original coffee roaster it's just a cool double-sided sheet with a score tracker down here and then you have a little score pad for the stronghold version I mean I guess maybe the score pad is better but I don't really care I don't use them I usually prefer to take my notes about games on a separate sheet of paper I have a hard time with legacy games I don't like destroying my game stuff I like things I can laminate just hmm so these are both nice thoughts but they're not really things that I would use in the game so as far as I'm concerned it's a toss-up I mean this is cool because you can see a whole bunch of campaigns at once this is cool because it's smaller although I mean it depends on if you care about thickness versus like surface area it's a toss-up I don't really care but I'm showing it and now the moment I've been kind of waiting for this is the most detail-oriented aspect of this comparison you have the two different envelopes of beam sheets so this is Larry called beans sheets which I find very charming this just says coffee roaster what's mysteriously in this classy envelope so let's have a look at what's inside they both can I open the same way they both have a little guide like a little visual guide to the game here so you can tell so you can tell then the original edition the cards are definitely a little bit bigger in terms of like thickness this is actually thicker thicker cardstock this feels good they both feel smooth but this one's actually a little bit more deluxe in my opinion in terms of the card stock they're both kind of confusing little maps of what goes on in the game that I promptly ignored when I opened these for the first time and continue to do then if you flip over to the back they do have a guide to points so they basically look the same I mean in terms of numbers maybe there's a difference in this flavor points minus three versus that being in the minus three down here which might make more organizational sense I guess it depends on how you like to understand your games but you have rows points flavor voice skill points and then ways to lose points there are no differences numerically it's got the same balance so it's really just how you like things organized there's not really a huge difference here so let's have a look at some of the coffee cards and see we think of those so here are some coffee beans sheets some coffee cards from the original coffee roaster so as you can see there's like a little Japanese description of what's going on a description in English a key to tell you what level it is and then the contents of the bag and the roast points and flavor points that you can earn what's interesting is that this is double-sided so there's actually two coffee types per card so you can do the Kenya side you can do the Peru side some people organize their cards by roast like light medium dark I actually have a beginning intermediate advanced but let's see how many of these there are I'm pretty sure there's eleven so have one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven so there are eleven cards in here and what that means is that there are 22 different beans there are also 22 different cards in here but each coffee gets its own separate card which depending on your personal preference could be great or you may be like the efficiency and larger size of these cards so these cards are separate because they're really going for that more deluxe vibe so on the front you have this entire long description of the coffee type and its got like a more romantic sounding name so like el turo Oaxaca and then on the back you're gonna get that same information so how to build your bag roasted flavor point information and of course you have a level on the back what's sort of interesting is that the beginner level is the same color as the expert level in the original game so it's got a different color scheme so you have our Oaxaca Brazil Sao Paulo Panama Panama Cuba more Panama more Panama one thing is interesting though is I kind of feel like the names are different so I don't remember seeing a Panama tipica washed in here for example there do however seem to be at least some matchups on the cards for example we've got this Panama Topeka washed and this Vulcan Candela shb what so she has this is liberal as expert level what's this one yes it's also expert so it's at darker red and you can tell that numerically it's the same build so the same build of beans and then the same requirements for flavor tokens going into the bag the same corn scoring conditions for roast and then flavor so clearly some of these coffees match up to each other it's just they don't have quite the same names but you can definitely find beans from the new version that match up with beans from the old one so I haven't done like a full study of every single bean in here but I feel like a lot of these have counterparts even if they have different names so you're still getting basically the same mix of beans with the same kind of scoring and balance that you would get in the older edition so when it comes to cards it's basically about what you like do you want the more efficient double-sided cards they're a little bit thicker and a little bit bigger or do you want these smaller slightly thinner cards that have a little bit more flavor text on the front in addition to the basic scoring stuff on the back for me it's for me personally it's not really that big a deal maybe I like the flavor tax just a little bit better because it's you know it's pleasant I think graphically this looks really nice but like this is fine and I wouldn't necessarily go out buy a new edition of the game for these cards as opposed to these ones so before I do my final evaluation of which one of these I'm keeping I am going to tell you about one more rules difference between two games and that is that in the original version of coffee roaster you can do what's called the flavor token a stacking where if you would like to thin out your bag a little bit and remove a flavor token that you have no intention of using you can actually play one flavor token for its effect but then stack another unwanted flavor token underneath it and it's a neat way of getting rid of tokens but does not seem to exist any longer in this version of coffee roaster although I suppose if you know the old rules you can just do what you want isn't gaming all about having fun of doing what you want anyway so I think between these two you this one edges is this one out just a little bit I really like the original coffee roaster partially because you know I worked so hard to get a copy if I'm thinking you know I had to seek it out figure out how to email get it imported and I also just like the quirky art I like that it's a little bit simpler in terms of the board and the play area you know for me that streamlining is really nice I like the efficiency on those big thick beans sheets and you know I have a lot more emotional attachment to this version of the game that said this game is really basically the same thing with some extremely minor differences that aren't gonna affect your gameplay very much at all in terms of play they're pretty much the same game so if you are in the United States and you are enjoying the fact this has been reprinted and you want to copy it then this is the one to yet I will say that I think both of these games including this reprint United States are a little bit overpriced from what they are this is like a little quickie game but the image sarpy on this is like 45 bucks don't pay $45 for this go wait for a sale and get it cheaper because it's a fun game but it's not like $45 fun this one I don't regret paying that higher price for because it was like a Grail game at the time and it was so cool to be like a solar reviewer who has a copy of copy coffee roaster and like I totally confessed to giving into the foam on that but no regrets so these are my two copies of coffee roaster I'm probably gonna keep this one in the collection and then let this one go on to a new home so that other people can enjoy roasting the perfect cup of coffee maybe while drinking coffee at their board game table free quick game I hope you enjoyed this comparison and happy gaming [Music]

Channel: Beyond Solitaire

Views: 3,591

Rating: 4.9448276 out of 5

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Id: zlJt4kFI9ak

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 24 2020