Steam & Cheese Preview - The Mice Are In Charge...And They Need Cheese!!
Transcript
Hey there gamers, welcome back to the board game co channel and today we have a preview of Steam and Cheese. Hey there gamers, it's Professor Mag here and welcome back to the Board Game Co channel. Today we have a preview of Steam and Cheese by Skeleames. Now this is a current game found campaign so you can check out the link down below for everything that they have planned. This is a sponsor preview and this is a prototype copy in front of me. So, all rules, components, things like that are subject to change. And there are definitely some things that will be changing in this game, such as these tokens will be uh more clear that they are different colors, things like that. And if you'd like to see exactly how this game plays, there will be a gameplay on the channel between Alex and I. So, you're able to check that out as well, so you can see exactly how this game plays out. Because in Steam and Cheese, players are going to be playing as these different mice trying to create cheese to fulfill orders. So, first you're going to start off with milk. And then you have the choice to pasteurize it or not. And then you're going to turn it into cheese. And then you're going to attempt to mature it where you can have some fresh cheese, you can have some hard cheese, uh but ultimately you're going to be creating these to fulfill orders that will ultimately give players money as well as victory points. So, this is all going to be over the course of six rounds where players are going to be drafting dice and then using those to activate different actions. all to create this process of gaining milk and then turning it into cheese that ultimately other mice are going to want to eat. So with that, let's take a look at steam and cheese. Now taking a look
here, there are quite a few shared areas that are going on. So this is going to be the main board that has a lot of information for players such as your victory point tracker around here. But the only piece that is going to completely belong to a player is going to be your player board over here. So, you're going to have that as well as any cards that you may gain and then play. So, you'll have your player area, but all of these other things are going to be shared areas where other players are going to be interacting as well. So, these gears here are going to be where players are activating their main actions for the round. There are also these different gears that players are going to be able to interact with for different benefits. And you also have the zeppelin that players are able to travel along as well. Now, there are also shared goals over here and I am just giving you a general overview of everything that you are seeing in front of you before we dive into the process of what players are doing. So, taking a look at your player board here, as I noted, you're going to be gaining milk and then turning it into cheese. So, your milk is going to be gained in this area here. And then through actions, you're going to turn it into cheese and then mature that cheese before ultimately fulfilling the different order cards that you have drawn. So with that, that is a brief overview. And now I'm going to go into a bit more detail of how players are going to accomplish this. Now, as I said, the game is going to last six rounds. And each round, you're going to be rolling the dice. So depending on the number of players, you're going to have a certain number of
dice, but you're going to roll them. And there are three different colors that players are going to be interacting with. So one of them, which is the white one, is going to provide milk. So, not only are you going to be using these to activate different actions, but when you select the die, it's going to provide what the face up value is. So, the white ones are going to be milk, the gold ones are going to be money, and these brownish ones are going to be something that is rendant. That is something that is used to create milk into cheese. So, you are going to need that as well. So, these are three different resources that you're going to gain when you select the die. But then ultimately, you're also going to be selecting where to place that die for the actions that you want to activate and how powerful you want them to be. Because these dice are going to be rolled each round. And depending on how they land, that's really going to change a lot because the face up value that you can see when looking down at it is what you're going to gain in those different resources that I mentioned.
But the sides that are pointing towards the different actions that you are activating, it's going to be determined the strength by the number that is facing that particular action. Now, just to show you an example, I will roll the dice here. And as you can see, for money, that is quite high where we have a six, a four, and a six. We have a one, a four, and a one for the milk. And we have a five, a three, and a two for the renet. So, if it was our turn and we were drafting these dice, we currently don't have any milk at all. So, we might choose to want milk over the other things even though they are higher values. And that's okay because we're going to have stronger actions because of it. So, with this four, we would be able to select this die and draft it. And then we would gain four milk for ourselves. So, we would take four tokens over here of the clear milk ones and place it over here because this is unpastured unpasteurized milk. So, we're going to have that and then we're going to use this die and place it into one of these gears. And these are the different actions that players are able to take.
But, for example, I'll have us place one over here. So, where we do have the four, I'm going to have us orient it specifically this way. And that's because we have a six that is pointing this way toward this action here. Meaning that we're going to be able to take it at a strength six. If I had spun it in different ways, I would be able to use that action for the other actions instead, that strength for the die. But instead, we're going to use it for this one here. Now, when you place this, you are able to activate two things, but I will have us go through this first. So, this is going to have us select order cards. And order cards have a specific value. So, as you can see, there's one, two, and three. And we placed a six value, meaning that if we wanted to, we could take both of these cards or somehow we would have six to spend for those different cards. But we are also able to take the different equipment that is at the top as well. So those are able to be placed and slotted into the different gears with a different action.
But this is how you would take them from the main board, but they are a bit more expensive where not only do they cost the number that is printed on the board, but you are multiplying it by the number on the tile. So this first one here would cost us four for that action, meaning that if we wanted to spend six, we would be able to take this as well as one of these two cards because that would equal six for us. So that's how players are going to be taking these things. And as you can imagine, these order cards are going to require specific types of cheese. So, I'll get into that process in just a moment, but just know that you're going to be choosing these based on the cheese that you have, what you're able to produce, and you're going to be taking a look at the victory points that it provides, as well as the money that you're able to spend in game. Now, finally, these order cards are going to be really important because there's a set collection aspect at the end of the game as well where you can get points for the different tags that you have if you have enough. And I'll go over what that means when we go over endame scoring, but that's another incentive to select certain cards from that area. Now, as I said, we do have two actions with this die. So, for our second action, as you can see, a five is going to be pointing this way. So, we are able to use a five strength for this here, which is how we are going to pasteurize our milk. So, where we currently have four milk, if we did have five, we would be able to move five down. If we had six, we would only be able to move the five. But where we have four, we can move them all over to here.
Now, that would be a full turn for a player within a round. And when a turn ends for a player, your milk is also going to degrade. So you have these different areas because the milk can only last for so long before you have to turn it into cheese. Otherwise, it will spoil and will end up in your trash. So for us, where our turn is ending, where we have four milk, this is going to move it down to this area here. So we do still have time to press this and turn it into cheese, but we want to be sure that this isn't wasted. Now, as a reminder, on a player's turn, you're going to be drafting one of these dice, gaining the resource that it represents, either money, milk, or renet. And then you're going to be placing it to activate the different actions. But dice are also going to block other dice. So, where we were able to place that dice and take those two actions, as the boards start filling up, if you are blocked off from other dice, you're not able to take the other actions. or you might choose not to take a particular action because you're either not able to perform it or it doesn't have a benefit for you. So, you're not always necessarily taking two actions, but at the beginning of each round, you're going to have a lot more choices over which actions you want to activate.
Whereas, as you start getting toward the end of the round, you're going to have less options because there are more dice placed out. So, now I'm going to go over the process of how you're going to make the cheese. And I'm just going to go through that with the different actions. a little bit quickly, but I think you'll understand because a lot of it is intuitive. And then I'll go over the other actions players are going to do that are going to be improving things around the board. So, taking a look over here, you already saw how we would gain milk and you saw how we would pasteurize it. So, for the sake of the example, I am going to leave one up here just so you can see how that would work. Now, you do have this renet here, and we started off with some because players do start off with tiles at the beginning of the game that give you a few resources. So, we did already start off with this where we didn't need anything. But in the future, if we wanted to be able to turn this into cheese, the first step would be this pressing here. So, that's going to be this action over here. And depending on the strength of the action, you're able to place that many cubes over into your cheese area. So where we if we want to try to do all of this milk, which would be four for us, we would want a strength four or higher placed facing this action. So if that were to happen, we would spend all of this because we would need four. And then these would move over to these respective areas. So these two boxes are fresh cheese. And some orders are going to require that. And you even get
victory points at the end of the game for having cheese here in your player board, even if you weren't able to submit it for certain orders. But you're going to have the two different areas as well where you have pasteurized and non-pasteurized. Now, once cheese does hit this area, you'll need to then process it into other types of cheese. So, you start off with fresh and then you have soft and then hard and then artisan. So you're going to be doing that with this action here where you're going to use this to first move it along these first two boxes. So to get any cheese over to here, you would have to take this action twice. But when you do move those over, again, you're going to do it determining determined by the strength of the die that is facing that action. So if we did want to move all four of these cubes, we would need a four facing this action.
And whenever you do so, you're going to create one trash because making this type of cheese just makes more trash. So to represent that, when you move them over, you'll just take a cube and place it over here into your trash. And these cubes are going to be worth neg3 points at the end of the game. But there are ways to take out the trash. So that will always happen as a result. But for example, even if we had a strength six action here and we had enough cheese that we were able to process, we would still only gain one trash for that action. So that is how you're going to move these along. And then finally, when you do have cheese in this area here, you able to spice it instead. So that's going to be a different action where you're going to have spice in your player board here. And then when you use this action, which is going to be right over here, that's how you're going to be able to spend these two for example, and move two of them over to here. And again, if where that was only two, you would only need a two or higher facing this action to activate it. So you may have had something pretty strong over here where you're drawing orders. And then you might do something which is just a two to perhaps spice that different cheese. Now, getting cheese at this farm matured is pretty difficult and will take you a bit of time, but it's also very rewarding because the different orders that require more refined cheese is going to also give you better rewards at the end of the game.
Now, one thing to note when you're seeing these purple dice placed here, that is something that is specifically for a two-player game to represent blocking off certain areas and showing interest in those particular actions. But depending on the number of players, you'll have a different setup with that. Now, that is the process of how players are going to be choosing to pasteurize their milk or not and then turning it into the different types of cheese, but you're also going to have overseers as well as assistants, and they are hard at work as well. So, you do have your overseers with their own board and they're going to move at the end of each round, but they're also going to have bonuses where some of them are immediate, for example, gaining five money, but more often they're going to provide a bonus for you if you do a specific thing. So, sometimes it's taking a particular action. For example, in the Zeppelin, you'll gain extra spice or sometimes it's when you draft a particular type of dye. So, if you take the money die, you'll gain even more money. So that is going to be this board over here where at the end of the round there's going to be three dice left over and players are going to draft those as well to determine how far they move around this thing here. So that's going to provide bonuses for players. But their assistants are going to be the mice that are in this board here and they're going to be able to work in two different places. So, they are able to work on this assistant board here, and you're able to either be placed on the inner track or the outer track where
when you activate this action here, you're going to be able to run them around the tracks. So, if I did have one over here, and for example, if I had a die action of four, I would be able to go one, two, three, four, and collect the milk that I went across along the way. And in the same sense, there is Renet here in the middle. But as you may have noticed, there are these actions here as well. So when you do summon these different assistants, you have to be able to pay for them, which is shown here on the player board. And they get more expensive the more that you're trying to hire at once. But if you do have two working here on this board, if they do ever align, you're able to trigger the action in the middle as well. So, for example, this one is clearing out your trash where you would be able to take out the trash. Now, that's how players are going to be activating these center actions. And then there's also an action here that's going to allow players to spin the disc inside. So, you're going to be able to line it up in different ways because the actions that are triggered are all going to be based on the multiplier here. So, for example, for the trash, you would need a multiplier of four to be able to remove four from your trash. So that's going to incentivize play incentivize players to not only spin the gear on here, but then move their assistance around the board as well. But assistants can also work up here in the zeppelin.
And when they do work in the zeppelin, when you activate them, you're either going to activate the top row or the bottom row. So you are going to be activating different rows at different times. And when you do so over there, they're going to start over here at the end and then move along the track. So you are going to gain whatever happens on the spots that you cross along. For example, if I had a three strength action for this, then my assistant would go one, two, three, and I would have to pay one money, but I would also gain a victory point as well as a spice. So that's how you're going to be gaining both the benefits as well as the costs that are on that track. But similarly to the assistant wheel over here, once you have two of your assistants where they are in the same exact row or same exact column as each other, you're going to be able to activate the action within the center as a bonus as well. So these are going to be additional actions for players that are pretty strong or sometimes, for example, you can see here it is six points. So players are going to be incentivized to have their assistants working in pairs because you're going to gain these extra bonus actions when you're able to line them up together. But as I noted, they are pretty expensive for you to get all of them out. But players are also going to get victory points at the end of the game for however many they were able to summon, as you can see by this track here. Now, another thing that players are going to be able to do is place out new machines. So you saw how we would take them from the market board. But in
order to place them out, you would need to take an action like this. And the cost of placing it out is going to be reduced by the die that you use. So for example, if this five was placed here, the four would be pointing toward this area here, meaning that the player would have a discount of four for placing out their machine. Now, to do so, you're going to have to have your different marker marking that it's yours. So, in order to place it out, you're going to have to be able to afford unlocking that marker. So, for us to be able to place this out with this action, it does have the discount of four, meaning that it's going to cost us one coin to place this out. And we'll also have two victory points at the end of the game for having unlocked this marker. So, when we do that, you would choose whichever one you want to replace. For example, we may choose to replace this action here and place this in. And then we will have our marker here. Now players are rewarded for this ownership, not only with the points that they unlock from placing this out. But when other players now activate this, they're going to gain a resource of their choice. So they are going to gain a benefit. And that's perhaps a reason for other players not to use those actions. But as you can see, they are much better than the actions that start off on the board. So you are incentivized to choose them.
Now, another thing that players are going to be placing these out for are going to be these goals over here. So, as soon as a player accomplishes a particular goal, you're going to place out your token on that area, representing that you're going to gain that many victory points and other players can gain the victory points after that. So, for example, for the player in first place is going to gain 15. The next player would gain 10 and then eight and then five. So, taking a look here just at a few of them, you're going to have 40 money. So that's having 40 in your supply. This is going to have four of your assistants up in the zeppelin, meaning all four of them or for example, eight different cheese, which is all of the different cheese you are able to have. So as you can see, these are quite difficult, but they've rewarded a lot of victory points at the end of game for players. And for these, you are able to simply place them out.
So, where you do have to be able to pay them to place out the different machines for ownership, you are able to place these out as soon as you accomplish these different achievements. And you're also able to take your marker from these if you need to to place over here. Now, the final action that players are going to be taking, which is rarely used, but extremely important, is going to be fulfilling the different orders. So, when you complete the orders, you're going to take that action and you're able to do it at a specific strength, just like with any of the other actions, but players are incentivized to do it at a higher strength, even if you might not be fulfilling that many orders. So, even if you're, for example, fulfilling one or two orders because you have the cheese to spend it, depending on the strength of your action, you're going to gain these additional bonus tokens. So, these are going to have actions on them, and you're able to either spend them as an action for yourself in a one-time use, or you're able to attach them to the different cogs as well. So, when you do that, you're also able to even get two victory points if you attach it to another player's machine. So, players are incentivized to place these out because it is going to boost the different actions, but in a pinch, it could also give you yourself an action that you might need. So, if you do the complete orders action at a strength three, you'll gain one of these. And if you do it at a strength six, you'll gain two. So, even if you're not necessarily completing six orders, you might do it at a strength six because you might want these extra chips to see what you're
able to gain from that. Over the course of six rounds, players are going to draft their different dice to gain resources, activate the different actions to gain milk, pasteurize it, turn it into cheese, and then refine that cheese. But you're also going to keep an eye out for your assistants and what they're doing because you want to be sure that they are hard at work either within the zeppelin or the assistant wheel itself. Now, again, you are working toward set collection as well for the different orders that you are fulfilling. So, not only are you trying to make sure that you have the cheese that they want to meet their demands, but you're also trying to diversify the cards that you are gaining as well, so that you're able to gain points for that. So, with that, I'm going to go over endame scoring and everything that will be important to you at the end of the game. Now, any waste over here is going to be worth -3 points for each cube that is in there. And also any leftover milk that has not been converted into cheese at the end of the game is also going to be placed down here. So if you are getting milk toward the end, you want to be sure to at least turn it into the basic form of cheese before it becomes trash for you because that will be negative points. Now, you do get points for your different types of cheese as well where you can get one, two, three, or four for your leftover cheese on your board. And you're also going to gain victory points, as I said, for everything that you have unlocked.
So, if we had, for example, this currently here unlocked, we would gain eight points from this side and four points from this side. So, a total of 12 for the different tokens that we were able to place. Of course, you're going to add your current score to whatever you are adding everything else to. Players are also going to add any points that they have from the achievements that they've gained respective to the place that they came in. So, if you have 15 points, you'll gain that. If you have only eight for something, you'll gain that. Players are also going to gain one point for every five money that they have left over at the end of the game. And then finally, you are going to get those points, as I said, from the set collection. So, for the different tags that you have, right now, we only have two green and the three blue here. But if you see the ones in my hand, I have a set of three unique ones, which is the pink, the red, and the blue. So for a set of at least three different symbols, you'll gain six victory points. Four symbols would be 16 and five symbols is going to be 28 victory points. Now that is pretty difficult to do and it all depends on what comes out here in the market. But if you are able to collect a lot of different symbols for yourself in that set collection, that's going to be a lot of points for you at the end of the game. So, you are going to add all of those different things together and whoever has the most victory points at the end is going to be the winner. Steam and cheese is going to be a game where players are going to feel conflicted with the different dice that they are drafting because they are going to represent the resources that you are
gaining. So, you're going to want to take something that is a high face value on the top. Of course, you're going to want six milk, but you're also going to want your different actions to be strong as well. So, if you want to perform an action that is a six strength, perhaps you might draft a lower cost die because you want the six to be facing on the outside to activate specific actions. So, this game is really going to have you choosing between what resources you might want to gain, but then what other actions you're going to want to activate and how strong you want those actions to be. Because where a six is great for gaining resources, it's extremely great when you're using that for something like trying to process your cheese or refine it with a bunch of spice. Now, you are going to have your overseers, which do a little bit as they are moving around their overseer board, but your assistants are going to be working non-stop where they're going to be running around their assistant board as well as the zeppelin for you trying to not only gain the things that they can, but the bonuses when they're able to pair up as well. So, where you are going to be focused on your resources and your cheese and that core loop where you're trying to refine it and make it better, you are going to have these other things that you're trying to focus on as well that are going to be very rewarding.
Because the more things that you're able to interact with and place out on the board, it's all going to represent victory points for you at the end of the game, showing that you were either able to place out more of your assistance, you were able to place out more of the different buildings, or ultimately if you're able to get a lot of those achievements for yourself because they represent a lot of victory points at the end of the game. So, if you'd like to see exactly how this game plays, there will be a gameplay on the channel between Alex and I. So, you can be sure to check that out. You can find the link down below for everything that Skeleiga Games has planned. I've been Professor Mag. Thank you all for watching the Board Game Code channel and I'll see you next time.