Cabriole Preview - Craft Your Way to Furniture Fame

Today, Ryan and I have a preview for you from Merida Games. This is their next game, Cabriol. And this is, and I'm going to use the words of the designer himself. This is a cozy yet strategic game. And he told us when he was describing the game to us that it was cozy and strategic, which sometimes can be like, well, cozy seems light, strategic seems thinky.

How do you pull that off? And I have to say, I think this game does both of those things. >> Yeah. I mean, well, first of all, the theme is pretty cozy. like you're you're making furniture. And what we have here is >> what feels like a it's a resource collection style game, but it uses an interesting worker placement system that I think is what really drives the strategy.

But what you're basically trying to do across the course of the game is build sets of furniture. You want to build chests, you want to build tables, and you want to build chairs. You're going to do that by coming out to the main board here and taking actions that are going to collect resources that are going to level up the four different types of craftsmen that it takes to make furniture.

And you're going to actually collect like cards that later you're going to build. So it is fairly thematic in that. For example, I didn't know that the the carver, the joiner, the turner, the upholder, these are all different people that are involved in the making of furniture. >> Yes. When I look at the pictures, I understand.

Oh, yeah. Of course, those are the things. Uh, and upholstery, I've heard. I've never heard up her. Uh, but I does. >> Exactly. There you go. Uh, yeah. The cards that Ryan mentioned, they're kind of going to serve as recipes, if you will, or maybe blueprints because you're going to be collecting those.

You're never building the cards from out here. You're going to collect them, put them on one side of your board, and then during another phase, you're going to spend resources to actually make them. And interestingly enough, when you make them, and this is another one of the strategic things, is you're going to choose points or you're going to choose money.

Now, I will tell you this in round one, choose money. Uh, I think if you choose put it'd be an interesting approach. There's only six rounds, but when you build something, and particularly in the first round, you're usually going to be building one thing. >> Sure. Uh, because you can't build multiple things until you've leveled up your guys a little bit more.

But when you build that, I could take the points of the money. The money, of course, is going to be spent in the following round or rounds to do a lot of the actions you're going to be taking out here in the main area. >> Yeah, I think that's one of the major strategic decisions. And the other way is kind of how you're building out this playerboard.

Before we talk about the turns, I'll kind of talk about this so you understand. You can build more furniture per round based on how high you've leveled up each of these four craftsmen. If you're joiners at masterwork or your upholders at masterwork upholder, you can produce more types of furniture. Every type of furniture has a resource cost of resources you're going to spend, but then it has requirements.

Like this one requires at least an apprentice carver and an apprentice upholster, which is fine. I've got that. But since I've leveled up my joiner all the way to masterwork, he can contribute to four different cards. My upholder can contribute to up to two different cards. So there's a little bit of strategy here in how you're planning your turn because when it comes to taking cards, you're looking at your limits of like, okay, well my my limit, my lowest is a carvert apprentice.

So I could only make one card period that round that requires a carver unless I come over here and maybe level them up in anticipation. So, I would say there's definitely strategy both in the way that you're taking your actions on your turn and in your long-term goal of trying to maybe maximize some of these things.

They're all good at making different kinds of furniture, which I think is pretty thematic. Like, every chair requires an upholder because every chair is made out of fabric, right? So, you kind of see these things uh present throughout the entire game. >> Yeah. And it's interesting too cuz the strategy involved with those four categories of worker or craftsman starts from the very beginning of the game because you're only going to have two of the four to begin with.

So two of them will start as the apprentices >> and then the other two are off the board. So you need to effectively hire them instead of training them to even get them on the board. So from the from the very jump, if I'm not having a carver and I look out here, there's really no point in taking any of the Carver cards if I want to build them immediately.

However, again, strategically, you might want to take some Carver cards thinking, "Oh, that might be a card I do want to in the future build because the cards you take, they're going to sit to the left of your board." You don't have to build them. Now, you can only have up to six at any given time there, but you could effectively spend the first couple rounds collecting some stuff and then kind of pivot and focus on that.

I don't know that that's a winning strategy, but it is one you could take in terms of like just having that, then building up your guys, then spending some money. The thing is, you need to get that sort of money engine going where you're like, I'm going to sell something for some money, maybe sell this one for some points, use that money to get a little bit more to maybe build another thing.

You're not going to be building a ton of things in the game. >> No, not especially not at the start. And that's kind of the flow of the game. The way that it kind of ramps up at the start, like David said, you you get a random card that tells you your two starting craftsman. And then based on those two, you're going to get a different starting setup of money.

And that's all you've got. So, like David alluded to, your first chair in in the first round, it's possible to make two things. It's probably very likely you're probably going to make one thing in the first round. You're probably going to sell that for money. Now, you've got some income. Now on the next round, maybe you're going to make two cards and maybe you sell one of those for money and one for points.

Now you've got a whole stack of money. So by the third round, maybe you're making three pieces of furniture, right? So it's got this kind of scale where by the end of the game, which is six rounds, you might be able to make all six pieces of furniture and then, you know, get a bunch of points all the way in the sixth round.

how you kind of balance that money versus points is going to matter because I think there's a temptation to make this furniture, get a bunch of money, but if you do that and if you don't get incremental points along the way, it might be too hard to catch up by the time you get to that last round. >> Well, yeah.

And you're also kind of leaving it up to whatever cards come out. The longer you wait, the longer, you know, in rounds four, five, and six, you're like, well, the things that I really want to get those sets because you do want to try to get a variety of things. >> Yeah. has a table, a chair for every set of three of those.

>> Yeah, there's plenty of other ways to score points, but that is one of the things and you don't want to ignore any of those things. Another thing that we'd alluded to earlier about the strategy here, a lot of what we just discussed kind of speaks to some of the longer term strategy as you're selecting cards and the pacing, but the roundtoound strategy is going to take place with how the worker placement works.

We're going to have five workers here, and the first player is going to take one of their workers, and they're going to put in one of many different spaces. We've got a game set up here for two players. So, there's only three rows, but there could be fourth row. Uh, but I could set right here. That's the first spot for this row.

What that means is ultimately when we resolve all of the workers, which is done after all the workers are placed, this one's going to resolve first. I'm going to have first pick at this row. And then someone else could go here. Now, in a four-player game, all of those could be filled. The interesting thing here is as soon as Ryan goes, if he goes into another row, he's got the same situation there, but this offlimit token goes on the other row that's available.

So, as soon as basically all but one row has been selected by any player, this token goes out and no one can even place there for the rest of the round. Yeah, that's a big part of the strategy of the game is because cards that remain in the row every round, you'll see some coins on these cards. We're kind of have a game in progress.

That means those cards kind of sat out for a round. So, when you're declaring a row off limits like this, what you're saying is these cards are all going to get coins. Now, in a two-player game, it's really interesting because if David goes to one row, I can go to the other row. I'm declaring this off limits.

When the start player passes to me next round, I know exactly these are going to be here and I'll get first pick of those. Except after you resolve these, you're going to resolve this little extra projects here. And this is another spot you can go to, the first player to go there is going to get to take any two of the cards that were left behind after everyone drafts their cards.

You can even pick from the offlimits row if you're willing to spend a little bit of money. So, while this is a good way to kind of secure that these cards will be available for you for next round, if there's some really good cards out there, somebody might come up here and pay to buy them because we're not just looking at furniture out here.

If you see, here's one example. Sometimes cards out here will just give you a number of resources. Some of these cards out here will just give you money. Some of them will give you bumps on your different craftsman track without having to go to this section of the board. So, you can see some really good opportunities.

You're looking for cards that might complete your set. You're looking for cards that require what you have. And I'm not going to say that this is a mean game at all because it's like we said, it's pretty cozy. >> But there could definitely be an element of blocking here. If you see somebody just needs a chair and there's only one chair out there, you might be tempted to take the chair.

I don't >> for sure. While there's no direct interaction, there is definitely that interaction of a worker placement game where someone might go to a place and while it doesn't necessarily block you, it does give them a priority. So once all the workers have been placed, you're going to resolve all these sections.

And we'll talk about these sections now too. When you're resolving this section in player order according to this track here, you're going to place on any of these spaces. So, the first player could go up to this turner and either hire or train their turner for three. If someone else wants to train their turner and they place here at a later spot, they can go there, but now it's going to cost five.

So, imagine if you will in a higher player count game, this third person wants to do that, but players one and two do the turner. They can't do the turner now. they have to do one of the other uh craftsmen. >> And the resources kind of work the same way. You're going to see four spots in each resource to buy it.

And you're going to see four little like trade ratios, if you want to call it that. There's one that's like for walnut, you can buy one walnut for two coins, or you could buy two walnut for five, three for nine, or four for 14. If you have a lot of things that need walnut, and you're thinking, I've got a lot of money.

I'm just going to come over there and buy four. Well, if the player in front of you buys four, you cannot buy four. The best you're going to get is three. And if you're lower down in that line, you might only get one. So, you're seeing kind of maybe the strategy of like, oh, I really want that card.

Oh, I really want to get the cheap joiner. Oh, I really want to get the best walnut. Like, you're not going to get all of that. You're going to choose like, I really want first pick of this row. That's where my first worker placement's going to go. And then by the time it gets back around to you, especially in a four-player game, a lot of these other spots, you're not going to get first pick at a lot of things.

Yeah, it is interesting because not only are you battling in each individual area, but that idea of the different areas enters your mind significantly because remember, you've potentially got some furniture cards already to be built. So, you might be looking like, well, I need three walnut, >> so I don't want to mess around and not get my three walnut.

I'm going to go there early. But by doing that, like Ryan said, you're missing out on potentially your next piece of furniture that you really want to get built. Yeah, it's it's and that's where that strategy part comes in because the game, like we said, it has that pretty cozy feel and but this this can get pretty tense, especially in a two-player game, but there are some ways that they limit for two players.

We talked about how you can't use every spot in two players. There's one less row of cards in two players. And in fact, in a two-player game, you don't even use one of the resources. We don't even use oak in a two-player game. >> All the cards that require oak were taken out. They're all marked, so you don't add them into the deck.

So, we're just fighting over these three resources. So that kind of keeps that tension going even in a two-player game because it's like I I really want the walnut which is the cheapest one. But like you can go here twice if like David's really not paying attention. I could take two and then he's like ah I'm only going to get the third, you know, or whatever.

That's not even available in a two-player game. So you're just out of that resource. >> Well, Ryan done that to me in the last game we played up here. I was I didn't have a joiner and I had some cards that needed a joiner. So, I was like, well, I better get a joiner so I can work on these cards because I figured I had enough cards to potentially for the next two rounds just focus on getting these built instead of really focusing on getting more.

>> And I did mess around and he took the first two spots so I couldn't >> Oh, you know what? I wasn't even trying to block. I just I needed to get So, we talked about that because after you're done with all the actions, you're going to move into the production phase. And a lot of these chairs or tables or chests or whatever are going to require you to have leveled up these guys.

It might require a masterwork joiner. I had two cards that required upholders. If I had just had an apprentice upholder, I could only make one of them because an apprentice could only work on one piece of furniture at a time. A journeyman, however, can work on two. So, I was able to build two chairs in one turn because I did take that action twice.

I paid a lot of money for it, but I was able to get him up to that journeyman level, which is also effectively going to get you points at the end of the game. For every person that reaches journeyman or master, you're going to get some points at the end of the game as well. So, it does help you build, but it also kind of is building up towards your end game scoring.

>> Yeah, for sure. And the end game is going to come after you play six rounds effectively. So, after six rounds of, you know, building these furniture, selling them for either points or money, that's going to wrap things up. >> Yeah. And by the time you get to the sixth round, you're, like we said, you're having the like the biggest turn of the game, probably building everything you could build for points because money is not as valuable.

You're cashing it all in and then you're doing scoring. And like we talked about a little bit, there's a set collection element. For every chest, table, chairs, you're getting points. For every journ, and master, you're getting points. For every uh five coins you have left over, you're getting points.

But here is the other crux of the game. For every project that you did not complete, you're going to lose five points. Yeah. So, if you're just out here, because like we said, these are getting money. All the ones that didn't get picked are getting money. You might have seen this in other games. You're tempted to just take a bunch of those and take all the money.

Yeah. But if you end up with six here, you better be ready to build them on that last round. >> Yeah, that is an interesting point because I think a lot of a lot of players naturally are just going to go, I want cards. I want cards. But yeah, at a certain point, like I said towards the end of the game, I was like, I've got my cards.

>> I'm just going to focus on these and hopefully try to get them done. But yeah, that is Cabriole. If you have any questions about it, this is truly cozy yet strategic. I would say it's a great way if you're a Euro player and you've got people in your family or friends circles that like aren't into euros.

Sure. This is definitely their first step potentially to get this on the table and get them to play something that's a little more euroy. >> Yeah. A little like there's that resource management, the worker placement, the the like there's there's a lotion. There's a lot of tension. Yeah. >> If you have any questions about it, please make them in the comments below.

We'll get down there and answer whatever we can. Until next time, make sure everyone has fun at the table and we'll see you then.