Steam & Cheese ►►► Most innovative dice ever?

0:00 Hey everybody. Today on Roto Runs, we're proving a prototype of steam and cheese. But before I get going, please turn your subtitles on to the cling on channel so that when I make rules goose, you'll know what they are. Then if you've done that, well then welcome to the world of steam and cheese, an industrial era steampunk place full of the most adorable little mice you have ever seen. They have built a mighty society driven by steam in the pursuit of cheese. And I'm going to show you how it works today in a two-player run through, which means it's going to be me, the green player, up against Jen, the blue player over here. And as part of setup, there was a whole bunch of stuff that got put out here. This is a worker placement game where there are three different worker placement boards, these cogs. And in each of the boards, there are going to be four different actions available. So, the 12 actions of the game get randomly scattered out amongst these. We've got a bunch of contracts waiting to be grabbed and fulfilled for cheese. We've got upgrades. Uh these are machines that give us access to the basic actions, but we can get better versions of those actions and override the basic ones. So, these are random. Those are random. The location of stuff is random. Um we have five random um objectives that we're chasing after like uh busy little mouse and milk dealer. 15 points for the first player to get any of these done. These are chosen for a wide variety. And the

1:31 last thing that happens as part of setup is each player gets their own little unique bonus. Uh starting with the last player, they draft one of these various tiles, keep it for themselves, hand the next one around. So, in this case, Jen decided to start with five bucks and a random bonus tile, and she pulled this one out of the big stack over there. And then that left me the remaining ones. And I chose to start with some actual milk because that's what we're here to do. Which one was mine? This one started with five bucks and some milk. Uh, which I will very shortly turn to cheese. All righty. And so, we are ready to go. How does it work? Well, like I said, this is a worker placement game. and dice are the workers. We're going to be playing through six years of development, six rounds. And each one of these years, each player is going to place three of these dice out here to get stuff done.

2:25 Oh, and I should say, by the way, because we're playing a two-player game, there are some extra purple dice that block a random space on each board, making it tougher to get to some of the actions. So, in this game, it's going to be a little bit trickier to get to upper zeppelin actions and spice and oh, lower zeppelin and cleanup and contract acquiring and contract fulfilling. These are the ones that are a little bit more blocked by these neutral dice. Anyway, let's roll them bones and uh get to work. Okay, now I am the first player. And so what I'm going to do on my turn is I'm going to pick any one of these six dice and put them in any of the nine remaining um worker placement spots that are available because like I said, one of them is blocked by these neutral dice that never move. There's another thing I can do with the die I take. I can put it over here instead on my own board.

3:18 Because if there's an action I desperately want to do, but it I've been cut off from it, I can do any of the 12 actions of the game by putting a die right there. But you can see I can only do that once per year. So, which die am I going to take? Well, you'll notice there are three colors. And these are multi-use dice in the best possible way. First of all, the color of dye I take plus its number indicates how many resources I'll get. If I take a white dye, I get more milk. If I take a brown dye, I get renet, which is the stuff you need to turn milk into cheese. And if I take a yellow dye, I get money. And money is a very important resource, as you might imagine. So, what do I not take a white dye because I took the bonus start that gave me some milk right out of the gate. Um, so I think I'm either going to take some more cash to join the five I've already got or I'll take some Renit because once I've got Renet, I can use it to turn this milk into cheese. That's kind of the name of the game. So, uh, interestingly, well, the best yellow and the best brown dye are both five. So, I can get five bucks or five renit. If one of these are a six, I'd let that be my choice because these are both uh good starts.

4:35 But, um, you know, it's interesting. It's 531 for both of them. You know what? I'll go on ahead and take some cash money first. So, first of all, there are several steps for taking this die. I take that. That gives me five more bucks instead of five rendered or or six milk if I taken that. Now, I am going to place it into one of these zones. And if I'm smart about where I place it, I will get to do two of the 12 actions um that are on all these outer spaces. Uh, if I don't like any of the ones that are up there, I can instead send this over here and that would let me do any of the 12 actions, but I'd only get to do one action this turn. Whereas, if I come up here, I can do two. And now that I've got a lot of cash that I can invest of all the places I'm going to go, I think I like this or I need to think about what actions do I want to do, right? So, one of the things that's very very nice would be to rush right out and get some contracts because this is one of the main ways we score points in this game. If I have this contract and I produce three raw milk and five p um cheese and five pasteurized cheese, that's 18 points and five bucks. I wouldn't mind having this as a goal. The cheese in and of itself is not worth anything. Well, actually, that's not true. leftover cheese at the end of the game is worth leftover everything is worth, you know, some points. But the big points is making the cheese and then selling it to all these cheese lovers out there. Um, so if I want to grab one of those, that is this

6:06 action right here. This is the action that lets me get contracts and machine upgrades. And so if I want to do this action, I have to put this die either right here or right here. And why is that? This is the brilliant uh part of this game. Remember how I was saying when I put a die out, if I'm smart, I'll get to do two actions. Let's say I put the die right here like this. All right, I've already gotten my five money. Now, I'm going to get to do two of these four actions. Um because from this die, I can see this one, this one, this one, and this one. If I put it right here, I'd only have access to three. This dye can see that action, that action and that action. But this die cannot see. It doesn't have access because dyes creates walls rather. If I put it right here, this die would have access to this, this, and this. But not this because again that die is blocking the way. So if I put it right here, this die has access to all four actions in all four directions. But there's another trick too. The strength of the action is determined by this die. It's not that I'll do a level. If say if I come here and I choose to do these two actions because I can reach both of them. It's not that I'll do a level five and a level five. Oh no, no, I will do a level three action right here and a level one action right there because I've used the die. But you can see on the sides of the die, I've got a one, a three, a six, and

7:38 a four. And so what I want to do is I want to put this someplace that lets me do a level four action and a level six action. And so I get to do more stuff. [snorts] So what do I want to do? Well, you know what makes a lot of sense. It's it's totally random how these actions came out. This action and this action combo very nicely together. Actually, it's fascinating. This action and this action combo well together. This is the action that lets you get contracts and machine upgrades. This is the action that lets you fulfill the contracts. This is the action that lets you build the machine upgrades. If this had been way over here, let's say, then first I'd have to send a die to get the machine upgrades. Then I'd have to send a die over here to do the upgrades, but totally randomly. These three are all interlin. This combines with that. That combines with that. So I think I want to do both of these actions. I want to get a contract and a machine upgrade. And I want to build that machine upgrade. I think I think I think I think. So how am I going to do that? Well, if I come right here, if I come right here, that gives me access to both. Um, and it means coming here, that means if I come here, then nobody else this turn is going to be able to get access to the market because, hey, this space and this space can't see it anymore. If I come right here, which gives me access to all four, then Jen on her turn could come to this space and she could do the market as well. Although on the other hand, I'm leaving the space open so that I on a

9:08 future turn could come here and do another market. So if I come here, I have shut the market down. And since I'm coming here with a level six and a level four action, so I'm going to get to do a bunch of stuff. Although, here's the problem. Am I happy coming to the market with a level four action means I've only got four action points to spend on the market? I can't get as much as I want. It might make more sense for me to put the die like this because now I get to do a level six action in the marketplace, but I only get to do a level three build. Whereas, if I go like that, I get to do a level four action in the marketplace and a level six build. H. So, basically, having a stronger build action means I don't have to spend as much money. The bigger the number, the more of a discount I get for building.

9:59 Whereas, so I could get a $3 discount or a $6 discount by going like that or that. I think I'll take the $3 discount because remember, I just got a bunch of cash, right? I'm taking five bucks. So, I've got excess cash. So, I'm going to make this big juicy six give me more stuff that I can draft and less of a discount instead of less stuff for me to draft and more of a discount. All right, so I made my five bucks. I put my die out someplace and because well I have access to this action, this action, and this action, but I'm not going to do this action. It would only be a level one version of it. You can see and I don't want to do that anyway. I want to do this and this. And I can do these in either order. So, first of all, I'm going to go to the market with my six action points. So, that means I can spend my action points to get any combination of contracts and machines that I can afford. Now, what does it mean to afford? Remember, I've got six points to spend. Well, that's where these little multipliers come in. The stuff over to the right is cheaper than the stuff on the left. Like this machine has a base value of two times three means if I wanted to grab this machine upgrade, which is a better version of the Zeppelin than normal because it's a plus one zeppelin action.

11:15 Well, that would take all six of my points. 3* 2 is six. I that this would be all I could grab and I wouldn't be able to get any contracts. And I do want to get at least one machine and at least one contract so that I'm giving myself a a goal to chase after. And I'm giving myself a machine to upgrade because I'm going to install that upgrade right away on this, you know, with this action right there. So, um, so it means I want a relatively cheap machine. This one would cost two times one. So, this is a $2 machine, a $4 machine, a six, a six, and a six. So, those are all a bit too rich for my blood. So, do I want to get this machine, which is four, or this one, which is two? This one gives me a choice. Anybody who activates machine can either spice their cheese, making it more valuable, or clean up their workshop, getting rid of negative points. These are both nice. This one is um it says, "Hey, this is an opportunity to build machines or activate the zeppelin over there." And see, these are not implicitly better. It just means like right now if I were to get this and I were to install someplace, you can see here's a place where I can do cheese.

12:27 Maybe I replace this machine with this machine. Now it means we have more flexibility. Everybody has more flexibility. You have flexibility to spice your cheese or clean up. If you wanted to clean up, which is where over here, but it was closed off and you couldn't reach it. Well, you could come here or here to clean up. So me building this gives everybody more worker placement options. And the nice thing is when I build it, I will mark it as mine with one of these markers. And if any other player uses it, I get a nice little bonus. So I want to build something and then either use it myself or hopefully other players will use it so that I can get more passive income out of it.

13:09 [snorts]

13:10 So anyway, I am looking at which of these, you know, I think I am going to go for the cheapest one because this is only going to cost me two of my six action points. Remember, I had six action points. And then that means I've got well actually here, I could just buy both of these. This would be two. This would be four. But I want to get a contract or two as well. So I'll take this. That's two of my four contracts. And now I'll have to build it later, but we'll come back to that in a bit. And now I I look at these contracts. And again they are more expensive. Now all these contracts have a base value of one. Um so this is one times one. This cost me one action. This cost me two two three and three. Remember I have four more action points left. So I could get this and this and one of these um with with my four remaining action points.

13:59 And I did like this one. The one I was looking at. This needs ultimately I need to have eight cheese. Um four uh three of it is raw. And you can tell it's raw because it's got that little milk symbol on it. And you can see that over here. Here's where I store all my cheese. This is raw cheese. This is pasteurized cheese. And so this is saying, "Oh, I basically want the the lowle, you know, it's what's called a soft cheese. Three soft raw cheese plus five hard um pasteurized cheese. So that means I would have to have three cheese here and five cheese in this spot. And if I have all eight of those cheese, I can complete this to get 18 points and five bucks. So that's a nice goal. I, you know, I do like this one. I'm going to take this. And so this costs me um of my four remaining points, two. And I'll keep that. And so I've got two more to spend, right? Yes. So uh All right.

15:02 All right. Why was I saying I could get I didn't have enough. So that's two plus one. That'd be three. So basically, I do not have I only have two more action points to spend. I misspoke earlier. Paulo pointed that out on the clown subtitles. I can't afford these. So I can get this one or this one. So which of those do I want? And I'm going to waste a little bit of action points if I take this. Uh let's see. This one is have four um uh what do you call it? hard cheeses that are again raw and it'll give me three points and five. And so this isn't as good as, you know, ones down here because um raw cheese is generally speaking less valuable because you don't have to process as much. You don't have to pasteurize it before you turn your milk into cheese. So you generally don't get as big a payday out of these. So if I go for this one instead, well, this is an interesting one. This says, "Hey, have um five, you know, hard cheeses over here." And I forget the the exact terms. Right. Right. Right. I'm sorry.

16:05 These are fresh. These are soft. These are hard. And these are refined. So, this is saying I need a hard cheese, five of them to get 15 points. And they'd have to be pasteurized because again, they don't have uh that little one. 15 points and nine bucks plus. Now, here's the big deal. um I to complete this I have to have all that but while I'm delivering that five hard pasteurized cheese if at that moment I happen to have um four raw soft cheeses I can deliver this as well. So instead of 15 points I'll get 18 points and instead of nine bucks I'll get 15 bucks 9 plus six. So this is a double level and um so it gives me more flexibility.

16:52 So, that's good. I I kind of like this one, but there's a downside to it, too. You will notice, um, here's the one I'm already taking, and here's this other one. They have the same little picture on it. Um, and it also represents the color in the background, this kind of reish orange background. There's a set collection element. In this game, you want to deliver to different customers. If you keep delivering to the same customer, you're going to get fewer points at the end of the game. So, I'm delivering to the same customer by doing this, or at least the same clientele, I guess, because clearly these are different mice. But if I deliver to the same faction, the same country, whatever you want to call it, then I won't get as many points. Set collection is try to get as much variety as possible. So, I already know I'm taking this one to get the big payday, but it's an orange, so I don't necessarily want another orange one. this one. It won't pay out as well, but it'll be easier to do. And it's purple, so the more variety I have at the end of the game, the bigger the points. If I recall correctly, there are five different colors. And if I can get a set of all five of them, it's huge.

18:01 It's like, was it like 30 points or something like that? 28. 28 points. Uh, folks, my prototype doesn't have a player aid yet. That kind of stuff would normally be on a player aid, but anyway. [snorts] So, getting variety, even if it's not as good a payday, makes sense. So remember, at the end of the day, I chose this die that gave me five bucks. I placed it here. That gave me six points worth of drafting potential. And of those six, I spent one, two, three, four, five, six to get two contracts and a machine. Now I am half done with my turn because I've done this action. Now I get to do either a level three build and I've got something to build or a level one adjust the assistant wheel.

18:47 And I am not going to do this because it doesn't make any sense to do it unless I've got some assistance out here on the wheel. Since I haven't deployed any assistance, I'm definitely not going to do that. I am going to do um this action which says, "Hey, build a building." And because of the number three, I get a $3 discount. This is such a cool worker placement thing. I'm skipping ahead to the final thoughts. I love this idea that you the top of the die matters, the sides of the die matters, and in some cases the bottom matters as well. In this turn, it doesn't matter to me, but it sometimes you might get a die because you don't care what's on the top, you care what's on the bottom. Anyway, we'll worry about that later. So, I'm going to build and I'm going to get a $3 discount. So, here's the way that works.

19:32 Um, to build a machine, I have to take one of my little ownership markers so I can mark it as mine. And the first time I do that, it's going to cost me five bucks. Easy come, easy go. I made five bucks for grabbing the die. I'm going to spend it to build this machine and mark it as my own. And now that I've done that, you can see if the game ended right now, I'll have two points for that machine. If say I build three machines, which gets expensive fast, five and then 10 more and then 15 to build my third. So that's like 30 bucks I've spent to build three machines. But the points I'll have will be two plus two plus four. So that'll be eight points at the end of the game. And I'll have three machines out there that are hopefully earning me income when other players visit it. Anyway though, I now have to I've paid my money. I've got to install this in any of the 12 tokens overriding the beginning level oneers with a level twoer. And now there's a few things I want to bear in mind. Now, I might be building this and I don't care about cleanup. I I haven't made a mess yet. I don't care about spices. I certainly do not have any contracts that want me to deliver spice. Uh so maybe I don't care about that. So, I should put it someplace where my wife Jen might go to it because if she goes to this, then I get income. So, again, I could put it anywhere. And here's another thing I could think about. If there's an action, like say if I put this here and like, yay, I've got that, but I don't want Jen to be able to come here and do some um

21:04 shopping in the market as well. I could I could overbuild this and all of a sudden, oh no, there too bad. Even if you wanted to come here, there are no opportunities to go to the market anymore. I have replaced the one public worker placement spot for going to the market with a dual use spicy cheese or um clean up your trash action and that will affect everybody um because now we have to find a different way to go to the market and I was the only person to go there. So, you know, this game players are constantly um you know, triggering actions that are intertwined with and creating opportunities or denying opportunities to other players all the time. We are very interlocked in this game. So, I've got to decide where am I going to put this? Either to put it in an ideal spot if I want to use it a lot, an ideal spot where Jen wants to use it a lot, or maybe I just want to get rid of an action that I don't want Jen to have access to or anybody else because um you know, like if there was an action like the uh where is it? the um the p this is the pasteurize action.

22:06 Say I just pasteurized a bunch of stuff and I've got tons of pasteurized. I look around and other players have a lot of contracts for pasteurized cheese. Oh, I could destroy that. And too bad, so sad. This is my building now. Nobody's pasturizing anymore. Now, there is always a way you can do an action, even if it's not out here on the board. That's what this space is for. This space lets you do any action you want. But the problem with the space on ours is, hey, I can do any of the 12 actions, even if it's been removed from the board, but my turn will only be doing one action. Whereas, if you come out here and put your dice smartly, you get to do two actions. So, it's painful to come here. But sometimes you might have to. So, I mean, you know, that's not if if if I feel like I've got contracts to work on for a while. I don't have to focus on contracts. Maybe I do that.

22:53 Maybe I just say, "Yep, you know what? No contracts for Jen. No. Um, grabbing extra buildings for Jen. Um, you know, this would be particularly meaningful if there was an objective out here to be the first to build four buildings. One of the objectives we might have had is, hey, be the first to build four buildings and get 15 points. Well, I can ensure that nobody's building buildings now because the the space is gone, right? Unless they're willing to use their own home space. So, I could do that. That's kind of a dick move. Now, the simplest thing is the the friendly thing is, hey, you know what? Hey, let's just upgrade this spot that normally Oh, by the way, this die should not be there. That was an example I was doing. Let's just uh put this here and say, "Oh, this used to be a garbage. Now it's a garbage uh spicing." There are two places we could go to spice our cheese.

23:39 Or I could go the other way. There are two places. I mean, I I haven't removed anything, but I've now got two places where you could clean up your mess, which by the way, you do want to clean up your mess because every spoiled bit of milk you've got is -3 points at the end of the game. So, if stuff spoils and goes down here, and believe me, it will spoil, you're going to want to be able to clean it up. And so, I've just made it easier for the stuff to clean up, and I haven't taken anything away. So, anyway, that's just me trying to on my first turn here. A lot goes into deciding where am I going to put that thing. And you know what? I think I'm going to do it. We say goodbye to the only way to go to the uh contract and machine market. It has been removed from the game. It is not coming back. And um if if anybody but me triggers this action, I'll get a little bit reward.

24:33 Here's the thing. I don't think Jen is going to be going to this action anytime soon because spicing cheese is a ways off in the future. cleaning up messes ways off in the future. So, and I'm not going to be using it. Um, but by me putting it there, I've pretty much gotten the monopoly on contracts. Jen will have to make a less than optimal move to get contracts of her own, at least until such a time as a new machine comes out that, you know, could replace an existing one so the contracts come back up here on the board. Right. Anyway, so uh that was it. I took a die, got the stuff, and then um did a couple of, you know, actually I guess I could have put this here. Um but no, no, no. I mean, well, it's going to be a while before I fulfill those contracts. So, I'll just leave it there.

25:20 All right. So, I I did a couple of actions. I closed off some stuff. Uh this thing is worth two points to me. And um right, so that was it. Now, there could be some more stuff I could do. If I owned any bonus tiles, I'd get to use one per turn. Jen has a bonus tile because she chose one as part of starting setup. Um, and you can get more of them. I don't have any of those. If I had, let's see, there aren't any out right now, but sometimes contracts once you complete them like this one. If I complete this to get 24 points and um you know, 16 bucks uh by getting nine hard cheeses, nine hard pasteurized cheeses, I get all that and then at some point in the future, if I ever need to, this is the little bon action I can do on my turn. This is, hey, as a bonus action on my turn, I can complete a uh this is complete a contract. even if like complete the contract was cut off anyway. Um so if I had any bonus actions off completed contracts, I could do those. I don't have any of those. So my turn is over. And at the end of my turn, all this remaining contract stuff slides over. So the remaining stuff gets cheaper. And now you might say, "Boy, this is kind of obnoxious that you can't just slide them. You have to pick them up and move them." Folks, this is a prototype. You might not know it because it's a gorgeous prototype, but it is a prototype. And the developers realize that, hey, for their special fancy deluxe version of the game, you will be able to slide the cards over and slide

26:52 these over. You don't have to like manually move them over. So, let's see what new machine came out. Oh, this is a very nice one. A level three that combines. Hey, if you come here, you get to spice cheese and you get to work your assistants on the assistant wheel and get bonus actions out of them. But this right now would cost a total of nine actions, which is not something you can do pretty readily since u dice can only give you six. Although there are ways around that anyway though. So that's it. My first turn is over. I'm still going to take two more dice ultimately before the end of this first year. But it is now Jen's first turn. And if Jen wanted money, well, she could get three bucks. But oh no, I'm sorry. Before we go on to Jen, there's one more thing. It's easy to forget and it's very important. At the end of every player's turn, any milk they have on hand in their factory starts to go bad. All your milk in all of these little depots moves one over to the right. If you had any milk in this depot right here and you hadn't used it yet, it will spoil and go bad. Um, at which point, hey, this is negative six points at the end of the game. So, the four milk I started with, because I chose to start with some extra milk, it is in danger of going bad. I've got two more turns before I lose it. So, I've got to turn that stuff into cheese or at least pasteurize because if I pasteurize it, it'll move down here so it's kind of fresh again and it can start moving over. But eventually, I got to get this over into Cheeseville. But worry about that later. It is now Jen's turn. So,

28:24 Jen could get some cash. [snorts] She But you know, really the best thing she could do is is take this six. This is the biggest number. This will get her six milk. She has no milk. So, I think that's what she's gonna do because without milk, we can't make cheese. And you know what? Cheese is kind of in the name of the game. So, Jen will get six milk. Bloop. Look at all that milk she's got. All right. Full up. And now she's going to put this dice somewhere and do a level two plus a level four or a level four plus a level five action or a level two plus a level three or whatever depending on how she rotates it. And I'll tell you one thing Jen's not going to do. She's not going to go out and get any contracts. Now, she could, but if Jen wanted to go out and get contracts, she wouldn't take this highv value die. She might take a low value die. Maybe this one. Because this one says, "Hey, you only get two milk." Why would she do that? Because if Jen is going to use her, hey, I can do any action I want, even if it's been removed by one of my jerk fellow teammates or my my opponents. You can do any of the actions here. And the strength of the action is based on um let's see zoom on my board. It's based on the bottom value of the die. So if you put a two here, you're doing a level five of any action you want. You're getting less resources, but you're getting to do a stronger action. So anyway, Jen's not going to do that. Um she's going to she's going to, you know, sooner or later she'll get some contracts. It's going to take a while.

29:49 She needs to make cheese first anyway. So Jen is going to go out and do something else. Plus, in addition to all the normal stuff Jen can do, Jen has this bonus tile. She can use one bonus tile per turn, and these are very valuable to get. There are two things Jen can do with it. Jen can just discard this to activate it right now, which means you would use it based on the strength of the bottom of your die. So, Jen would do a level one version of this, or Jen could instead install it on any action she wants. Like if Jen were about to do a Zeppelin action and she puts this here and then she comes here to do a Zeppelin action, not only will she get the Zeppelin action, she'll get to do this. And every player from now on who goes here will get to do this bonus action. And because you know if Jen is greedy and keeps this for herself and just uses it and then throws it away, she will um she'll get the action.

30:45 Nobody else can get it. But if she puts this out here on the board so it's available to everybody as a reward, Jen will get a victory point for upgrading our existing manufacturing process. Now, here's the special thing. If she upgrades the uh machine of an opponent, and this is my machine, if she were to put this here, because she's upgrading my machine, she would get two points. And then anytime anybody activates this machine, they get to do this. And Jen says, "You know what? If you'd put a good machine here, I probably would have upgraded your machine. um I would have gotten some points and then we'd both want to use the machine and but nope I kind of you know well again I could have gotten a machine that would have been more useful but that meant I would have gotten less contracts. I got a machine I didn't really care about. So I found a way to use it which maybe wasn't the most friendly way. So anyway, Jen's got to decide this turn is she going to use this or not? And if she is, is it going to be a greedy once and done or is she going to install it someplace? Probably someplace that she wants to send this die because then she'll get to use it anyway. But everybody can use it. So what is Jen going to do? Well, me, my milk is starting to go bad. So Jen's will be too. Jen does not want to mess around with her milk going bad. So what could she do? Well, for starters, she could, if she wants to, come over here to the pasteurization machine because that means she could turn this milk from raw milk into pasteurized milk, which means she makes um pasteurized cheese instead of raw cheese. And now to decide

32:17 whether she wants to do that, she needs to look at what contracts are available. Not that she has access to them because somebody cut them off. But so like this one wants a mix of raw and pasteurized. This wants this is a mix as well. This one is mostly raw a little bit. This one is only raw. And this one is only pasteurized. So um right. So Jen could be thinking about that. But here's another thing, too. It makes more sense for Jen maybe not to rush right out and pasteurize right away. Um because remember these are going to if she does it right now, they'll just keep aging. If she waits and then waits and does other things and then eventually pasteurizes them, she gets more time before the milk spoils. So that's like a little timing miniame because you can't move it from milk to cheese until you've got renet. And Jen doesn't have any renet. So while she could pasteurize it right now, and let's see what she do. She'd probably point the fiverr, right? because then she'd get to pasteurize five of this of this six milk. Or maybe not. Maybe she'd do four and she'd keep two raw and four pasteurized because she's looking at something that needs a mix of raw and pasteurized, right? There's a lot to consider there. But that's if she was going to pasteurize right now. She doesn't have to. There are a bunch of other things she could do. So, let's actually talk about what all the other So far, I've only shown you two of the 12 actions. I've talked about a few more. Let's uh let's uh do a quick headcount. We uh we know what this is building. This is cleaning, which if stuff goes bad, you can clean it out.

33:47 This is spicing. It's like the last step in making super gourmet cheese. Um which basically means moving your cheese from here over to the super spicy stuff, which again, right now there are no um spicy uh contracts for cheese out there. We'll worry about that later. So, uh that's what that is. Um, let's move on to this one over here. This would be an interesting one for Jen to do. This says she could take one of her assistants. She'll have to pay them. She has four. The first assistant she pays costs five bucks. Again, you can see it right here. The first assistant you hire costs five. The second one you hire costs 10 and then 15 and then 25. They get more and more expensive. But if you've got them working for you, this is cumulative. If you have all four um assistants out doing stuff for you by the end of the game, you have 12 13 14 50 that is 16 points for the what is it? 30 um you know five what is that? That's that's 30 40 50 for the 55 bucks you'd spend.

34:51 You'd get 16 points plus these little assistants would be doing stuff for you. There's two places your assistants can go. They can either go to the assistant wheel or they can go to the zeppelin. This is interesting. If Jen had a ton of money, she could come right here and say, "Oh, I'll send an assistant to the Zeppelin and to the wheel." But that would cost her 15 bucks for her first and second uh assistant. She only has five bucks right now. So, if she were to uh send an assistant out, what would that do for her? Well, let's look at the wheel. The assistant wheel is a way that you can collect more and more milk if you send them to the outer wheel or you can collect more and more renet if you send them to the inner wheel. Now, normally you get milk and renet by drafting white or brown dice. But this is a way to get more and you know every time you activate you can get more and more out of them. So that's if Jen were to send an assistant over to the wheel.

35:54 If Jen sends an assistant over to the zeppelin, well, first of all, it matters if you're walking along the top or the bottom row of the zeppelin. There are different actions for those. This is walk along the top. This is walk along the bottom. But either way, what you're mostly going to do is get points and spices. You need spices to make the super spicy um you know, the the the refined cheese, I think it's called. And you know what? I misspoke earlier, folks. Another thing to bear in mind with this with his uh what do you call it? Um prototype the um contract cards are smaller. The the the publisher is planning on making the contracts bigger sized um so that the icons aren't quite so small. Uh they know it's it's kind of hard to read them from a distance, but if you look close, you can see this contract requires five. Um yeah, this is all spiced cheese. five raw spiced cheese and four um pasteurized spiced cheese. It's worth 21 points and 36 bucks. That is freaking huge.

37:05 I mean th you know this could be you know almost a quarter of your score uh you know depending on how things go off of this one contract. Plus, [snorts] if you deliver all nine of this spice cheese successfully, you could then on top of that deliver some hard um passion raw cheese to get an additional nine points, an additional four. So, I mean, this could be something you are working towards for half the game to get all this cheese into position to get this huge payday. Oh, and by the way, if you're working on that along the way, you might complete the objective that says have a whole bunch of cheese. Um, right. The objectives we have right now are have a lot of milk on hand, have a lot of completed contracts, have a lot of money on hand, have a lot of bonuses on hand, which means maybe Jen doesn't want to use that bonus. Maybe she wants to hold on to it a bit until she's got five bonuses in hand, scores 15 points, and then starts spreading them around in this game because we can be busy little mice. This other one's a really interesting one. Never quite seen one like this before. I like it a lot. Um, the player who scores this is the first player who is 15 points behind everybody else. The last shall be first. If you fall way behind on points, then boom, you'll get 15 points. And then somebody else would have to do it to get 10 points and whatnot. This is a really funky one that actively in incentivizes and encourages, hey, don't go for points quick. Go for the long game. But if everybody's doing it, I mean, who's going to be the first person to jump ahead 15 points so that another player

38:36 can score this? Anyway though, so we've got those objectives. So Jen doesn't have to think about that. Maybe she doesn't want to use this right now. Maybe she wants to set herself up to get more bonuses sooner than later so she could be chasing after this and only then start laying them out. I didn't think about that. But how do you get more bonus tiles? Well, besides getting this freebie starter one, the main way you get bonus tiles is by completing contracts. And somebody cut off Jen's ability to even get contracts so she could complete them. The way that works is if you activate the complete contract action, and it's really kind of surprising, there's no reference to it. You'd expect it to kind of say, "Hey, don't forget the bonuses." Um, when you complete contracts, if you used at least a level three die to activate this action, you get one um of the bonus tiles. If you used a level six die, you get two. Um, although it's interesting, you could do this action, complete no contracts, and still get the bonuses. So Jen could come to one of these spaces with a six with no contracts to complete. She could do it just to get the bonus tiles. So she could be chasing after the 15 points. Oh my gosh. And Jen does have a six.

39:47 Whoa. What does that mean? Well, I mean, if J were to come here to do the six, then she's got to ask, "Right, I'm doing this." Oh, no, no, no. She doesn't have a six. Uh, she would need to take one of these that don't have a six on top. So, the six is on the side. Oh, that is interesting. You know what? With all that in mind, I think I've got a plan for Jen. Jen is going to come over here. So, she's gotten her six milk. She because uh this space on the corner can reach all four, can see all four actions. She can do a combination of any of these two actions. She doesn't need to clean up. She is she's already she is going to pay her five bucks to hire an assistant. And that assistant could either work the zeppelin or the wheel. Jen's going to have it go out on the wheel. So, but Jen's got to decide. Is the assistant going to move four steps on the wheel, two steps on the wheel, three steps on the wheel, or five steps on the wheel? I think she'll move it five steps on the wheel, which means her other action is pointing in this direction. That four, Jen's going to do four pasteurization and five steps on the wheel. So, and she could do these in either order. And she's got to decide before she kicks this off, is she going to slot this in here so that she could get that bonus as well, right? Because then she'd pasteurize, she would get the bonus.

41:06 She'd get a point for putting it here and then she could do that. But nope, Jen is thinking she is going to start saving up to be a busy little mouse. Once she's got five bonuses, then she'll start deploying them on the table. So anyway, let's do the pasteurization first. One, two, three, four. Right. So, she's got two raw and four pasteurized milk now. Okay, she's done that the four and now she's going to do six. Now, uh I'm sorry, not six, five steps on the assistant wheel. So, let's look a little bit more closely at this wheel, shall we? There are two rows, the inner one and the outer one. There's also a middle one, but that you can ignore the middle one until such time as you have two assistants out here on the wheel. Here's what Jen does. She puts this someplace.

41:57 It'll be her first step to move it out here. And boom, when she lands there, she gets one rented. And then, let's see the the um inner wheel. She goes uh what is it? Clockwise. You can see the little clockwise arrows. So, it' be one was it was five, right? One 2 3 4 5. And in doing that, Jen got one, two, three, four, five, six rent, right? Because it was one, two, three, four, five. So she hit all those spaces. She got one, two, three, little double. Three. Oh, I'm sorry. There's a double here. One, two, three, four, five. Nothing. Six. One, two, three, four, five. It's one, two, three, four, five steps to get one, two, three, four, five. Six renet. Jen has six renit now. which normally, well, heck, the best you could do is take this to get five renet, but Jen's got six.

42:46 So, we take the little brown cubes that represent renet, and we put it over here. Jen now has the opportunity, the possibility to through the um the cheese making action, which is over here, uh called cutting the curds. She can spend up to five renet to turn up to five of her milk into five cheese. So, she has done the pasteurization and she uh has an assistant out there ready to do work. Um, right. And you know, and that set her up to make stuff without necessarily having to take dice. Now, she could have gone the other way. She could have gone on the outskirts and taken five steps. What would she have done? She probably would have done one, two, three, four, five. That would have given her one, two, three, four, five, six more milk. So, she could have had six more milk. She could have 12 milk right from the get- go, would she'd be in big danger of it all spoiling. Jen doesn't want to overextend herself that much that fast.

43:44 So, she's happy to just come in here and get the six renet so she doesn't have to worry about chasing after brown dice. Okay. So, I think that is that Jen has come here. She's placed the two and Jen decided not to use her bonus because she's starting to save up for bonuses. Okay. And now at the end of every turn, Jen's got six milk that are in danger of spoiling. But soon enough, she is going to turn at least five of this milk into cheese. So, worry about that in a bit. That was Jen's first turn. It is now my second turn. There are still these dice left. And what am I going to do? Well, I don't want this cheese to go bad. I've got two ways to deal with it. Either pasteurize it to buy more time or get some rent it so I can convert it. So, what am I going to do? Am I going to take this big juicy five? So, I'll have five rent it. That's more than enough to take care of my cheese. Or do I want some more money? I'd go from five to eight bucks. You need money to uh build your buildings. You need money to hire your assistants, right? Do I want to do that? And there is a chase. Hey, who's the first player to have 40 bucks on hand? What does the world cost? 40 bucks. Apparently, that'll get you 15 points. So, you could start hoarding money sooner later. Although, you won't.

44:58 you I mean most of these come along you the these get activated midway or later in the game which is interesting especially because to mark them you take one of your little owner marks remember how I had to spend $5 to take an ownership marker and say I own this machine it always costs well five 10 for your second 15 for your third all the way up to $35 if you have built six machines for that last machine which is worth 10 points so that's cool But if you ever complete these objectives, you can just go on ahead and take your next one for free and go on ahead and say, "Boom, I've done it. I've got that 15 points." But that means the next machine you build just got $5 more expensive, right? So that's a consideration as well. So anyway, I am doing my second thing. Do I want to get some renet? I DON'T DO I WANT TO GET SOME more milk. If I get two milk, I'll put it here. I'll have six milk. I need to complete my two contracts. I need eight for this. I need 12 milk to turn into 12 cheese. Um, and let's see. Seven again for what I've got going. Seven of that uh milk of that 12 milk has to be raw and five of it has to be pasteurized, right?

46:16 So, that's a lot of milk. So, I could go on ahead and get myself some more. But, you know, I want to start getting rid too. So, I'm going to take this big juicy five. All righty. So, that means I get five renet. Um, I don't have to send an assistant out to the wheel to get it. I'll just get it with my die. Thanks. 1 2 3 4 5. And that's more renet than I can use. So, it'd be kind of inefficient. So, now I could do a level four um cutting the curd action to turn four of this renet into four cheese, but it'd be better to have at least one more to do a level five action here. So, in one action, I could get all five of this rented and five done. It'd be inefficient to not get the maximum stuff done, right? But before I do that, I want to pasteurize some of this stuff because I How much do I need? I need five pasteurized and seven unpasteurized. So, I need to get more milk, too. But, I mean, I'm I'm still going to get one more die. My next die might be the uh whatchamacallit. So, in the meantime, I've got Renit, and now I've got a level five die. Where am I going to go? The board is tightening up.

47:23 Like I can't combine any two of these four actions anymore because Jen took that space. I could combine these two and these two. Or over here I could combine these two, these two, or these two because these three spaces are full. Or over here I could combine these two or these two. And now as the game goes on, it gets tougher and tougher in a given round because the actions you want to do are maybe only available combined with something you don't care about. And that could be painful. And it's at that point that you'll start thinking about, you know what, maybe I should grab a low value die and do anything I want over here, right? So, but anyway, I got five renet, which means I'm going to be able to do a level one and a level four or a level three and a level six or a level four and a level six depending on where I put it. So, what should I do? You know what? I think I'm going to rethink that because here's the deal. Jyn's already got a bunch of renet, right? I bet you she's not going to take this five. I could gamble that this will still be here on a future round.

48:20 Because I'll be honest, I wouldn't mind building another building or another another machine. So, and it also bugs me that if I got five renet, I've only got four milk. So, how about I take the lowest of the low, the measly little one, and just get myself one milk. And then hopefully if I can get the five renet, I will convert all five of this milk into pasteurized milk. um or no or all five of this milk into actual cheese. So, I'm hoping I'll get this for my third and final turn of the first year. And I don't why would I take this? Because I'm going to send it here. Um which means I can do any action I want. And this remember this is the bottom of the die. It will be a level six action.

49:08 And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go get another machine. Can't get them out here anymore, but I can get one. I already have some contracts. Do I want to get another contract? Well, I already have a purple and an orange one. Um, I don't have a yellow one and I don't have a green one. I, you know, so I wouldn't mind getting these because then, hey, I'd have three of the five colors and I'd have more contracts I'm trying to do over the course of the game. So, that would be something. But, this would cost me two, three, and three. And here's the deal. I'm thinking I'd like to get a really cool machine, a really awesome machine instead, right? So, what do I want? Well, um, again, this is 3 * 3 is nine. I only have a six, so I'm not doing that one.

49:53 But this is three times two. And this is a double action. This is do Zeppelin stuff plus age your cheese. Turn it from a fresh into a soft. Turn it from a soft into a hard. Turn it from um, you know. Yeah. So, they make your cheese more and more valuable. Plus, it's not one or the other like the other one I built. It's both. So, that's pretty cool. Um, or this would cost me four of these six I'm I'm spending. And that means, hey, this is do the Zeppelin, but take an extra step. So, you can go further along and get more goodies when you do it. I think I'm taking this one. I am making a better Zeppelin. A better Zeppel better Zeppelin action.

50:39 Um, so let's take this. It's 2 * 2. So that is four of my six actions. And so I'm going to build this later. And that means I've got two left, which means, you know what? I will grab this. And now I've got three contracts with three different factions, which is taking me up, I forget, it's maybe like 15 points, 16 points. I forget the exact numbers, but the more unique factions I've got. And so now I've got another job by the end of the game. I need to have five raw spiced cheese. Oh, this is that one. I need a lot of spiced cheese. I need to have four spiced cheese. Half of it raw, half of it pasteurized to get the huge payday. 21 points and 36 bucks. Yaoza.

51:25 Let's go with that. Okay, so um I just got myself some more stuff and that's it. I don't have any bonuses, etc., etc. Everything slides over. A new one comes out for both of these. And what is this? Okay. Oh, this is an upgrade to this, which says, "Hey, when you're adjusting the assistant wheel, you get a plus one on it." All right. So, that was my second action. And I know my third action is going to be that unless Jen takes it. But again, I don't think she's going to. She already has a bunch of rent. And you know what? She doesn't have a lot of money. And I guess correctly, Jen says, "Oh, I'll take that, please, and get some money cuz I'm broke. It's no joke." So, Jen says, "Hi, I will take some cash money because it's a three." And now what she going to do? She can put it over here to do a level four of any action she wants. So, she could come out here and get machines herself. I didn't completely cut them off. Um, or she could do a five plus a six action. That would be the best somewhere out there if there are two actions next to each other and she'd like to do both of them. Now, the problem is she wouldn't mind. She would love to get another assistant out on the board, but it's going to cost her 10 bucks. She's only got three. If she could get another assistant out, which means she'd have four points in the end of the game. She'd want to put that assistant probably on the outer ring because I didn't mention this before, but remember how there's the middle ring. Say Jen had an assistant and it was right here and had gotten her some milk. And then say this assistant moved.

52:53 Hey, I get some rendit. I get some Reddit and then I get nothing. But bec whenever you've got an inner and an outer assistant, if they line up at the end of one of their movement, you get the bonus in the middle multiplied. You would get seven cleaning actions. So if you've got a lot of spoiled milk, which you know, seven spoiled milk, that's negative 21 points. So this would be a 21 point action for you just to clear all the spoiled milk out. Now these haven't moved. She hasn't put one here. And by the way, one of the actions is move this inner wheel. So like if that were there and Jen said, "I'm going to move the inner wheel." And she just moves it once. Hey, they've lined up again. And that means Jen can do a level five zeppelin action as an example. So it's good to get multiple assistants out either onto the wheel or onto the zeppelin because the same idea happens over there. Hey, if I've got a Zeppelin moving along the top and I've got a Zeppelin on the bottom and they're both giving me points and giving me spice, but then if they ever line up, I get to do the middle action as well. And these are very big deal actions. So, assistants are expensive, but they can pay out big depending on where they go and what they do, right? So, anyway, what was Jen thinking about with her big old three? Oh, wait, wait, before we get to that, I forgot. My milk is aging.

54:16 It's so easy to forget this at the end of the turn. I best it'll be better, you know, when uh we get player aids and whatnot, but in the prototype, Jen and I forget to do this all the time. Um anyway, so uh my bat milk is about to go bad. Next turn, I've got to do something because I don't want to have -12 points of spoiled milk. But that's my next turn, right? Um and Jen's still thinking about her milk is going bad, too, if she doesn't do something with it quick. So, she's got the renet. She could come right here, but she's kind of blocked herself off. If she wants to pasteurize what? Pasteurize is just reset. No, she if she wants to do this, she could combine this with any of the other actions. She could combine making with pressing. She could combine um making with a zeppelin. But to do a zeppelin, Jen needs 10 bucks. She does not have 10 bucks. It could be a little bit cheaper if Jen had chosen this starting power, which says she wouldn't have started with money, but every time she hires an assistant, she gets a $2 discount, which may not sound like much, but it adds up when you've got four incred progressively more expensive assistants to hire. Anyway, though, um so it kind of makes sense for Jen to say, "Hey, let's take care of this. Let's make some cheese." If Jen were to come to this spot and um put the six pointing here and the five coming pointing here, it's overkill. But what does that mean? Well, first of all, Jen says, "You know what?

55:42 I'm going to cut the curd." That means she could spend up to six renet to turn six milk into up to six cheese. She's got five. She will spend um five of her renet. So, she's doing a level five action to turn five of these six into upgraded cheese. So, one of them is going to be left over. One is probably going to spoil because she you can't always do everything with perfect efficiency. So, what does Jen want? Does she I think she'll get all of this stuff done. So, that means she's really going to focus on pasteurized cheese, which is generally more valuable, but you've got to be on the lookout. Are there any jobs that want pasteurized? Yeah, like this one's an easy one. um you know, hey, five pasteurized uh hard cheeses for 15 points and nine bucks. And then if you have some a raw some raw soft cheese, you can get a little bit extra. So maybe Jen's looking at that particular whenever she gets around to getting a contract because by default the cheese isn't worth much. It's worth like, you know, points at the end of the game, but not very much. You're much better off selling them. So Jen and now Jen has one more. She'll send that over there. So now she's got one fresh raw and four fresh pasteurized cheese. That was this action. And now she gets to do this. She can do five of the press action. That means she's got five action points to spend. And she can spend them amongst these cheeses to so she could spend hey one two to have a hard um soft or she could spend one two three four you know

57:15 however she wants to spend you know the five she's got to start improving aging pressing the cheese. So she's got five to spend. Heck. I mean she could just say oh I've got five. I'll just go boop boop and boop. Now she's got um five soft cheeses. But again, when she's doing this, she needs to think about what contract might she grab in the future. It'd be a contract that focuses more on hard cheese. So again, she's looking at this one, especially because if she ever gets up here, this is the cheapest one to get. It only costs one action point to get this. So, and this is straight up five hard cheeses. So, she goes 1 2 3 4 five. She's now got one of the five hard cheeses she needs for this, and she's got three that are that are soft and are almost hard. So, let's say Jen did that. She did a bunch of press and now she's got a bunch of cheese over there and she's eyeballing that. But, you know what? If she ever ends up getting that, well, um, what about this one?

58:16 The next one. Oh, this one. Well, this would be the fresh cheese. And Jen just got rid of all her fresh cheese. So, that's interesting, too. This is have hard um raw cheese and fresh pasteurized cheese. So, that one's not good for her. Um this one is interesting as an upgrade. If she has This is all past. If she has three soft cheese, which she has now, and three spiced cheese, which she could be working toward, then that would be 10 bucks and um 12 points. Plus, it would unlock a bonus. Whenever she wants, she could go to the market, right? This is be a little bonus she can do whenever she wants. So, maybe that's the one she's eyeballing if she doesn't get that one. This I think works for both that and that. So she's got a long-term plan. That's the cheese she's made. This is the action she did and she's saving up money to be able to build a machine or hire another assistant. Now that's if hiring another assistant is going to be 10 bucks.

59:20 There's a way to make it cheaper. Anytime you want on your turn as a free action, you can recall an assistant from the zeppelin or the wheel. Put them back here. You've effectively lost two points. But now, hey, it only costs five. So, if you put them out here just to get some stuff, you realize, "Oh, I need to do something else." You can always get them back to have them go do something else. But Jen doesn't want to do that, right? Let's see. She was what? She was um one, two, or one, two, three, four, five. That's where she was, right? Yeah. She wants to get that 10 bucks to put a second one on the outskirts so she can start getting these bonus things by either manipulating the wheel or getting these guys to move to keep giving her milk, to keep giving her renet, which means for the rest of the game, as long as those are out here, she's going to focus more on getting money dice, which she's going to be needing to get them out there anyway though. So, um, yeah, that was it. That was Jen's second action. And now she's got one she one milk that is about to spoil at the end of the next turn if she doesn't do something with it. All righty, it is my turn. And as I predicted, the renet is still here. One, two, three, four, five.

1:00:30 And where are you going to go? Um, I can't come here. This is done. So, I got to go out. And, um, if I get a doubler, it's a four plus a six, a six plus a three, a 1 plus a four, you know, however I want to put it out there. But, you know, as often happens near the end of the round because, you know, um, all three of these, I could combo any of these three together. I could combo these or these, or I could combo these, or these. Those are my options. Well, here's the deal. This is going to spoil if I don't do something with it now. So, that's either pasteurize it, so it buys me more time, but I think I have more need for raw milk. I need four raw milk here, three raw milk here, five or nine raw milk there. I don't want to pasteurize it. So, I'm going to come over to this spot or no, where is it?

1:01:18 This spot right here. This is my last chance to um press this uh milk or use my renet. I just got to turn this milk into cheese. Wait, no, no, I'm sorry. It's this action right here. So, that means I've got to come to this space. This is my only way to do it. So, I'm coming here and that means I'm going to I have five bucks. I can send somebody up to the zeppelin. So, maybe I'll do that. We'll come back to that in a second. So, what do I want to do? Uh, do I want to have three Zeppelin actions plus six press actions? Well, I've got five. If I So, yeah. So, if I do this, then I can turn all of this. I'll be a bit wasteful. And that means three zips. Let's do it here. Where we go? I am doing I'm going to spend I'm going to spend all five rented I've got right that. Yeah, this is what I wanted to do. Actually, I'm I'm kind of wasting it. I could spend six renet, but I'm only I could spend up to I'm spending five renet to burn to turn all of this stuff into raw cheese. And now I do not have to worry about it spoiling.

1:02:21 I've got five um fresh cheese that's raw and I have no jobs for it. But if I can get four of these moved over here, then I can complete this contract and get money and points. Okay. So, um although when you eventually go to complete contracts, you can complete as many as you want. You don't want to do this action till you've got enough to complete like two or three, but that means you've got tons of cheese and whatnot. That's a much more long-term thing. But remember, the sooner you go here, if you go here with um at least a three or four, five, or six, you can be earning bonus tiles as well, which again, they really should put that on there as a visual reminder. But again, it's a prototype. I'm not I'm sure they're still working on cleaning stuff up. Anyway though, so I've come here. I have spent f all five of my renet to turn my five milk into five cheese. And now what's pointing in this direction? A three. By the way, this game, you know how I mean, I've always known for I don't know how long I've known that.

1:03:19 Hey, on the other side of a die is always um the two sides equal seven. On the other side of this is a two because 2 plus 5 equals seven. On the other side of this is a three. Right? I never knew this. Dice have rules for how this stuff works. That when you look at it, it's always four, five, six, and it's always one, two, three. So over time, the more you play this, you're going to start to have a second conscious knowing, oh yeah, that the three the six is always next to the three. Anyway, so I'm going to get to do three up to three zeppelin actions. Now, to do it, I'm going to have to hire an apprentice. So there goes my five. And I've got three steps to take on the zep. And it's the upper row of the zap. So I come in here and I go one. And what do I get for landing on that space? A victory point. And then I can't go along the bottom track. I have to go along the top track. Two. I get some spice. Which, by the way, here's another thing. They know the spice color and the glass color or the milk color are kind of similar. They aware of all this stuff. Anyway, so I got a spice and I move again and I get a second spice.

1:04:23 So now I've got two spice, which means I want to get a contract that makes me or no, I do have a Didn't I just get a contract? Yeah, I ultimately need nine spice to make these nine um refined cheeses. So I've got two of the nine spice I need. And this is the main way to get spice. If I get here another spice, now I got to pay a buck to keep moving and then I get a point. Then I got to pay two bucks to keep moving and then I get two spice and a spice and so on and so on all the way up to the top. And remember, if I ever get a second and I have them go on the lower track and they end here, oh, I'll get the bonus action. And these are very powerful. But that's if I get a second assistant on the Zeppelin. So, turn around, buddy. You're walking forward. All righty. So, that was that. Pretty happy with that. I saved my uh my milk from spoiling and I started walking the Zeppelin. That was it. Oh, and nothing to spoil. Okay, Jen's final turn. And what is Jen going to do? Jen wants more cash.

1:05:23 Um although at the end of the turn, this is going to spoil. That's negative three points. If Jen wants to, Jen could pasteurize it to move it down here so she's got more time. Or if she takes one of these, she'd have more rented. But here's the problem. Even if she has the renet, access to cutting the curd, turning milk into cheese is gone. It's too late. Jen can't do it. There's no other machine spot where Jen could go. But that's not true. There's this space right here. So, I think the time has come for Jen to take a low value die. She'll take this one just to get some more cash money because she's saving up to be able to do more assistance and stuff like that. And that means, like I did before, she can do any level six action she wants. Any of them. So, um, if she had enough money, she would probably send another mouse out here to get more stuff on the wheel and start getting access to the bonus actions in the center. But she doesn't have enough cash yet. Best way to get cash in this game? Either take highv value yellow die or complete jobbies. I thought I froze Jen out. Nope. Jen says time for me to go to the market. And she is going there with six actions. So, what is Jen going to pick up? Well, she was already thinking about what um what uh stuff she wanted, right? She has a lot of

1:06:55 pasteurized cheese. Which one was it? Oh, it was this one. This would cost three of her six, but it's a nice one. And it gives her that bonus. I think she likes that. She says, "Hello, nice cheese lady. Cheese queen from Barat Town." I don't know. Um, so Jen now needs to have six pasteurized cheese, three spiced, and three um, soft. And she already has the soft. All righty. So, she's got that. She spent three of her six. So, now she's going to spend three more. And it could be to get another contract, or it could be to get a machine. Although, the only machine she could get, this costs six. This costs four. Oh, so she could get that machine. But right now, the only machines you could get is this, which opens up another way to build machines. That's not bad. Opens up a way to do zeppelins. And now that I'm on the zeppelin, this might make sense for Jen to take this because if if this is if this is the only way for my Zeppelin to my Zeppelin guy to move, Jen would have to visit my machine. So, I think she'll take this. So, this costs two times one.

1:08:04 So, that's two. So, she has spent five. She has one more. What the heck? She'll take this. So, she spent her six actions to get two contracts and a machine. And now everything it should slide over, but instead I have to kind of pick them up and move them over. But again, I mentioned before they know this needs to be just one long channel in the cool deluxe. I think the standard version won't be uh a double layer like this. This is the deluxe board, but you get the idea. And so, another machine comes out. All righty. So, that was it. That was Jen's final turn. Okay. And at the end of her turn, oop, no place to go. So, Jen has lost three points. But that's okay. It's not the end of the world. That just makes this a valuable action for her. This is now at least a threepoint action to go there.

1:08:51 And it's okay. You can afford to let some milk spoil uh in the uh in the interest of pursuing other stuff. So, anyway, that was Jen's turn. Remember, she could have also done this, but she is saving up. Oh, you know what? There was something else she could have done instead. Instead of that, instead of that, Jen could have taken she could have taken this, let's say, to get some milk and put the six in that direction. Yeah, she get to move the wheeler bill. She wouldn't have she wouldn't even care. But doing this, even if she didn't have any contracts to complete, because she sent a six there, that would have given her two more bonuses. She'd be halfway towards completing or she'd be more than halfway towards completing the checkup. Maybe she should do that instead.

1:09:38 Maybe she should do that instead. If she puts this back, puts the dollar back, puts the contracts and the machine back. Well, think about this. Instead, what would she do? She would she'd probably take the milk or no, she could take the rented, but no, she'd probably take the milk to get two more milk that would start aging. But you you know what? I think I like that even more for her. She's going to come here, right? She is going to complete contract. She doesn't have any, but because she came there with a six, she gets two more bonuses. But she might use this very turn. Let's see. Okay, it's a hey, get to move the wheel around and a hey, whenever you feel like it, get to rent it. If she did that instead and now this says, hey, you can move the wheel up to three times. What might she do? Well, she might say, "Oh, I'll move it uh 1, two, or even a three." Right? Because then there's a 6x multiplier on that.

1:10:36 What she's really doing is deciding where does she want the 6x, the 5x, the 4x, and the 7x multipliers to be if she gets her second person out there, right? Um like like uh I don't know, like probably getting points, right? Because but that's where she was. She this is all the the six is already on that. So maybe she wouldn't rotate at all. So, she wasted this, but she did it to get these. And so, that was a perfectly f. Now, she didn't make any money. She left that money on the table. But next round, Jen is going to be the first player. Jen will be able to grab the best money. Hopefully, a five or a six that rolls. It'll be really sad for her if everything rolls a one or a two money. But that is interesting. It's a really interesting choice. Is she going to take that stuff? Because she doesn't need it.

1:11:23 I like this. But you know what? I think we're not going to do I think we are going to stick with the original plan. So, she does get that buck after all. I was just trying to show you know other variety. She says, "Oh, I'll save these for later." She can get those later. I mean, I don't have any yet. So, she's still pretty confident she's going to get first dibs on that someday. And she's going to stick with the first plan, getting all these because here's the deal. She really likes getting this machine built. Where will she build it when she gets the chance to? She will build it right here. So now if I want my top assistant to work on the Zeppelin, it would have to visit Jen's machine. And that means every time I visit Jen's machine, Jen gets a reward. It's one buck, one milk, one renit, one spice, or one victory point. It's not a lot, but it can add up over the course of the game. And this is a game where, especially early, every little bit helps. You know that one buck could take her from four to five, which could take her to build, you know, et, etc. So, I think that's what she's thinking. She's got these contracts. She knows where she wants to build it to take advantage of what I need to do. Um, anyway, and so that was that unless she wants to use this, but she's not going to. So, anyway, at the end of her turn, like I said, this spoiled. Now, we are done with the first of six rounds, but the end of every round, something magical happens. You may have been wondering this whole game, hey, who's fancy top hat mouse? This is our overseer. I like to think of this as this is us. You know, we we are the manager of this

1:12:54 operation. We get to do something. Now, what happens is each player picks one of the remaining dice. They don't take it. So, each of us have access to the three or the two or the one. [snorts] And that's how much our overseer gets to go for a walk on the overseer board. So the very very first time it happens, it doesn't really matter what you take because if my overseer were out here and I say three, that means I move from here to go one, two, three. That means I have access to this moving forward as long as I stay on that space. Whereas if I was here and I choose one, I would just get five bucks immediately. But the first time you do, you get to deploy your overseer onto here wherever you want. It's our overseer's agent waiting waiting to go. And so let's say I choose the three. Well, I can choose to land wherever I want and then move three. So, I get any action I want. And you know what I want? You know what I want? I just want five bucks. I want five bucks right now. Boom. So, that's it. And so, now Jyn, she's going to do the same. She could go anywhere, including where I just went. And now this becomes more of an issue at a higher player count. You can see in a two-player game, there's a lot of spaces and nothing to tighten up the board. Really kind of surprised the developers didn't say, "Hey, you know what? There's always a neutral one that just always moves clockwise at the end of every turn or or maybe every round it always moves to the next space. So, we've got more. But it doesn't matter.

1:14:14 It doesn't matter. It's fine with two. Jen could go anywhere she wants. She would like five bucks. Here's the problem, though. If she comes here, she can do it, but she'll bump me. And now I can move to any spa, empty space that I want to move to anywhere. So, she'll give me a second bonus. She does not want to do that. So rather than come here to get five bucks, I think Jen says Jen has a building a bu a machine to build. What if what if Jen comes here? Because as long as she's here, she gets a $5 discount whenever she builds a machine. So that's pretty nice. That means her first machine is effectively free. But remember, you get a discount when building a machine based on the die value. What if she wants money? What if she comes over here? She's already planning on trying. She's gonna be first player next round. She's planning on grabbing money dice. As long as she's here, whenever she grabs a money die, she gets three more bucks. So, that's even better. Jen's going to come there.

1:15:13 She's not going to come here to give me a nice little bonus so I could get more stuff. She's going to come here next round. She wants to grab all three money dice if she can because that'll be an additional nine bucks, right? So, we'll see what happens because that's it. We have finished the first of six rounds. Yaoza. So, here we go. Jen becomes the first player. We mark that we're on the second year of production. And all the dice except for these purple ones, which again is a two-player only and probably a solo game, too. I don't know. I haven't seen the solo rules yet, right? So, where have I gotten all? No, there's these two as well. And there we go. And Jen is hoping for all big numbers on the yellows because Jen likes grabbing yellow dice. And Jen gets first dibs. Show me what you got.

1:16:00 Oh, the yellow dice were cruel. A one, a three, and a four. Well, Jen doesn't even look at what else is out there. The first thing she does is she grabs that yellow four to get four plus three. That is seven simoleons. So now Jen has 11 bucks. Jen could get now her second assistant out on the board so that they can start giving her access to those middle bennies. That's what Jen wants to do. So, she's got to decide where is she going to go. She wants to send him out there. That's this action over here. And since she's first dibs, she could combine this action either with pasteurizing. It's a bad time to do that cuz she has nothing to pasteurize. Or she could combine it with Zeppelin, but she wouldn't have enough money after sending her second assistant out to get somebody on the Zeppelin. Her third assistant is going to cost 15 bucks. Or she could combine it with cleaning up the taking out the trash.

1:16:55 So, let's do that. Let's say Jen um right uh Jen if Jen's gonna get right. So Jen is going to send the six. So she gets to do six steps. And on the opposite side, you know what's on the opposite side? The one. So Jen gets to do one cleanup, which is exactly what she needed. She just effectively scored three points or prevented herself from losing three points. And now she gets to um either send this guy around to pick up more renet or hire another one and then send that one around on the outskirts. Yeah. Um the six movements you can you can't split them amongst the the mice. Same thing for the zeppelins. All the stuff you got can only be one zeppelin. Jen's going to spend 10 five. All right. So she's broke again to send her second and she's going to get to move six spaces. And here's the deal. She wants to end here. So, they're looking at each other. So, she will get six points. So, that's right. It's a one, two, three, four, five, six. Yep.

1:17:59 There we go. One, two, three, four, five, six. Jen just got one, two, three, four, five. Six milk. A nice little haul. So, it's like she took a level six milk dye plus her but nope, she just got six milk, which again, it's going to start spoiling sooner than later. And um their two assistants say, "Hello, inner gear." "Hello, outer gear." Oh, wait. Oh, wait. Oh, wait. I'm sorry. I did this backwards. I forgot. The outer one goes counterclockwise. So, maybe she didn't get right. So, it's it's a 1, two, three, four, five, six. She didn't get quite as much. It's 1, two, three, four, five, six. Six. So, that was only four milk, not six milk. There's little arrows. And they know, by the way, that these arrows are kind of small. It's kind of easy to miss. I mean, you can see, I mean, there it is right there.

1:18:48 that little tiny arrow saying counterclockwise, little one going clockwise. Anyway, there is actually a list of, you know, improvements like the sliding and the arrows and whatnot. I'm not worried about any of that stuff. Uh the publisher definitely has it well in hand. But anyway, uh so that was Jen's big payday. It's cost her a lot, but for the rest of the game, you know, this is going to be her where is it? Um her favorite spot over here, right? To keep activating that. or this one too because remember um like you know if she were to activate this and this were to rotate all the way around I mean it would be a few activations that come all the way back that counts as them moving and that would be six points. So these are good for Jen which means sooner or later remember she's ultimately going to have five of these things to install and when she does she's probably going to want to put them on these actions the one that help her. And by the way, what is this action? That means whenever anybody activates a uh assistant on the wheel, they get to move themselves um onto the board uh based on the strength of the die. So if this was like a level four action, they'd be able to do a level four move on the big wheel as well. And these are super powerful. You only normally get to do this three time or six times once at the end of every round, but it could be done a lot. So, Jen would certainly want to put this on a place that I plan on using a lot or that she plans on using, not necessarily a place that I want to use. Anyway, folks, I think we're going to stop right there. Although, first, milk is spoiling. Got to worry about that. But that should give you a pretty good idea

1:20:19 of the overall flow of steam and cheese. And now, uh, if you'd like to hear some final thoughts, first of all, please remember this was a sponsored preview. And with that out of the way, oh man, folks, what a clever design here. For anybody who uh you know goes on and on and on about how there's no new ideas, there's no innovations left in board game design, kindly direct them to Steam and Cheese, won't you? And brand new first-time designer, um Alexander Ry. Alexander, phenomenal. this worker placement idea of the top being hey what you get when you draft it and then where you place it doing two actions based on the sides and then depending on where you place it sometimes not caring about the side value but caring about the bottom value caring about the top and then the bottom this is so cool I have never seen a dice worker placement game do anything as cool and dicey as this such a brilliant idea dice are implicitly three-dimensional objects Why for the history of modern board game design have we all treated them as one-dimensional things just a thing on top? Why not use all the stuff all around it? Oh my gosh, this is so smart.

1:21:26 And um and then that aside, it's also a really cracker jackack fun playing, you know, uh goods harvesting point conversion euro style game, which is something that Jen and I tend to enjoy. You know, very fun, you know, economic industrialization thing. You've got contracts to fulfill. You've got conveyor belts to convert your goods from one to another. You've got that constant pressure of, oh my gosh, if I don't keep working on my stuff on the conveyor belt, if it stalls, I lose it because, you know, the milk spoils. So, I've got to be prepared for that. Um, you've got cool upgrades, worker placement games that change or spaces that change and evolve through the game. Both because players can replace the basic ones with advanced ones which they then own so that they get um income whenever anybody uses it, but that's just the beginning because then you can add bonus tiles on to them so that not only will you get that, but you'll get cool bonus things as well. And so by the end of the game, you are going to have a radically different worker placement board than well, pretty much every time you play, you're going to play on a completely new board because the board is going to evolve in different ways.

1:22:34 Yes, there's always going to be the save 12 actions to begin with, but just even where the actions are. It has a huge impact on the game. Like in the runthrough I just did, totally randomly, there happen to be really nice synergy between the collect contracts and pay contracts. In a different game, they might be on different gears. So, what are you going to do? Are you going to have to be inefficient and do multiple actions to do that? Or are you going to upgrade something so that you can make more of those synergies on given spots? But then there's the question of getting into the position because as soon as some player goes there, oh no, these two are cut off from each other. I can't do both of them now.

1:23:12 [snorts]

1:23:12 uh because again of that brilliant dice is this you know next year in the uh the yearly dice tower awards I think they have a an innovation most innovative game of the year if this game doesn't get nominated for that I then the fix is in because Alexander has really revolutionized the use of dice in a euro in the best possible way and I love it and Jen loves it as I was explaining this to her and showing how it works and we started playing she was just grinning ear to ear it's so much fun to think about all the sides of your dice, not just what you happen to roll. And that is so cool. And you know what? Even if it didn't have that, even if it was a more straightforward worker placement, you know, goods conversion game, there's still so many other wonderful thematic, really strongly thematic flourishes between the conveyor belt system for upgrading your cheesewares and the um upgradable worker placement spots. and you know the different contracts u you know some of which oh my gosh this was a really hard contract to complete and it doesn't even pay much that's okay because it gives me bonus actions maybe bonus actions that aren't on the board anymore because the world keeps changing and evolving as we play it just wow Alexander I don't know how long you've worked on this but you have come up with something really special and really rare a completely paradigmshifting use of a game component that has been with us for centuries ies. Think about that. For centuries, we've been playing with dice.

1:24:40 This can't be. I MEAN, IS ALEXANDER TRULY the first person in human history to come up with this idea? I don't know. If so, Alexander, well done, sir. Regardless of, you know, history of game design or not, this game is a blast. Also, it's gorgeous. It is so fun and charming and delightful just to look at to see all the the art. The components are great. Bear in mind, I am showing you the deluxe version. You can hit that eye in the top right corner screen or follow links down in the show notes to go see what the standard versus the deluxe version is. I know it's dual layer boards and um and some various other things. I'm not quite sure what all um but just wow. So, it's one of a kind. It is really something special. You don't see stuff like this come along very often. That folks was the preview for Steam and Cheese. Thanks so much for watching.

1:25:30 Have a very nice day. Talk to you later. So long. Bye-bye.