La Pâtisserie Rococo | How to Play | Learn to Play in 15 Minutes! | The Best Pastry Chef?
Transcript
Hello everybody, my name is Ilya.
name is Tyler. Together we make up Card Board Crew, a couple that loves to play board games.
And today I'll be teaching you how to play La Patisserie Rococo. This is a one to five player game designed by Louis and Stefan Malz, and is published by Eagle-Gryphon Games, who helped sponsor this video.
Let's go to the table and let's learn how to play. As always, you begin by setting up. You'll place the game board in the center of the table using the side that matches your player count. Then, place all the ingredient tiles into the ingredient bag and all the recipe tiles into the recipe bag and mix them well. Next, shuffle the table bonus tiles face down, then place one face up on each of the five presentation tables. The remaining tiles will not be used. Next, separate the numbered staff cards by level from one through four and shuffle each of the piles. Using these, you'll form the general staff deck by stacking the appropriate number of cards, starting from level four cards at the bottom, then level three, level two, and finally level one on top. The number shown indicate how many cards are used for your player count.
Then, you'll take the staff cards with the star icon, shuffle them, and place a number equal to one more than the number of players face up below the game board to form the higher display. All remaining staff cards with the star icon are removed from the game. Set the two baking trays next to the general deck along with a supply of coins within the reach of all players. Then, place two random special bonus tiles with the matching colored side face up onto the special bonus spaces on the board. You're now ready for player setup. Each player chooses a color and takes the matching player board, three goods markers, 17 ownership markers, and four starting staff cards. You'll each place one ownership marker on the zero space of the prestige track and keep the rest nearby. Then, place your goods markers on the starting spaces of your goods track at two flower, one sugar, and one butter. Your four staff cards form your starting deck and should be placed face down near your player board.
Then, you'll randomly select a starting player. You'll give him a start player marker along with 10 coins. Then, in clockwise order, each other player takes one more coin than the player before them. You're now ready to play. In La Patisserie Rococo, you're running a pastry shop competing to impress nobles at a grand Versailles festival by baking, decorating, and delivering pastries. The goal is to earn the most prestige points by the end of the game through presentations, table majorities, noble influence, and efficient use of your staff. The game lasts exactly four rounds and each round has four phases: preparation, select staff, perform actions, and gain income. Before we get started, as a general note, a lot of the iconography or specific card explanations can be found on the reference sheet. So, please use it and pass it around if you're ever uncertain of any ability or icon.
We will bring to your attention the prestige icon. When outlined in red, you'll gain the prestige immediately in the game. While when outlined in black, you'll score the prestige at the end of the game. Now, let's get to it. At the start of each round during the preparation phase, you'll refresh the ingredient and recipe markets. In the very first round, you'll simply fill each of these up. In the future rounds, first, any leftover ingredients in the lower rows are discarded. Then, the rest slide down and new ingredients are drawn from the bag to refill from top to bottom. Recipes work similarly, except the rightmost ones are discarded. The rest shift right and new ones fill in from right to left with their unbaked side face up. The next phase is select staff, which determines what you can do this round. In the first round, you'll simply take four of your starting staff cards into your hand. From round two and onward, you'll secretly choose exactly four staff cards from your unused deck.
If you don't have enough unused cards, you take all the remaining ones, then flip your discard pile to form a new deck, and continue selecting until you have four. After that, you draft two additional staff using the baking trays. The start player will deal a number of cards equal to players plus two onto tray A, and the player to their right deals the same amount after onto tray B. Then, once both trays have been dealt, the starting player and the player to their right look at the cards on their tray, pick one card, and pass the tray in the indicated direction. You'll repeat until everyone has taken one card from each tray. The four unchosen cards will go face up into the higher display. At this point, you'll have six cards in your hand. Before the next step, you must discard one card face down out of the game, leaving you with five staff cards to use this round. You're now ready for the third phase: perform actions. The perform actions phase is the core of the game. Starting with the player with the start player marker and going clockwise, players take turns playing one staff card at a time until everyone runs out. When you play a staff card, you may perform one main action based on that card, and then you may perform its bonus action. If on your turn you have no cards left, you'll have to pass, but other players may continue if they have cards remaining in their hand. This can happen if they've hired more staff throughout the round. Now, there are nine main actions in this game, and the action you choose must be one your staff card is allowed to
perform. Blue actions can be played by either type of staff. Gold actions can only be performed by a pastry chef, and silver actions can only be performed by an assistant. Pastry chefs cannot normally acquire ingredients or buy goods, while assistants cannot normally decorate or hire staff. However, if a bonus action specifically lets you do something, that bonus action can override those normal restrictions. Let's go through the actions. The first action is acquire recipes. When you take this action, you may choose one or two recipe tiles from the recipe display. You'll pay the coin cost shown above those spaces and place them in the recipe storage area at the top of your player board. You can only store up to three recipes at a time, but you may discard recipes you own at any time if you need to make space. After taking this action, if there's at least three empty spaces in the recipe display, slide the remaining recipes as far to the right as possible and refill the empty spaces from right to left. The second action you can take is acquire ingredients. Here, you'll choose exactly one ingredient tile from the ingredient display. You'll pay its cost and place it face up near your player board.
The cost will depend on the row the ingredient is in and how many tiles were in that row before you took it. So, some ingredients will be more expensive and others may even be free. There's no limit to how many ingredient tiles you can have, but the ingredient display does not refill during this action and only refills during the preparation phase. The third action is buy goods. Here, you'll choose one type of good: flower, sugar, or butter. Then, buy one or more units of that good by paying the total cost shown on your player board and moving that goods marker up its track. You cannot go beyond the top of the track and you can only ever buy one type of good with this action. So, you can't split one buy goods action between flower and butter, for example.
The fourth action is bake. When you bake, choose one or two recipes from the top of your player board and pay the required ingredients and goods shown on the recipe. Goods are spent by moving the matching goods markers down on your tracks, while ingredient tiles are discarded. If you're using ingredient tile with more icons than you need, the extra icons are wasted unless you're baking two pastries at once, in which case you may divide the icons from your ingredient tiles between these two recipes. Once a recipe is baked, you'll flip it to its finished side and place it on an empty cooling rack on your player board. If you don't have an empty cooling rack, you cannot bake. Some recipes also show the pastry chef icon, which means they can only be baked by a pastry chef. The fifth action is decorate. Here, you'll choose one or two baked pastries on your cooling racks that do not already have a topping. For each one, use one of your ingredient tiles that has a topping icon. Flip that tile to its topping side and place it above the pastry.
Each pastry can only have one topping, and if you decorate two pastries, each one needs its own ingredient tile. Decorating is optional, but it does matter because successful decorations will increase your income after those pastries are delivered. Which brings us to the sixth action: deliver. When you deliver, choose one or two pastries from your cooling racks. For each pastry, you'll decide separately whether to sell it or present it. If you choose to sell it, discard the pastry and gain coins equal to five times the prestige value printed on that pastry. You will not gain prestige points when selling. You're simply converting that pastry into money. Additionally, if that pastry had a topping, you'll move the topping to your successful decorations track, starting at the top and continuing down.
Successful decorations will improve your income over the course of the game. If you present a pastry instead, you'll place it onto an empty space at one of the presentation tables on the main board. If the space shows an immediate bonus, you'll take it right away. This might give you coins, an ingredient, or a good. Then, place one of your ownership markers onto the pastry. You do not score those printed prestige points immediately. You'll score them at the end of the game. Next, check the table bonus tile for that table. If your pastry meets the requirement, you'll immediately gain that bonus as well. You can still present a pastry to a table even if you don't qualify for a table bonus. And similar to selling, if the pastry had a topping, you'll move that topping to your successful decorations track.
Finally, if you have a service staff connected to the table, you may pay three coins per connected service staff to gain one prestige point each. The seventh action is hire. When you take this action, you'll take one staff card from the hire display on the board by paying its cost, which depends on how many cards were there before you took it. Then, you'll add that card directly to your hand, which you can use later in this round. You may also, instead, hire one of the star staff cards below the board. These require you to meet a condition shown on the card, but are hired for free. If you've met the condition, you'll claim the card and place it into your hand to be used later this round. It's important to know that you may only hire one star staff card during the entire game. You'll mark this with an ownership token to remind yourself that you may not hire an additional card with a star icon. And as a reminder, assistants cannot take the hire action unless a bonus allows it.
The eighth action is give notice. Here, you'll choose one staff card from your staff inventory, which can be the card you just played, and removed from the game. You'll gain coins based on the notice value shown on the card, four coins for an assistant or six coins for a pastry chef. You must always have at least four staff cards in your total staff inventory. So, if you only have four cards, you cannot take this action. Additionally, even if you give notice to the card you just played, you can still use that card's bonus action afterward. The ninth and final action is place service staff or noble host. With this action, you'll choose one of the two options. If you place service staff, put one of your ownership markers on an available service staff space connected to the presentation tables and pay the cost shown. Depending on the space, this may give you immediate benefits like a free recipe, ingredient, or good, or it may give you prestige during final scoring.
Service staff also matter when presenting pastries because each one connected to the table where you present can let you pay three coins for one immediate prestige point. Or, instead of placing service staff, you may place a noble host. Here, you'll choose an empty noble host space, pay the cost shown, and place one of your ownership markers there. Noble hosts provide additional income during the income phase, and they also score at the end of the game based on how many opponents have placed service staff. And finally, while it's not one of the main actions, keep an eye on the special bonus tiles throughout the game. As soon as you fulfill the condition on one of those tiles, you may immediately place one of your ownership markers on the highest available scoring space. Each player can only claim each special bonus tile once. [snorts] In addition to your main action, you may choose to take a bonus action listed on your card. Then, play will pass clockwise. Once all players have played all their cards and have passed, you'll move to the gain income phase. Here, everyone will gain a base of five coins, plus additional income from successful decorations on your player board, and from any noble hosts you've placed.
Then, you'll pass the start player marker clockwise, clear the higher display, and begin the next round. After the fourth round, the game ends. Final scoring begins after the gain income step of the fourth round. You'll first sell any remaining pastries for coins, getting five coins for each prestige point as indicated next to the pastry dish. Then, you'll convert your coins. For every 10 coins, you'll receive one prestige. Return the coins converted back to the supply and keep any leftover coins next to your player board as they may be used in a tiebreaker. Next, each presentation table scores, awarding points to the players with the most and second most pastries there, with ties broken by the player whose pastries are closer to the bonus tile. Then, you'll score your noble hosts. For each of your noble hosts, gain prestige points equal to the number of your opponents who placed at least one service staff ownership marker.
And finally, you'll score prestige for all your placed ownership markers across pastries, service staff, noble hosts, and special bonuses. At this point, you'll compare the scores, and the player with the most points wins. If tied, the player with the most leftover coins wins. If still tied, the start player in the final round wins if they are one of the tied players. If not, the first tied player to the left of the start player wins. And that's La Petite Pâtisserie Rococo. Do you have any questions? Leave them in the comments down below and get back to you as soon as we can. And if you found this video helpful, make sure you hit that thumbs up button, hit that subscribe button if you're new here cuz we love talking and teaching board games.
And hit that little bell cuz you know when our next videos come out and we can all partake in the joy of board gaming.
Mhm. Now, for our question of the day, what is the most delightful thing you have ever baked?
Ooh.
a macaron? Was it a scone? a croissant?
Yeah. Let us know your answers down in the comments below. Until next time, though, we will see you later. Bye.