Roses, robots and debt! Rosalie Board Game Preview
Transcript
Hello everyone. This is Johannes.
And this is Sarah.
And you are watching Board Gaming Ramblings.
And today we are taking a look at Rosalee.
We are. This is an upcoming game from Uchibacoya. As always then, you know, this is sent to us from the publisher and it is a prototype pre-production copy. So things might change. This is the newest big box game from Uchibacoya. They have Last time they did Sweet Land, which is a game we really like. So we were very excited to sit down and play this. And we have done that now times and then we're going to talk about it. That's like the rules of these videos. I'm going to do a brief overview. I'm going to try to keep it brief because there is a lot of things going on in this game. This is not going to be a rules teach. And in this video we will not be able to go over every single like mechanism, every single system because there is a lot of things going on. It is a heavier game for sure. In this game you run a rose garden. And you will plant your roses. You will start with a few roses. You will start with a lot of debt. You will start with a lot of debt that is negative points, but you get some money from that debt. So basically start with nothing, you go to the bank and you say, "Can I please have some money?" Yes, but you will have to pay back. And then you're going to start building up your farm or your rose garden. You will build up by getting more roses. You will get contracts for people that wants to buy the roses that you are producing or growing. You don't really produce roses. You will build different monuments that will give you special powers. We'll talk more about that later. Different buildings that give you special abilities. At each of each round at the end of each round I mean you need to at each of each round.
I like that. At the end of each round you need to attend to your garden and you can do that with your workers, but you probably want to use your workers for doing actions because this is an action selection game. So you can automate your work by getting these robots. But if you have these big robots that are better than the small robots, then you need energy for example by making windmills to make it work. Also, the money is going to disappear because you're going to do two actions and you have no more money and you're trying to do all of these things for different reasons, mostly for victory points. You're going to get victory points by selling special roses. At the end of each round, you can also choose to get money or victory points. And it's like one of those where you're trying to get the debt away and then get those victory points. There is goals, there is special powers over here, and like skill tiles, there's another goal, there's skulls, there's things going on. There is so many things. You can have special player powers. I'm not going to try to talk about all of these things. That was an overview. Probably made you not understand exactly how the game works, but basically, you're choosing actions. I didn't even tell you how the game works. You're choosing actions and then you get to choose three actions each round in the beginning of the game, then four, then five. And then you have to, as I said, you will have to tend to the garden. The roses will grow.
Uh half of the game is going to be full, then you have to have greenhouses to be able to grow some more roses that only grow in spring. You will then sell those to the contracts. You can sell the special roses to some other place. And then you will get some income. If you have some sprouts, they will be bigger, they can become roses, and you will try to do that seven rounds and try to score some points. And that is basically kind of a little bit about what you do in the game.
Let's talk about how the game looks first because the artwork and components are amazing. And as expected, we saw that in Sweet Land's production as well.
And Austria, and
Yes, for sure. But like Sweet Land's, the pleasant artwork may suggest that this is an easy cozy game. It's not. It's a hard cozy. Yeah, it is cozy, but it's no means easy, and I think it's like on the weight a little similar to Sweetland. It It really depends on how your brain clicks with the game, but for me, this is slightly easier.
Yes.
Um
I think the mate's the opposite.
Yes. So, I think it's like on par with Sweetland.
Think it as I said, like it depends on and it's always hard to say like when you go into a game. I think the publisher themselves has that this is a bit easier than Sweetland. Um and I I it's hard to say like it it all depends on how many times you play it and all of those things. As I said, the core concept is an and they have these really cool action selection boards.
that component.
And this is very cool.
cool.
This is, first of all, a great component and you are choosing actions like not blindly and like the other players aren't seeing it. So, what do you call hidden? Yes, not blindly. [clears throat] I'm just going to choose and I I hope I get the one I want. No, I'm choosing an action and then we're going to do it in turn order. There's a turn order mechanism here where basically the more you pay to move on this track, you basically by passing your actions, you will be able to move her getting income and the further you are on the track, the more the more the the earlier you are in turn order. There are like the different actions. You're going to get new cards, the new roses. You're going to automate as I said in overview, you will build buildings, you will get new contracts, you will expand your rose garden, you will get more workers and then there's a special action down here which you will not do in the beginning of the game and maybe you will do it the second time you play the game if you are very good. It is basically being able to sell like special roses on extra time because you will be able to do it one time each round and most of the time, first couple of games you play, you will be happy when you're able to do it any at all.
The cool thing about this action selection mechanism is that you can choose to do the action one time, then you're spending one worker and the amount of
money
money that says here, but you can also choose to do it two times
and then you will spend another one of your precious workers and you have to pay even more money. So, the first time you automate, it will cost you four money, but if you want to do it a second time, you have to [clears throat] pay nine additional money and you can do it two times. The The positive thing about that is that you can do more stuff for one check mark.
Yeah.
But you will be spending more of your workers. So, we've been in positions like positions times where we've spent all our workers, but we have check marks left and then you may basically have to pass. Passing is not a bad action in this It's a good one. Sometimes you deliberately want to pass, but like balancing how when to do those double actions and when to just settle for one is very interesting decision-making.
And let's talk a bit about passing because you pass I I I briefly mentioned that you can pay to move up the track and it's good to be first because there's some things you really want to be able to do first like in specific rounds, specific positions, but you also the farther you go up here, the better bonuses you can get. And for example, getting these pollination ones, the white cubes, one of the easiest ways to get them is by passing.
Yeah.
And you need those to get the special flowers and to be able to get more special flowers and to be able to do the special action I talked about, you need to be able to get more of these. It is a very nice balance of both me wanting to go first, but also okay, so I can pass. When I pass, I can pay to move up. There's zero to move one. I pay four to move two and I pay 10 to move three. And in the especially early in the game when it's most important to maybe climb this track, 10 money is a lot and it's hard to like put that the money aside to be able to do that movement. So, I think it's a very interesting mechanism because you as you said sometimes okay, it is more important for me to be be to build the buildings and then I will pass the next action. Since I'm here, I will get some energy and maybe some more graft, and I will be able to use that later in a good way.
Another cool thing is that you're still placing one of your check mark when you're passing. And thing is, when I have chosen my action, the next thing we're doing in the next round, we rotate these. So, you will get the the other players what you call it, clipboards.
Yeah.
And then those spaces are blocked.
Yes.
So, when I'm passing, I'm also thinking which space do I want to block?
Yeah.
And then I have to be like, "Hmm, but I really want to get those new roses next round. What are the chances that that space is free when your clipboard comes to me?" Well, you can copy other people's like if this action is blocked, I can still do it, but I have to pay additional money.
And then you place something where else again, so you block something else again.
else. And those money, like money's really tight in this game, first of all, but it gets increasingly more expensive as the game progresses. So, you you'd rather not be doing that, but sometimes it's necessary.
You're paying the other player.
Oh, yeah.
giving the other player money, and I think this this is a really interesting interaction point of the game, as well. Because as you said, like I'm thinking, "Okay, I think you It looks like me like you really want a contract." Last time we played, I managed to block contracts for you at a position where it was
Oh, very big hindrance.
Yeah.
And I will and you could have paid the money, but like you already had a problem with money, and you needed a contract to be able to get more money in the next round. So, I think that's a very interesting a part of the game. There are so many ways to go. There's so many options. There's so many strategies, like paths to go, like will you start by getting more flowers? Will you start by expanding? Will you start by doing all these things? I feel like I have only scratched the surface the times we played. I feel like there's a a of variability, and a lot of that reason is because of the characters.
Yeah, I absolutely agree. I feel like the characters really shape the way that I go with this game. And also the fact that there's so many to choose from and that you're only choosing like four of their special buildings.
Because there are six different characters with a special ability and then all of them have seven different action cards special abilities.
I've been choosing so far the ones that give me like resources and ways to get more stuff. But you can also choose the ones that gives you more points easily. But there are more depth to those mostly. So those I feel like are for more advanced players. And I can feel like if you're getting a hang of this game, you can really explore those different directions with each character.
And the thing when you choose these special powers it's not like you just have them. They're connected to the building so you need to then be able to use the action to build the buildings and then you're choosing to not do other things. So it's always that like I feel like I'm making this plan oh I place these four these four abilities I want to unlock them but then I'm like oh but I need to do this thing and then maybe after two rounds I only unlocked one or two of them. And depending on the character and depending on the strategy that might be the way it goes and then you might choose like oh this is a late game ability and this is an early game ability. Uh but it's very there is so many ways to go around it. We already spoke a bit about the game being tight on money. I really love this fact that you're starting in debt. You don't have a lot of stuff. You're starting with with the money you got is basically the debt that you took.
Yeah and like first round you have a lot of money to do a lot of stuff and then the second and third round comes and you have like a fraction of these money and you still need to maintain like like handle this debt because if you don't gradually control your debt, it will grow because the loans will give you interest. Yeah. So, you need a big part of this game is like trying to keep this to a minimum, but you also want to like pay it off as fast as you can so that you can like get money like income as points instead of money trying to focus like shift the focus away from the money part to actually getting points.
But you don't want to do it too fast because you need the money that you are you have to be able to continue your engine. So, it's like every fall there will be an interest phase and then you will get one interest interest per second loan you already have. So, right now you would get three cuz it's rounds up and then I would have seven of these cubes and then four of them would turn into a new loan without me getting any money for it. So, that would just like continue growing up. So, you're trying to balance that. I really like this fact where you are as you said like you're trying to change from money to to points I think the better you get at the game the earlier earlier you will be able to for example sell these three purple special flowers and I'm going to do eight points instead of 15 points. Because the first time you played, you ended up with way too much money at the end of the game but that you could have chosen points for instance. You still won by a lot but you were in a position where you were afraid of you didn't know like exactly how much money you needed because it's one of those the the money is more worth in the beginning because let's say I get 13 money or eight points. 13 money I use 12 money to pay this back which is 15 points. So, it's way more than the eight points. So, that is a very interesting thing as well.
There is a decent amount of interaction I would say. It's mostly like a euro interaction. There is some points of interaction for example buying the different flowers because they're all roses they're all roses because they have they have colors that you need for the contracts. They also have point values. They also have a flag that we can talk about soon and also a number for set collection.
There is many reasons why you'd want the different roses. Also, they have different prices depending on if the it's like spring or fall and I feel like you what other players do will heavily influence your decision decision making both because you need them for the scoring that you're all all chasing towards but also because you you'd like to finish these contracts. So, you're trying to also make some synergy with the roses that you're picking.
So, every second round and the two last one there's going to be a goal. So, the first one is like having the most roses. Then, you have this flag. So, there's only always going to be a flag in round four and seven and that is how many you have of each flag. So, being first player for example might be very important. I'm seeing oh there's only one flag and of course I can be drawn more of that flag but I'm trying to be oh I'm a bit in the head lead but if if it's a tied and it's the player who's the farthest on this track who wins it. So, I feel like there's actually quite a bit of interaction. With that said, the game is long.
It's very very long. It has taken us like 4 hours with three players.
Yes.
And between two and three hours with two players.
say between 2.5 and 3 hours like almost 3 hours with two players. I think you can get it down to 2.5.
I think so but like a lot of the time that we use playing this game is not AP. There's some AP but you get to do more and more actions during the game so the rounds just like keep getting longer. It's I'm having a fun time but playing this with four we have not done that.
think I want to do it.
think I will, too. And I I think it will add some interesting interaction, but I think it will even make it harder to plan your actions and harder to do the decision-making because this will change up more uh this this um like uh selection
turn order even more important.
Yeah, uh for sure. And also the selection of roses will be harder to plan for it. So, that may be leading to even more AP moments.
What I do like then is that you don't Like when I do this check mark, it's not like I I can always pass. Like and I can always copy. So, there is like you don't have to If I Oh, I'm going to do flowers, but I'm lost. So, if somebody takes the flowers I want and there has to be anything else, I will do something else instead.
With that said, I don't mind the game being long because the game is really really good. I am having a blast playing this game. It's frustrating when you feel like you're a bit lagging behind. We've had that both of us.
Yes.
But I feel like if you're better at the game because you we both saw in those both those positions when somebody got like a better start, you could take a lot of that back. And I think even more when you're playing multiplayer, there will be more of that possibilities because there's even more possibilities of blocking and not just like a yes or no, black or white on the the scorings. I think it's a really good game. I'm having a blast playing it. I can't say so far if I like it better or less than Sweetlands. I really love Sweetlands. But I think that there is more interaction here than in Sweetlands and more yes, a more like a multiplayer thing here than it was in Sweetlands.
Yeah, I agree.
So, with that said, if you have any questions about the game, let us know in the comments. If you want to check out more about the game, you can check out the links in the description. If you don't want to check it out, you can go and play some games or go outside if it's warm or if it's raining, because that's also nice. And that's going to be the end. Thank you so much for watching. I'm Johannes.
I'm Sarah. And you've been watching Board Gaming Ramblings and bye-bye.