Tea & Rum Review: Gunfire is on the Menu
Transcript
Hey everybody, I'm Tom Vasel and welcome to the Dice Tower. Today we're taking a look at a game called Tea and Rum. This is from Captain Games and they number their games even though they're all different sizes. This is number 12. I don't really like that, but uh Captain Games, they're not the greatest looking games ever. This looks okay, right? Um and the game itself looks fine, but they have some really interesting ideas and they seem to fluctuate from doing a heavy game one year to a light game the next year. Well, this is a heavier style game, but it has a unique twist. Let me show you. In this game, players will be collecting two types of victory points, blue and red. Red are square, blue are round. You were collecting these. These are open, but as soon as someone gets their eighth blue victory point, at that point you're going to then hide all your victory points in your chest where they will be revealed at the end of the game.
Now, there's going to be two winners in the game, although in a two-player game it's slightly different. There's only one. There's a way to determine if it's blue or red. But in three or four players, there's going to be two winners in the game, possibly one if one person wins both. Now, when you put all of your victory points in your chest, you're also going to take one of these cards and at any point you can accomplish this card. So, here I can spend 20 gold and I finished this card and it will give me one red victory point. But if I don't accomplish the blue card that I take, then my blue victory points count for nothing. But if I do accomplish my card, then whoever has the most blue victory points becomes the governor of their island. They're one of the winners. And whoever has has most red victory points becomes the pirate king and is the other winner. Like I said, it could be the same player.
But an important thing to note is you cannot be more than 10 apart in your victory points. So, if I have 30 blue and 10 red, 10 of those blue go away and I would only have 20 blue and 10 red. So, that's what you're trying to do. How do you do it? At the beginning of each of five rounds, players going to look at their player board and wherever you have your population, that's how much money you will get. Players are also going to be taking turns in turn order taking these cards and it's up to you, you could pass and not take one, but you can pay this amount of money and then take one of the rows of that card. So, I might want one tobacco and one wood or I might want three wood. But whatever I do, I'll turn that card over paying the money. You have spots to put these different resources in your cargo. You can always pay money to open up more spots for cargo if you want to. The main part of the game comes next and this is the action phase. There you have four action boards with different actions that are randomly placed on them. You'll notice these actions 1 2 3 and 4.
Each person's going to start with a pirate in each of these spots and on your turn in the action phase, you pull one of your workers off a spot sending it back to your main board. Since there was four people there, this is the action I'll take. So, for example here, I can take three gold and the blue victory point or take a contract action. The next person to go will take the three action, the contract action or build a building and so on and so forth. So, you have to decide which of these you want to take off. You can always do a very generic action if you don't want to do the action on the board. At the next round of the game, all these workers will be off these spots and then players are going to put a worker down and then they'll get the one and then the next person can put one and you can take whatever action you want. You can even put more than one person in the same action, but But course that means on the next round, then two of your actions will come from the actions in that spot.
So this is like I said the main focus of the game and these let you build buildings, collect pirates, and various other actions. One of the actions as I mentioned was build a building. If you have the resources, you will pay that. Buildings are useful for a few reasons. Sometimes they give you an immediate effect. This one just gives you four of the blue victory points. This one gives you two of the red victory points, but also allows you to turn three into two tobacco when you want to. This one gives you three red victory points and gets rid of all your coins in storage, opens up your storage completely. Some will give you income phase things like this one with three gold. And there's all sorts of things they will do. Some give you symbols which will matter because at the end of some rounds, whoever has the most in different symbols will score victory points. The other action that I'm showing you here is reputation. Players will be gaining reputation as the game goes by. And every time you move up on this reputation track or eventually moving down, you will get all sorts of bonuses and these bonuses get better and better as you go up. Players can do a trade action where they can trade resources for money. Basically, you put things on one side and then things on the other side and make them equal using money to balance it. Although you can pick one resource to sell for an extra coin and one resource to buy for one coin less. Players can fulfill contracts which will you have to have to give the resources that it shows there which will give you points. Um and plus some bonuses. I mean this one for example, I could take four blue points, five blue
points, or four red and a blue point. Here you can take a point of either type and then move up two on the reputation track. Players can also buy pirates. Uh when you buy a pirate, you'll get sometimes an immediate benefit like these guys move up the track. Pirates also can be used once per game. You can spend cannons to get victory points. And pirates will get better as the game goes by. They're much more expensive, but they'll give you more victory points as you go through, and more and different pirates will come out each round. And that's pretty much it. Like I said, I've already explained the victory conditions. You're going to go through this whole thing five different times. You get four workers each time plus resources and more. And at the end of the game, there's one well, more likely two winners.
So, let's talk about the twist first. And that is the fact that there are two winners. Or if you play with two players, in a way two players is you reveal a color each round, red or blue, and you're going to find and there's like a automated third player involved, too. But at the end of the game, you'll find out whether red points count or blue point counts. It's fine, but I think the game's best with three or four. And frankly, I think it's best with four for a lot of reasons. One, in a three-player game, one person will be sad. Some people aren't going to like the fact that there's two winners. There could be one, but likely to win both would be pretty impressive. It's It's much easier to pick one thing and concentrate on it. And if I pick, for example, the red captain's the the the pirate king points and I'm going for red points, and you are trying to win both, I think I have the slight edge on you.
But some people aren't going to like the fact that two players win and two players lose. That don't bother me at all. I find it to be interesting. I like the idea of picking something to go and play for that. But you need to keep it in mind. Then on top of that, there's the worker placement. And this to me is the the meat and potatoes of this game. This game has a lot of mechanisms, but most of them are really simple. Ironically, the one that's the most complicated is the trading one. It's not really. They have two that scale balancing and you're like, I'm going to sell this for three and you just put out all your stuff and does it balance? If not, you even one side out with money either. You're paying more money or you're getting more money. I don't think it's particularly complicated, but but I that's I found that to be the most trouble teaching that and how the you have to accomplish a card to get the captain's points. The fact of the matter is getting captain's points is a little trickier. So, if you if you think, "Oh, there's two winners." Be the better winner, I guess, and and go for the blue victory.
But, everything else is really simple. I at the beginning of the game there's a resource collection phase and it's nice. You're going around table going, "Mhm, I think I want that card. But, which line on that card do I want and how much money do I have?" And you're trying to build up an income. And then there's a lot of elements from other games. Hey, I'm getting these resources to build these buildings which will give me things. And at the end of each round there's a certain symbol or two symbols that will give victory points out to people who have the most of it. So, maybe I'm building buildings to get that. I'm buying these captains for a one use ability and then a cannon which basically gives them a second use ability. And I'm trying to complete these contracts. But, all this centers around a really good worker placement system. And that is well, it's worker pulling and then worker placing. So, there's four people and there's a bit of a chicken. I I want that third ability. So, you pull your worker out first.
I'll pull my worker off over here first. And sometimes in this game going first isn't necessarily an advantage because someone's got to pull their worker off that section first. And if everybody wants that third action for it finally someone's going to be forced to pull their worker off. And then when the second round when you're placing workers on it, you you get to choose which area you go to, but you have to remember it's going to affect your third round where you're pulling them off. And the same thing fourth to fifth round. And that to me makes the game. It has other fun things I like moving up a track, the reputation track where every space is giving you good delicious stuff, the buildings affecting what you can do, you're always getting to do some fun actions, hidden victory points with two different things. It really is, to be honest, a mishmash of a lot of mechanisms.
But, it is all based around that centerpiece of which action am I going to take by putting a worker on and then pulling them off. And I like that concept a lot. The The actions on a section will change based on the number of players. There's four and then there's uh two and three sided. You just flip the tiles over. But, they're also going to be in a different order each turn. The The The buildings you use will be different from game to game. There's the pirates captains are the same each game. But, there's things that are different enough that I think there's enough variety to go back into it. I don't mind the fact that there's two winners. I find it to be an interesting I wouldn't want that in most games, but having it in one game I think is fun. But, the worker selection and the vast amount of things I can do in this game, I'm constantly doing fun interesting things. And then get to that end game and trying to balance your points because you can't go all in with one cuz you remember there's that 10-point differential. So, you need to even if you're I'm trying to win with blue victory points, I need to get enough red victory points so that I don't have to lose 10, you know, go down to that 10 differential.
That's There's just so many interesting fun things in this game. It It's unique and fun. I'll give it an eight out of 10. I think it could look nicer. And I think it's not going to be for everybody with all the different things going on, but I find it to be very interesting. That's Tea and Rum. I'm Tom Vasel and you're watching The Dice Tower.
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