Halflings: Best Chef Review - Chairman of the Board
Transcript
And finally, at number one, I have Halflings Best Chef. So, this is another upcoming crowdfunding project that I've been very fortunate enough to have an early copy of, and this is a diced driven worker placement game where we are trying to collect ingredients and complete recipes to score victory points. Now, the setting of this game is, you know, clearly heavily inspired by Tolken and, you know, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbits, and so on. And I have to say this is one of the most gorgeous games that I've ever played. You know, the visual appeal is off the charts here. From the cover to the board to these recipe cards, the artwork is as good as it gets. You know, truly wonderful um visual appeal. Um but we're here to talk about the the mechanisms. And again, I tend to really like dice driven games. And this game is a really nice stepping on point to introduce players to dice driven mechanisms they might not have seen before. So, at the start of each round, you're going to roll three dice, and you're going to be using those dice to allocate to different worker placement spots. And all these spots are pretty straightforward in what they do. So, for example, you've got the market where you'll have a random assortment of ingredients. If you're there first and you have the higher pit values, then you'll get first choice of those ingredients. Uh you've got these spices that will be like kind of wild card ingredients that you can use to fill in the space of an ingredient you're missing. You've got, you know, the money spot. you've got uh these wines you can go and collect where you know the more different wines you get the more points you can get but also each recipe card
that you're completing will have a a complimentary wine and if you have both of those you'll get some victory points. Uh you've got these decorations you can collect which will give you kind of ongoing in-game abilities or also endame scoring opportunities. They'll cost money and money in this game is pretty tight. Uh, and you've also got some kind of mitigation spots where you can get these soups which will let you roll these pips around in kind of act like your workers in Castles of Burgundy where you can convert like a one into a six or a two into a a one or a three and so on. And you also have the actual spots to complete the recipes. And kind of a twist on this game which really does up the tension is that when it comes to the the recipes you're trying to complete, they're not actually in your personal supply. they are on the main board, meaning that they are up for grabs by the other players at any time.
So, if you're collecting towards something, you need to be very paranoid that that that particular recipe could be gone by the time you have those ingredients. There are further twists in this game where it kind of reminded me of Kais where all the different actions are resolved in a particular order or you know a track meaning that the order in which they're resolved is very important because you could actually reserve your ability to complete a recipe before you have the ingredients. Meaning that you're kind of wagering in yourself to get what you need by the time it gets to that worker activation if that makes sense. So, for example, if I'm really missing a a vegetable, but I've already reserved my spot here, I might put my thing on the market after, hoping that there's still a vegetable there. Um, and then I would have everything I need by the time it comes to completing that recipe. Um, when you complete recipes, you're going to get some bonus money, which of course is very useful for buying organic ingredients, which are much higher quality and will give you more victory points. Um, but will also let you buy those very valuable decorations I mentioned earlier. You're also incentivized to um collect kind of um starter main and dessert meals cuz for each set you collect or complete these recipes and you'll get some additional points. Again, also collecting all the different wines is going to be giving you points based on set collections um and so on. So, it's all very straightforward stuff, but as I mentioned earlier, it does a great job of introducing or yeah, kind of like drip feeding you mechanisms you're going to
see in more advanced games. Of course, that thought process of what am I going to prioritize? When do I need to manipulate my my dice? Um, you know, am I going to take a gamble and go here? If I don't have everything I need by the time I get here, I'm going to take a um a dissatisfied customer token, which is going to be negative points. um and so on. So there's again there's lots of autonomy here on a very simple and introductory almost gateway plus level game. And for me this game does a good job of being kind of in a vacuum and being that stepping stone so you're not jumping straight into those more advanced games. This is going to be a good halfway point I think. So think of something like Lords of Water Deep. What that does for standard worker placement games. this game does that well or does something comparatively um but with dice driven worker placement games. I think I'd say if anything um if I had to criticize I'd say maybe maybe the game is a little bit repetitive maybe it's a few rounds too long um and also despite again me praising the fact that it's a good um introductory game I think this one isn't going to have that evergreen quality to it. I think once you've played this a few times, you then of swiftly move on to it and step onto something more advanced. But I'd say if you are regularly introducing games to new players, this is a fantastic option to have in your collection. again, not only because it's so gorgeous looking and people are going to get very invested in the way this one looks and
feels and the high quality of the production, but because people are going to understand and grock this one quite quickly, but it still has enough interest in going on to um, you know, to keep them hooked and not get bored. So, pleasantly surprised by this one. I wasn't sure what to expect because normally I find these recipe fulfillment style games a bit rinse and repeat and I find them a bit plotting and a bit monotonous. This one I really did like that up tension of not having your cards in reserve and you know really having to invest heavily to guarantee yourself to get the recipe that you want. So again that turn angst is turned up to 11 uh with this game which is definitely what you need for a worker placement game.
So, be sure to check this one out when it comes up on um on crowdfunding. I'm not sure exactly what platform it's coming on. I believe it's Kickstarter, but I will um correct that if I'm wrong. Um and yeah, check it out if it doesn't interest you. So that is Halflings best chef at number