Fromage and Cascadia - Review

Review of Fromage and Cascadia.

Cheese and Nature… what could be better? Maybe a selection of meats and crackers to accompany. However, these are the games I've played this week and they were both quite fun once we got into it.

I find that games can be made or broken by the company, but the mechanics and theme can save them. Fortunately on this occasion I had the pleasure of both, 3 wonderful people to play games, strong theme and okay mechanics which made it very enjoyable!

Review 1 - Fromage

Firstly Fromage, as it was by far the more enjoyable of the two. Not just because I absolutely love worker placement games with light Tableaux building system, but because its about Cheese, one of the greatest things in the world. Some would argue cheese is better than sex, I would say it depends on the cheese ;) … anyway…

Good points of Fromage

It takes you into the world of French Cheeses where reputation matters above all else.

Fromage is nicely assembled as a game with very clean refined mechanics which reduces player frustration.

It has a rulebook with some very funny parts (actually making us laugh out loud) by stating the obvious multiple times and then reiterating it when it shouldn't need reiterating. (This might be an accident, but I enjoyed it.)

It has a wonderful rotating lazy Susan which means every player can decide what they're doing with their workers at the same time and you're not waiting for everyone else to take a turn.

It is a strategic game without much spite which is quite nice as there's fewer fights and rules questions.

It's ideal for playing as a background game with those who are just dipping their toes in the board game world. Where you can have a nice conversation whilst you're waiting for others to decide what they're doing, without drastically increasing the game length. This prevents players from being frustrated by others suffering analysis paralysis. I think this is actually its biggest strength (after it being cheese themed of course).

However…

Bad points of Fromage

Whilst the artwork was great and gives Viticulture vibes, the colour scheme leads to so much unnecessary confusion each turn as the Bronze, silver and Gold cheese placements constantly get mixed with soft, hard and blue cheeses. Everyone I've played with has ended up being guilty of this multiple times in the game. I can't help but feel this could have been avoided by stronger player colours which stand out better. I'll tell you why this is such a problem, because we were playing in a well lit board game cafe, not an “ambient dimly lit room” that my mother and sisters insist on when playing games. When it's a dark room I can't imagine how much longer it would take to play.

…I digress…

There's games that do worker placement better and I'm not 100% sure that the theme is enough to make me choose it over other games. I wonder if it tried too hard to be like a simplistic Viticulture that it lost a little bit of its charm. It's frustrating that I can't quite put my finger on it but I do think it's the interaction between players indirectly affects others where as Viticulture directly effects others. It doesn't feel like you're competing against others to have the best cheese making reputation as much as it feels like you're building an independent cheese empire.

When you inconvenience other players it happens by accident 90% of the time which feels annoying rather than planned. So I wonder if the reason I'm not a huge fan is due to the lack of fire and passion in the decisions I was able to make, tough choices happened not from limited or prevented choice but too much off it. Six and two threes over almost every cheese I placed. It was difficult to strategize because of this.

Summary of Framage

It's a great themed game, but unfortunately one I won't go out my way to play or out my way to avoid. It'd be a game that's something I could teach quickly to non board gamer family members or friends. It would probably be the perfect background game to play whilst having wine and cheese! It's only 2 and half hours to play with 3 brand new players and a quick teach and by my book that's actually really good for an evening's entertainment.

…now it's time for Review 2…

Review 2 - Cascadia

Cascadia, a game set in Nature in North America. The artwork is visually stunning the game play, once understanding the unusually convoluted rule book, is fairly straightforward so let's begin…

Bad points of Cascadia

Rule book, rule book, RULE BOOK. I don't know quite what they were thinking but I've easily played over 150 different board games not including the many play test games I've taken part in too and that rule book needs serious simplifying. It took me 20 minutes to half an hour to work through because its not clear. A simple solution would be a quick teach and I'll likely write one because it's needed.

The goal of Cascadia is to build an incredible habitat for your wildlife to go into. Each turn you have limited choices of a Habitat tile with a with a wildlife token. Once you've made your choice you add your habitat tile to your growing tableaux and then you place your wildlife token on any corresponding Habitat tile (these have between 1 and 3 options on) - this short paragraph is probably the equivalent of 2 pages in the cascadia rule book.

Next, you then have a few ways of manipulating the tiles and tokens using pine cones you collect via matching certain wildlife to special habitats. You get points at the end of the game based on the placement of your animals and the size of your largest habitats in each category - this is the equivalent of another 2 pages in the the cascadia rule book.

I've finished Mocking the rule book I promise. Good points now

Good points of Cascadia

The artwork and theme is great. A little clarity with the graphic design would be helpful for the scoring cards as they're not that clear and easy to not pay attention too.

The mechanics, once understood, were quite straightforward.

Summary of cascadia

It's a decently put together pattern making game which links the theme throughout. Unfortunately the rulebook let's it down as I was very close to sticking it back on the shelf without playing because it was too higglty pigglty.

Thank you for reading!

Sam

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