Pegasus Spiele 57809E Beer & Bread (English Edition) (Deep Print Games) Board

Product Information

The last few turns can seem pointless if you are not able to sell any more beer or bread or play any cards that will effect final scoring. This is especially annoying if you watch your competitor play one final scoring point card on their last turn. The title and setting of the newest offering from designer Scott Almes and publisher Capstone Games sets the tone and has us asking all kinds of questions. Why are the two villages so close together? Will they combine into one mega-corporation to take over the world of brew and loaf? And are we selling our crafted creations to each other across the river? Are there outsiders who visit the local monastery, and do they come for our goods? Is this game creating an emergent narrative out of a simple two-player structure? A game called Solenia was released a few years ago which gave a very similar vibe to this but I would much rather play Beer & Bread.

Beer & Bread gracefully dances with its artful balance of constraints and limitations. Surprisingly, the game does not feel restrictive or punitive, even when an occasional misplay occurs. Take the resources throughout both fruitful and dry seasons, for example. Granted, the fruitful is more bountiful than the dry, yet scarcity could still persist. Hence, players must strategically harvest resource. It paves the way for more substantial production down the line. Founded on the fruitful lands of an erstwhile monastery, two villages have held up the dual tradition of brewing beer and baking bread. While sharing fields and resources, they still find pride in their friendly rivalry of besting each other’s produce. The components included in Beer & Bread are excellent from the beautifully illustrated game board and cards to the cute resources and first player token. The artwork feels like it has been taken from a game that came out a few years ago. This is not a complaint as I really like the artwork by Michael Menzel, but just an observation that this looks like a Uwe Rosenburg classic. Beer & Bread is a two-player game featuring multi-use cards and a unique round structure. The objective is to craft beer and bread using collected resources, but the amount you can craft is restricted to only one good per type. This is further complicated by the nature of final scoring: both good types are scored separately, and you retain the lowest of the two. During the dry years, three cards are added to the exchange area for players to swap and play. Before we get into round structure, let’s discuss the multi-use card actions. Cards can be used in one of three ways during a turn: Harvest and Store, Produce and Sell, and Upgrade and Clean. Harvesting provides resources, producing allows players to craft goods with gained resources, and upgrading provides powerful abilities and clears out the goods that have been produced (remember, you can only store one of each type at a time). The harvest and store action provides resources from the card played, as well as any matching resources from a previous harvest.Taking place over 6 years (rounds), the game gives and takes away. Fruitful years pay out resources aplenty on odd-numbered rounds. Wheat to waste?! Well, not exactly, as your opponent always gets what you can’t use! And during the even-numbered dry times, you need to survive on what you’ve collected before (or can beg from your opponent). Suddenly, those friendly hand-outs start to dry up and you’re left wishing you had planned better! Harvests that card for the resources shown on the top of the card – these go into the 9 box store show on the main board, and the card is placed to one side. Importantly the card is kept because resources will multiply if you lay another card on top which shows an identical resource (note: the resource has to show on the newest card to benefit from the multiplier effect of any existing resources; The game features alternating rounds of play offering up a twist on player interaction and the likes of card drafting and resource management. Each card is also multi-use so you'll have to tinker with the best use for them from turn to turn. Multiuse cards? A Scott Almes’ design? 2 Player only game? Where do I sign?? Beer & Bread is filling me up like a triple layered chocolate cake! If you’re ending a dry year, any harvested cards are discarded as are those in the exchange slots. Each player then gets 5 new cards starting with the first player ready for the next fruitful year to begin. Scoring… Simple As Sliced Bread

The final item I’ll mention is the upgrade system. Each card you add to your upgrade area pertains to a specific section of the board. You can add cards that trigger when you clear your goods, or that pertain to field resources, storage additions, or producing goods. There’s also phase specific and end game scoring options too. There are no limits on these areas, so you can have as many upgrades as you choose in each area. The shared field has varying yield based on the type of year. Water is always available. Game Experience: Each of you represents one of these villages. Over the course of six years - which alternate between fruitful and dry - you must harmonize your duties of harvesting and storing resources, producing beer and bread, selling them for coins and upgrading your facilities.Windmill– When all the cards are used in either phase, it’s the windmill phase. The player with the fewest stored resources gets the windmill meeple (signifying that they will go first in the next year). Then you re-seed the fields with the required number of resources depending on whether you are moving into a fruitful or dry year. In Beer & Bread , two people compete against each other in a friendly rivalry. As the heads of a small village, they compete over six years to produce the most delicious beer and bake the best bread. Players share the fields and resources, but their own actions determine victory and defeat. Only those who create a balance of beer and bread will be victorious, because only the less lucrative resource is scored. If a player produces beer or bread, that card is slid into the bakery/brewery slot face-up. The resources are returned to the general supply, and then the card gets flipped face-down. It will stay in that slot until clean up. At the end of the game you feel like your brain has had a good work out similar to playing a Euro style game but you will be pleased and surprised to find you have only been playing for 30 minutes. And I love how the type of year changes the game play – subtly on paper but significantly on the table. Even the upgrade powers change depending on whether you are rolling in rye or begging for barley.