Fromage – I Got A Need For Cheese
This is last weeks game from Board Game Arena. I was excited for Fromage last year when I thought it was going to be at Gen Con. It turned out not to be at Gen Con, but I own it now. And I got to play it a handful of times at different player counts on Board Game Arena (BGA). So is this game going to be a tasty cheesy game or a some stinky cheese that no one wants? Let’s see how Fromage plays and what works or doesn’t about.
How to Play Fromage
Fromage is a cheese placement game. You want to place out cheese every turn to score you the most points that you can. But there are certain rules as to how you can place out your cheese. And that’s where some of the strategy of the game comes in. But let’s dive into the basics of it first.
Placing Workers
On your turn you spend workers to activate different spots. One of things you can do every turn is make cheese. You spend a worker and a cheese token. Then you can also gather resources with another one of your workers. These resources are either livestock, building materials, order cards, or berries. And finally, you can spend a worker to activate a building, if you have a building to activate. When you place down a worker to make cheese you also spend a cheese token that you have. When someone is out of cheese tokens that is the end of the game.
The spots you can place a worker does have another feature to it as well. When you place a worker, it might be pointing across the board, or to the left or the right. The board will rotate after each player has placed each turn. And players place all at once. When your wedge of cheese/worker is pointing at you, it comes back off the board.
The Game Board
The game board is interesting as well and important for how the game plays. The board is split into four sections, so each player is going to have one section that is pointed at themselves. Each section is going to give you points in a different way.
One is more area control where you get benefits for having the most cheese in some areas. The other gives you a choice, more points for putting your cheese on one side of the cheese display, or more resources that you get if you put them on the other side. The third one is about creating pairs of cheese. And the final one is creating a path of cheese around a section of the board.
Scoring Points
So each section of the boards is one of the ways that you will score points. When you score points in a few other ways. One is that you can build a building that will give you points. Then you also get points for completing order cards. Finally, you score points for making cheese that is fruited or that is with jam. The berries will score points for fruiting and jam by multiplying the number you fruited with the number you turned into jam. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.
What Doesn’t Work
This is a weirdly simple game, but also slightly complex game. I think that getting down scoring for each section, at least on BGA, can be a bit tricky. You want to make cheese and sometimes the best option isn’t to make cheese. Plus you need to think not only about what scores you points but when you’ll be getting your workers back because you can do one action per worker and you really don’t want to get stuck with zero workers one rotation. So what you do is simple but with the scoring it can be a bit more than it feels like. It’s not a real negative, just that you’ll likely learn scoring after a game or two.
What Works
I like the speed and simplicity of your worker placement. You do have choices where you can place your worker, but not too many. And you need to think about getting your workers back, like I mentioned. So a lot of the time how many spots you actually want to move is going to be fairly limited. Add in that everyone goes at once means that the game turns are only as slow as the slowest player that turn.
I like the timing mechanism of placing workers. I could place all my workers out, or as many as I can, turn one and not get them back until turn four if I wanted. That is going to be a poor decision, most likely, but you could do that. Or I decide that I really want to gain, let’s say, three cows. That means because I’m waiting a while for that worker to come back, I’m playing less powerful options or more specific options the next couple of rounds. It’s a great balancing puzzle of when you get a lot of resources or a harder to make cheese versus when you just want your workers back for the next round.
One last element that I like, and I like more in the game, but to highlight, is how you start to become different throughout the game. You might unlock a different building or just have different buildings than your opponents. That means that you get a specific bonus or an extra worker placement spot to use. And that I think is a fun element for a game like this. It doesn’t make you completely different from the other players, but just gives you a different way to hone your strategy.
Who Is Fromage For?
I think Fromage is a pretty solid welcoming game. Like I said in the what doesn’t work, scoring for each section might take a new player a game to figure out. But what you do on your turn is simple enough. Place a worker once to make cheese. Place a worker once to gather resources, and place a worker once to use a building if you have one. It’s really just that simple so it’s a fun theme that I think a lot of people are going to love. But for more seasoned gamers, it’s still going to be fun because you get an interesting strategy as to how you place out your workers and when you get workers back.
My Final Thoughts on Fromage
There’s one element that makes this a very solid game. I like it, let’s start out with that. But I think the best element of the game is how you get your workers back. That timing puzzle of when you put down a worker who might take another turn to get there, versus getting it back next turn, it’s fun. And you generally don’t want to get a turn with no or one worker, but it might be worth it to score a lot of points some time.
And I feel like each way that you score, whether it’s berries, which can be really high scoring, or in a section, they all give you good ways to get points without feeling broken. So one game I might decide to push hard on that area control board and make sure I get as much cheese on there as I can. Or I might play it smart with the adjacency part of the board, or I could just go for fruited cheeses and jams to get the best multiplier score that I can. I decide what type of scoring I want. And the game is fast enough that if it doesn’t workout, you can always just decide to play again.
My Score: B+
Strategy: C+
Luck: D
There isn’t much luck in Fromage. Some luck in what orders you draw, but they are just one way to score that you don’t need to lean into at all, so it’s a low luck game. But it’s also not so heavy in strategy that you are planning out. But, as I said, it’s that nice balance of just enough strategy and easy and fast enough to play that I think it works well for me.
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