Cacao

Our Review

Fifteen Years of Extremities

Minimalistic Meeples

Over decades playing pieces in general looked like a small cone or bowling pin, thereby somehow representing the haptic and ergonomically perfectly shaped representation of a human being for the purpose of playing, albeit at the same time too abstract and a bit boring. With the arrival of the Millennium and with „Carcassonne“ the world of games has been hit by a wooden (r)evolution: The playing pieces were given arms and legs. And, as if that wasn’t enough, they were christened „Meeples“ , a term that was purportedly formed from a meld of the English words of „my“ and „people“.

The years after Carcassonne have brought a multitude of variants of playing pieces featuring extremities; nowadays we are even enticed to use animal-shaped „animeeples“ and food-shaped „vegimeeples“ (both can be experienced in huge numbers in „Caverna“. The original shape from “Carcassonne”, however, is still a big favorite with game designers and gamers. So, for instance, did Ted Alspach not only draw and publish a comic strip series that was published regularly up to 2012 and named Board 2 Pieces, featuring the live and fate of those meeples that can nowadays be called “classic”; he has even provided those meeples with super powers in his game of “Mutant Meeples”. For a counterpart let me mention “Terror in Meeple City” (in its first edition published as “Rampage): Meeples are suffering a great deal in this game and really thrown onto the board, flung about and blown over, to be finally gobbled up by us monster players, fortunately not really! There is an impressive number of 90 meeples in six colors, the yellow ones, being meant to be blond, are wearing skirts.

With actually 102 meeples we were surprised by the first edition of “Antike” that featured this number; however, in later editions, the meeples in Antike changed shape to look more ancient. The highlight in numbers and at the same time in quality currently probably is “Keyflower”, featuring the - so far known - maximum of 141 meeples, who are called “Keyples” in this came. “Carcassonne”, in turn, has remained constant at 40 playing pieces, notwithstanding the many expansions for the game. A rather worrying reduction of population can be noticed in the current series of Carcassonne versions under the heading of “Around the World”: „In Carcassonne Südsee” the population drops to exactly half the amount of the original game. Have globalization and financial crisis managed to grab the world of games in their cruel fist? Anyway, in “Carcassonne Goldrausch” the population count rose again to 25 and is, furthermore, even wearing cowboy hats. “Cacao” from Abacusspiele, however, is continuing this reduction very consequently and - with only 1, yes ONE, meeple per player - is holding the current negative record; and this lonely meeple is not even a Chief, but only a water-carrier who is used to mark your score in points on your player board.

And yet, we have at our command 176 additional workers in „Cacao“ - how can this be possible? The answer: The playing pieces have virtually been „melded“ with the tiles and all players have eleven of those worker-tiles in four player colors at their disposal. The edges of those tiles are marked with an amount of zero to three workers - in total always four workers. In this way those markings very clearly indicate their function: When I place my worker tile with the one-worker border next to a cocoa-producing tile, I can harvest one cocoa bean; when the border shows two workers, I of course receive two beans - and the same principle goes for three or zero workers. Very often however such a worker tile is not only placed next to one of those tiles called jungle tiles, but next to two or maybe even three jungle tiles. Then the workers at the other connected edges become active accordingly, too. The worker or workers at unused edges need not relax too early; they, too, will have to contribute to the raise of the gross national product, as soon as I or another player puts a jungle tile next to such an edge of a worker tile.

With this sophisticated twist alone the feeling of the game changes completely in comparison to „Carcassonne“; despite the similarities seem staggering at first glance: many square landscape tiles, and even the box has the same shape and size. But I do not score the tile that I place and on which I place a worker, but the up to four adjacent tiles in combination with those - in the end up to four - possible worker tiles. In addition I am, to begin with, restricted to the placement of worker tiles, albeit always having a choice from three such tiles. New jungle tiles are placed into the general display only when two worker tiles, regardless of which player color, are placed diagonally next to each other. Furthermore, the active player may choose this favorite from two open-faced jungle tiles; should he be forced to place both of them he can, at least, choose their respective locations. Visually, the general display corresponds to a „Chess board“ pattern, being made up from alternating worker tiles and jungle tiles. This results, in the end, in a more abstract overall picture, but still looks very pretty.

This results in new and different tactical ruminations: Of course you want, first of all, use your own workers most efficiently, by placing a tile edge with two or three workers next to a profitable jungle tile, and a tile edge with one or zero workers next to a less profitable one. But at the same time, when a jungle tile is placed, another player will probably glean a profit from this placement too, so that I will try to achieve the opposite for his worker tile. Furthermore, you should try to avoid that your workers cannot do anything useful, because, for instance, one of the edges of your tile remains a border tile of the general display or that a worker, who might be able to harvest cocoa beans, cannot do so, because your storage is filled to maximum capacity of five beans. On the other hand, I will prefer to place a jungle tile that does yield little to nothing next to an available two-worker edge of another player. Of course, such measures can be taken much more efficiently in a game for two players than in a game for four. To find, based on those consideration, the “best” location for a tile can take some time and some pondering, especially as the supply for jungle tiles as well as for worker tiles is known or can be figured out. And yet, despite all this, a game usually progresses quickly, you can even manage to arrive at the final result within a very sensible time frame of half an hour. Furthermore, each player is involved in the moves and considerations of all other players, are their tile placements very often have consequences for your own state of affairs.

So, what do those jungle tiles offer? Besides the already mentioned harvest of one cocoa bean there are two double plantations which deliver two cocoa beans per worker (but remember, due to the storage capacity of a maximum of five beans you should not place a three-worker edge there! In combinations using other tiles you can sell those cocoa beans for varying sums of one, two, three or - albeit only once - for four gold coins per cocoa bean. On other jungle tiles you can earn one or two victory points per worker directly. In the jungle there will also turn up five temples, where there will be a majority scoring at the end of the game yielding six or three gold for the player in first place and second place in each of the temples. Water tiles help our water carrier our one and only meeple, to advance on the circular player/village boards. Each player begins at minus 10 and can advance to plus 16 via eight activation steps; the individual activation steps do not have identical effects, they are most effective at the beginning and at the end of the circular track.

And then, finally, there are two mysterious cult places for sun worship: The sun discs that you collect there can be either swapped for a victory point or - and this is the more alluring and interesting effect - you may use them, shortly before the game ends, when all jungle tiles have been placed and only a few worker tiles are left, to build over a worker tile already in place with a new one so that you can use the then usually four adjacent jungle tiles again. Or you focus on a certain effect and keep a three-worker edge handy, maybe for a water spot, that is, three more steps of your water carrier. A little negative factor might be, that a starting player advantage that is definitely existing can be enhanced by the option to replace/overbuild a worker tile, for instance, when the last one changes the majorities in one or maybe even two temple tiles for their final scoring.

The visual design of the components is satisfactory, the lack real meeples is balanced by the wooden pieces representing cocoa beans. On the other hand, the card board tiles for cold coins/victory points are a bet meagre and the constant taking up and changing is a lot of handling, I think a common scoring board as in „Carcassone“ - maybe even on a cocoa bean shaped board with a second meeple for each player - would have been better, but of course the coins avoid easy calculation of other player’s scores. Despite the box inlay being prettily designed, each meeple has his own bed or recess, all components tumble about, especially all the gold, if you turn over the box. This can be avoided if you keep the cut-out sheets and put them in for a filler.

A rounded-off, tactical and definitely sophisticated tile placement game giving one a constructive game play, that manages to get some fresh air into a standard genre using few and uncomplicated rules. Players from Vienna or lower Austria may greet the appearance of new cocoa tiles with a happy “Gaugau”.

Harald Schatzl

Players: 2-4

Age: 8+

Time: 45+

Designer: Phil Walker-Harding

Artist: Claus Stephan

Price: ca. 25 Euros

Publisher: Abacussspiele 2015

Web: www.abacusspiele.de

Genre: Tile placement

Users: For families

Special: 2 players

Version: multi

Rules: de en

In-game text: no

Comments:

Keep the push-out sheets

Good also for experienced players

Also works well for two players

Compares to:

Carcassonne and other tactical tile placement games

Only one wooden meeple per player

Other editions:

Filosofia Edition, Z-Man Games

My rating: 5

Harald Schatzl:

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0