OUR REVIEW

COFFEE WITH MILK IN VIENNA

Café Melange

MAKE A RESERVATION AT CAFÉ CENTRAL

Café Melange, the new game from Clickerspiele, shows a coffee cup on the box cover, and in this cup sit and stand caricatures of famous Viennese persons. For a background story the game uses the famous Viennese Café Central and its function as a favored meeting point of equally famous people.

The object of the game is to place your own guests and famous people at tables, in their role as visitors to the coffee house, by playing cards and to score victory points for placement.

When you open the box you are confronted with those components:

92 Reservation cards, 28 action cards, 124 markers in six colors, 24 guest and 16 celebrity tiles, 1 waiter, 1 game board and 1 rulebook.

The reservation cards come in three categories for chairs and for colors of tables and shapes of tables. Those reservation cards are used to determine wishes of guests and celebrities.

There are chairs in four colors, tables in three colors and three different shapes of tables.

With the first reservation card that is played for one of your own guests you place one reservation marker each at each table that might be a possible place for this person in order to reserve a seat at this table.

For each additional reservation card that is played for this individual guest you remove all reservation markers from tables that do not conform to the newly played reservation card.

As soon as there is only reservation marker left for this individual guest you place this guest at the table with the reservation marker and you score the victory points that are marked in the top left-hand corner of the guest tile.

At the start of the game some celebrities were placed at tables on the board and two additional celebrities were displayed open-faced next to the game board, all other celebrity tiles are stacked face-down.

For those two open-faced celebrity tiles one reservation card was turned face-up, the respective card for a celebrity was placed beneath the celebrity tile. According to this reservation card the reservation markers were placed for those celebrities at all prospective tables.

In his turn, each player can at any time play reservation cards for one of those two celebrities on display. And of course, here to, you remove reservation markers for each additional reservation card that is played from tables that now do not fit the specifications. This is continued, too, for celebrities until, until only one reservation marker is left on the board for a celebrity, and then you place this person at the remaining table.

For placing a celebrity you also score the victory points marked in the top left-hand corner of the celebrity tile.

Each guest and also each celebrity tile shows another number in the bottom left-hand corner, this number is a multiplier; at the end of the game you score as victory points the result of multiplying the numbers of both guest and celebrity for each guest that is sitting at the same table with a celebrity.

The three sections of the game all have a size of 7 areas.

The active player has two choices in his turn: He can play between one and three cards and then draw one card or he waives the playing of cards and draws three cards in hand.

Within the action of playing up to three cards you may play only one action card. So, in each of three game sections each player can only play one action cards, which gives you a maximum of playing three action cards in the course of the game.

Whenever a guest or a celebrity has been placed at a table you move the waiter forward by one spot. The track for the waiter, printed on the board, is divided into three sections.

The game ends when the waiter reaches spot 21 on this track.

Whoever has accrued most victory points, wins the game.

In our test games we have found that the rule for playing action cards is not that easy to control and to stick to, as it is often difficult to reconstruct if an action card was already used in a section or if the action card that has been played was played in the previous section of the game.

The mechanism of playing a reservation card to place reservation markers at tables and to remove them again as a consequence of additional cards that are played is very interesting and makes for a varied game.

The game only allows a minimum of strategic considerations and planning, decisions of players are often based on the current situation which makes for a high tactic component in the game.

Our tests have revealed an interesting phenomenon; in their first game, when players were not familiar with the game, they always placed their own guests at tables before playing cards for celebrities; this changed a bit in later games, but the basic tendency to play cards rather for guests than for celebrities was displayed by many players.

The basic idea of the game is very interesting and provides a sufficient amount of fun when playing.

Unfortunately there are three features in the game that have evoked criticism: The first of them are the rules, which are written much too elaborately and cumbersome for the rather simple game mechanism.

Furthermore, the design must be criticized, too, as it is good for players who suffer from red-green color blindness, especially the choice of colors turquoise and olive green for chairs can result in problems for such persons.

The final point for criticism has already been mentioned, the action cards, as it is not always easy to control someone has already played an action card in a given section of the game.

In some of our games we have tried to ignore this rule completely and have found that this influences the game a bit, but not massively and that winning or losing the game is barely influenced by ignoring the rule, so we did not really understand why the rule was in place.

As a conclusion I can say that the game is fun and allows a very tactical play. The flow of the game is varied and attractive and results in a high replay value. The graphic design, if you set aside the color problem, is pretty and transports the flair of the story nicely.

When all is said and done the game play is easy and in combination with the simple, albeit ponderously written rules, allow a classification of the game as a good family game, and the game is well suited for players who prefer simple games with simple tactical possibilities.

Maria Schranz

Players: 2-4

Age: 10+

Time: 45+

Designer: Stephan Riedel

Artist: Christian Opperer

Price: ca. 25 Euro

Publisher: Clicker-Spiele 2013

Web: www.clicker-spiele.de

Genre: Placement, collecting

Users: For families

Version: de

Rules: de

In-game text: no

Comments:

Varied flow of the game

Strong tactical element

Good replay value

Good components in keeping with the story

Compares to:

Café International

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 4

Maria Schranz:

Café Melange is fun and yet allows very tactical play.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0