As a kid I always wanted to be Willy Wonka. Make Chocolate and other candies! And of course have my own team of Oompa Loompa’s
But that story is for another time! so as Mr Wonka himself said
Hurry! We have so much time and so little to do! Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it
Mayfair Games King Of Chocolate puts you in charge of making the most money by making the most chocolate. Seems easy right? Well not so fast, there is a five step process you have to go through, and that is where the strategy comes in.
King Chocolate is a tile-laying/production chain game for two to five players. Players are chocolates makers, that are striving to earn money through controlling various steps in the chocolate-making process. The player with the most money wins.
The board consists of a ring of hexes with 6 different colors. Each turn, players have to place a two hex tile on the board. Contiguous colors can be claimed by one player. However, each player can only control a max of 4 steps in the chain, so you have to interact with your opponents at some point to make sure that production flows smoothly. This is where it can get interesting, as you don’t want to HELP the other players too much, but you NEED them to help you, so you have to learn to balance this, where you are getting what you need, but not handing them what they need.
The larger you make your tile run, the more capacity you have to pull in chocolate from a previous step. But you must keep in mind, your opponents could drop tiles to block your expansion and shatter your plans. During a turn, the active player can push chocolate through the production steps from one step to the next higher one. If your chocolate is being bought by anyone, you get paid.
Game play is simple to learn and plays fairly fast, Each turn follows two steps: play a tile, and take actions.
Tiles can be placed anywhere adjacent to tiles already on the board, even inside the center ring. Players then have three action points to spend. Actions include drawing tiles, placing new workers on the board, moving a worker already on the board, or activating the production chain.
The game ends when there are not enough tiles in the stack to refill the four face-up tiles, and whoever has the most money wins.
Final Thoughts
Fast setup and easy to learn rules, the game is fairly simple, UNTIL you start to play and start build your strategy up, there are many ways to get what you want, and you have to figure out what is the best way.
As far as the components in King Chocolate are decent. The tiles and money are thick and sturdy, a nitpick I have is there ended being a few “chads” from where tiles were hard to punch out, these don’t affect game play.I’m not sure if this was just my copy of the production run I got, or this happens all the time. Keep that in mind, again does not effect game play at all, I’m sure I could take a X-Acto knife and trim them off.
The colors of the board and tiles are a bit bland, but this falls in line with the “Chocolate” theme, Chocolate tends to fall in the darker shades of the color spectrum after all. Again, this is a minor very shallow nitpick on my part.
I appreciated the small touch that added with the rule book, when you open the box it looks like the paper that sits atop a box of chocolates.
I was shocked how much I enjoyed this, as I’m the first to admit that I’m not really a big fan of the European style “worker placement” games, but this has alot of depth to it, as you have to help your opponents, but not too much. You find yourself thinking long and hard before you decided to make a move to help or hinder them.
This is a great game to break out, as your waiting for the rest of your friends to show up on a game night. Or a great way to kick one off
You can purchase a copy of King Chocolate via Amazon or from Mayfair Games directly.
A BIG Thank You, to Mayfair Games, for providing the review copy
Recent Comments