“You are a master of your craft, boxing up chocolates to make a decadent chocolate sampler! When boxing chocolates make sure to fill boxes that fit well in your sampler, as you’ll get bonus points for grouping various chocolate types together.
Can’t quite organize your chocolate sampler to your standards? That’s okay because as a master chocolatier you can craft wild chocolate that assumes the flavour of all the adjacent chocolate types.
The chocolatier with the most stunning chocolate sampler wins the game!”
Setup
- Shuffle the Chocolate cards and deal 3 to each player.
- Deal 6 cards face-up to the centre of the play area to form the Chocolate Tray and set the rest of the cards to the side as the Chocolate deck.
- Give each player 3 Wild Chocolates.
- Shuffle the Box tiles and create a face-down stack. Draw and place 5 Box tiles face-up in a row next to the stack to form the Box tile line.
- Place the Score tiles face-up above the Box tile line.
Game Play
The player who last ate chocolate will go first. Play then proceeds clockwise. On your turn, you must choose and perform 2 actions from the following list of actions:
- Take a Chocolate: Take 1 Chocolate card from the Tray -or- discard 1 of your Chocolate cards to take 2 Chocolate cards from the Tray. Refill the Display back up to 6 cards.
- Box Chocolates: Discard Chocolate cards from your hand to the discard pile matching each of the chocolates on a Box tile (in the Box tile line or a previously reserved Box tile) of your choice, then take the Box tile and place it in your Sampler. You may discard 2 matching Chocolate cards to substitute for any 1 chocolate on the Box tile any number of times. Refill the Box tile line to 5.
- Place a Wild Chocolate: Place 1 of your Wild Chocolates on to any one of the 4 spaces of a Box tile in your Sampler.
- Reserve a Box Tile: Take 1 of the 5 Box tiles from the line and place it in front of you. Then, place 1 of your Wild Chocolates in the centre on top of that Box tile (over the points).
You may take the same action twice in one turn. At the end of your turn, you may only have 6 Chocolate cards in your hand. Discard excess Chocolate cards of your choice to the discard pile.
Ending the Game
The end of the game is triggered when a player to places the 6th Box tile in their Sampler. They take the “First” Score tile and finish their turn. Then, every other player gets 1 more full turn. Award Score tiles before Final Scoring.
- Awarding Score Tiles: Award each Score tile to the player who has the most of the depicted item. If tied, no player is awarded the Score tile.
Final Scoring
Add up points shown in the centre of each Box tile in your Sampler and any points on Score tiles awarded to you. Add 1 point for every Wild Chocolate that was not placed in your Sampler or currently on a reserved Box tile.
- Determining the Winner: The player with the most points wins! In the event of a tie, the tied player with the most Score tiles wins. If still tied, all tied players share the victory!
My thoughts
Chocolatiers is an elegant and simple looking game that is anything but simple. The premise of the game seemed easy: make a box of chocolates. But like chocolate making in real life, it seems easy until you actually try it.
At first read through, I was a little shocked. Daily Magic is one of my instant buy game publishers, and reading the rules I was a little afraid it seemed too similar but getting on the table I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I played this with 3 of my friends who are just getting to board games. I have played several games with them before mostly small box games. So thought this would be perfect for them and I couldn’t have been more right. They really loved this game, it was so simple in design, easy to teach and yet extremely challenging. The amount of strategy and thinking involved was actually impressive.
As previously mentioned, this game in a simple looking game. A similar looking box tile with multiple different chocolates in it or solid pastel colour background with single chocolate on it. It sounds quite boring and simple when you read that, but when you see the level of detail and yet restraint of Claire, the artist, you are blown away. The art is stunning. It would be quite easy to overdo the art on a game like this, but she has used a very light hand with it. Enough to make the chocolate pop and looking stunning, but not overdo it and had too much.
I also love the use of the Fleur de Lis, to tie it back to France where chocolatiering is rumoured to have begun. It is elegant touches like this that make me release why I love Daily Magic Games. Their eye for detail is quite amazing.
Final verdict
Chocolatiers is another hit for Daily Magic. This cleverly designed game offers a challenge for players with elegance in both art and theme. I think whether you are just getting into board gaming or a veteran of the industry, this challenging game has something for everyone.
Not to mention, if you play with a box of favourites (chocolates) next to the game and the winner gets 3, 2 for 2nd and 1 for 3rd, it is a great incentive to not come last and just adds to the fun and delicious of the theme.
Daily Magic has done it again. And, I know I will be getting myself a copy of chocolatiers and so will my friends.
