Cultivate and harvest tea, build a railway, keep an eye on the weather. Alubari is enjoyable enough as a solo game, but wow does this play well at two player.
Alubari: A Nice Cup of Tea
Designer: Tony Boydell
Publisher: Studio H
2019
How to play:
A pretty straightforward worker placement game sees you cultivating and harvesting Tea Estates and building the Darjeeling and Himalayan Railway. Grab your two workers (a third sits locked on the main board occasionally coming out to play from time to time) along with 20 discs of the same colour.
You’ll place your workers on available spaces at the top of the main board. Once they are all placed then you will take their actions one at a time and crucially, in order from left to right.
The actions let you:
• Gain resources: Iron, Stone or ‘Chai’ (more on the Chai later). These resources are be taken from a ‘storehouse’ on the main board. Let’s hope that the resource type that you want is there but don’t worry, more resources get added to the board randomly at the start of each round from a draw bag.
• Excavate: the bottom of the board has some randomly assigned ‘Tea Estates’ filled with rubble. Excavate enough of the rubble to clear a space and you get to pop one of your discs on it, claim its victory points and see that space generate tea for you periodically. You will use tea to fulfil contracts, keep until the end of the game for more VP or trade it for Chai (like I say - more on Chai later)
• Convert your resources: trade your iron for steel bars which you’ll need to start laying tracks and building the railway. But you might also want to trade some of your rubble for stone or vice versa.
• Lay tracks: build the Darjeeling and Himalayan railway track by track in sequential order - use one of your player discs to indicate that you have developed that part of the railway and claim its VP at the end of the game.
• Build: pay varying costs to build a station along the railway – picking up VP or other bonuses. Instead of building a station you might with this action choose to buy one of the available ‘equipment’ cards. These equipment cards will likely give you an ongoing bonus of some description (e.g. pay one less stone every time you X, Y or Z) but will also then let you pay each round to bring out your third worker if you want (or can afford) to.
• Grab a contract card from the three that are available from a display that will refresh every round. These cards will have an immediate bonus that you can trigger at a specific point ( eg ‘next time you excavate, excavate twice as much’) but will also have a goal which can offer some chunky VP (‘have laid 5 railways tracks and have 10 tea leaves’)
• Trade any tea that you have for Chai (more on Chai…well erm, now actually)
There are three mechanisms that then lift the game splendidly:
1. Chai: You can use any Chai that you have gained to supercharge an of your actions when you take them. So for example, I normally can only take three resources during an action. Use up one of my Chai and I can get five resources! Very useful. Or perhaps instead of laying just one track I want to lay three. You get the idea…
2. Weather changes: Each round the weather changes - as the contract cards get refreshed the backs of them display a weather icon to alert you to lay a matching colour weather disc down on the board. Crucially, you get to see in advance what the weather will be like during the subsequent two rounds. So for example, it’s going to be sunny next round – that means that my workers will enjoy being out in the sun and will excavate more rubble than usual and lay more tracks in one go than usual. Or perhaps it might rain and then they will do less of those things but my tea estates get watered at least and give me more tea. It might even be foggy so I am not going to be able to lay tracks at all as my workers won’t be able to see clearly. All nicely thematic but mechanically its brilliant as you start planning your turns in advance; “no point excavating rubble now, if I wait two more rounds the sun is going to come out and that is a much better time to excavate.”
3. Event cubes: At the end of each round, the games main resources (Iron, Stone and the rarer Chai) are replenished randomly from a draw bag. Also in that draw bag are a tiny amount of white cubes. Pull one out and it will trigger an event – perhaps the game blocks off some railways so that they can’t be built, steals some of the tea estates so that no one can claim them – things that drive the game forward and potentially scupper some of your plans. Just like with the weather changes you can see the order that these events will happen – so while they are potential inconveniences to your plans at least you are able to plan around them a little.
….and that’s largely it. Keep placing your workers and taking actions until either the railway has been fully completed or a player has ran out of player discs to place on the board. Score all of your tea estates, railway tracks, stations, contracts, left over tea and the person with most points is crowned the winner. Their prize? Most likely they get to have a nice cup of tea as a reward.
Solo Headlines:
I’ll talk later on in the review on what I (really) like more broadly about Alubari but there were a few things that I’ll say up front that I didn’t warm to about its solo mode.
Firstly, one of the things that I like most about a worker placement game is having competition for spaces – trying to get somewhere first before someone else beats me to it, having to pivot my plans when the spot I had my eye on is taken etc. That is pretty much a given in multiplayer games and I like a solo worker placement game to still provide that same competition for spaces – no matter how crudely. Here in the solo mode of Alubari however there is no competition for spaces. Each spot is open and available to you every turn, changing the game from being a delicious tussle for spaces and turn order into a simpler and less thrilling optimisation puzzle - none of those more emotional “aaargh, I was going to go there” moments and the tactical pivots that result. That said, while the competition for worker placement spots isn’t written into the solo rules out of the box, it was very simple and straightforward to implement something myself to provide some random blocking. Just a shame (for me) that they aren’t there as standard.
The other issue that I had with the solo game is that it is neither competing against an artificial opponent nor is it technically a Beat Your Own Score game with some arbitrary ‘if you have scored X then you have done Excellent’ targets. Instead the back page of the rulebook gives a list of about 50 or so ‘conditions’ for you to try and complete and tick off: ‘score 225 without using any equipment cards’ or ‘have an ownership marker on each of the four river spaces'. They seem like a collection of good goals to try and eventually complete but what it meant in practice in those early first games was that I didn’t actually get a sensation of winning or losing a game. The rules don’t tell me which of those conditions to meet in any given game, they just offer one big daunting list that I could hypothetically work towards. I quite like win conditions in a solo game (Honey Buzz, Guild of Merchant Explorers) but quite often they have a score target attached to them too and any win conditions are explicitly clear at the start of a game. Here I could just choose some conditions at random and see if I managed to tick them off the list, or just play a game and see which conditions, if any, I managed to meet . What I actually wanted was a score to beat – to know that I had won or lost that single game.
That said, some of the solo goals also included ‘play 3 games and score over 400/500/600 for easy / medium/ hard'. I still wasn’t satisfied. I was still having to play 3 games before I got that sense of ‘did I win or did I lose’ when really I just wanted to play one game and either be victorious or defeated. So I set about dividing those ‘campaign’ scores by 3 and using the average as my target score for each game. I then started to settle into the solo mode a little better – some easy house-ruling to give competition for worker placement spaces and a target score to try and beat. Nice.
….but then I came full circle and realised why the solo mode isn’t a beat your own score and instead was that list of challenges / win conditions. After a game or two I quickly started to understand how to score highly without much issue (which is unusual for an average player like me). You see, the solo mode allows you to prolong the game - deliberately not triggering the end by placing all of your player discs or finishing off the railway. That prolonging couldn’t be done indefinitely – remember that the game itself pushes forwards to conclusion as those white event cubes get drawn – but enough to ensure that my points tally by the end of the game was huge. It was fun to play, but it became quickly apparent how to play it well under normal conditions. Which then made me see the list of 50 or so win conditions in a new light - understanding that the game needs to force me out of those default ways of playing that always result in a good score. I came away with better respect. I had to fumble my way to find that better respect but I got there in the end.
Plays in a breezy enough 45 – 60 minutes, not the worst in the world to set up. In short, my adventures with the solo game were okay. I may well bring it off the shelf again though at some to look again at the solo challenges.
That said….
If you're reading this and thinking that you might as well not bother with this game now that I have painted it as being not that enjoyable solo then I would encourage you to read on as Alubari is an excellent game. What was clear as I played solo was the realisation of “I think there is a great game here but I think it’s probably to be found in the multiplayer game”. So I gave that theory a try (thanks to Mrs Headlines from a Solo Player, my long suffering “let me see how this one plays with more than one person” test subject) and wow, I enjoyed Alubari immensely. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I would say that if you are a solo player that also regularly plays multiplayer (or mainly multiplayer with some occasional solo plays) then this game is very much worth having in the collection.
General Headlines:
In the multiplayer game, the competition for worker placement spots is excellent – and is lifted splendidly by a very simple conceit: the workers actions are resolved from left to right. This gives me a little more to chew on - the order of my actions might mean that my first action directly benefits my second action but more likely I am probably going to take actions this round which then pay off at some point the next round. You better believe therefore that I am racing for a particular spot in the next round and I really hope I get there first. Players can also steal first player turn order by placing their worker in a specific spot - the ‘Storehouse’. I might not even want to gain resources from the Storehouse this round but I am going to have to take that spot to ensure that I am first next round. It’s an excellent tussle – not just where to place but also when and also whether you can get there first. Really nice – and to have this fully missing from the solo game for me takes away a unique selling point of the game. But multiplayer it really shines.
Some other worker placement games that I have played see me unlocking more and more (and more!) workers over the course of the game and my turns explode into combo-tastic black holes. At first it felt a little deflating / jarring that in Alubari you will only ever have two workers (other than a third worker that may only occasionally come into play) but in practice it means that things feel really snappy – one round blurs into the next and the game propels forward much like the train tracks that you are laying. Its not a case of huge explosive rounds where you accomplish many things – you quickly want to move to the next round so that you can execute the plans that you started in the previous round. Every round bleeds into one - It makes for a quick feeling game with little down time.
Usually in the type of strategic Euro games that I enjoy the most, doing lots of everything usually sees me roundly punished. Here though the opposite is true - I might very slightly do a little more of one thing over the other but Alubari is certainly a game where you have do a little bit of everything. I liked this - It felt quite fresh in contrast to my ‘just stick to Plan A and do not deviate’ games that I usually play. Driving this is those contract cards that you fulfil for endgame VP. While some of them are worth more points than others and therefore might have your fuller attention, it isn’t a case that you will just grab one or two contracts and work tirelessly towards achieving them. I have had games of Alubari where I picked up 8 or 9 cards and fulfilled them - small points here and there, some maybe worth more but cumulatively they all make the difference as to whether you win or lose the game. You couldn’t just do all the other stuff in the game and not focus on the contracts - you would lose. But they aren’t blood sweat and tears to achieve - they are frequent, reasonably easy to fulfil but just force you to regularly complete very different things in the game - a little bit of everything. Contracts feel frequently rewarding and enjoyable – and Alubari is certainly one of those games where each and every turn something good happens no matters how small. I’m a big fan of how games make me feel as well as how they might play mechanically. Alubari felt fun.
One thing that I also absolutely adore in games is a focus on timings. Not just figuring out what to do but having to figure out precisely WHEN to do it – punching the air when I get things timed exactly right and seeing a huge move pay off or crumpling to the floor when I get timings wrong and see my turns / round / game evaporate. Alubari does ‘the timings thing’ excellently. Its weather system and knowing in advance what the weather is going to be like for the subsequent two rounds is great - wanting to excavate rubble but knowing that if I hold off a little longer I am going to be able to do it so much better because the sun is going to be shining in two rounds. Not really wanting to lay railways tracks now but knowing that I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to next round as the fog is coming - maybe I should get it out of the way now? A constant eye not just on what you want to do but on whether it might be better to wait, or indeed rush and get it over and done with now. This is a near permanent feature in Alubari and I like it. And joining it is those white event cubes that might get pulled out of the resources bag and trigger an event that pushes the game onwards – perhaps building some tracks that you had an eye on, excavating some spaces that you really wanted to get to first etc. While they are randomly drawn, as other resources are drawn and depleted from the bag you start getting a sense that a white cube might be looming which forces you into a bit of ‘can I squeeze one more move in before a white cube comes out or shall I risk it'. It’s a bit of push your luck, a bit future gazing - and whole lot of getting timings right. I love it.
I haven’t played Snowdonia on which Aluburi is based and acts I believe as somewhat of a ‘Version 1.5’. My understanding though is that one of the main differences (other than setting and graphical design) is Alubari’s use of Chai as a resource to supercharge moves – and therefore make things a little less tighter than its mountain based predecessor. While I cant compare, what I can say is that I really like that this game wasn’t punishingly tight. I always felt like I could do something, that I had options, that I could scratch my head a little and then suddenly realise ‘aha but I can use some Chai to make this work even better’. Chai isn’t abundant – you still have to work for it - but it adds some freedom to a game that already is asking you to do a little bit of everything. It makes the game enjoyable - or at least provides lighter relief from my usually tighter tastes. I don’t want to say at all that it makes for a light game as there is certainly more than a lot to be considering here – I’d say its definitely a medium weight game. But is an enjoyably puzzly medium weight game rather than a mind melting, tension filled, tight brain burner.
At a glance:
A decent enough solo game that lacks the magic of the multiplayer game. If you are exclusively a solo player then you might want to pass this one over - but if you are keen for a game that plays superbly at higher player counts and can be brought down off the shelf for an occasional, and reasonably enjoyable, solo game then Alubari is definitely worth a look.
+ Enjoyable medium weight game that doesn’t feel too tight
+ Timings play a big part in decision making – not just what to do but when to do it.
+ Most turns feel rewarding, and turns are quick making for a snappy, nicely paced game
+ While there may be some strategic focus, this is a game where you get to do a little bit of everything which again feels quite enjoyable in this context
-Competition for worker placement spots is absent from the solo game
- Solo mode is neither playing against a point scoring bot or a beat your own score – instead a long list of win conditions to tick off.
Final Score(s):
Solo out of the box: 6 out of 10
Solo with a couple of simple house rules: 7 out 10
Multiplayer game: 8.5 out of 10 (its excellent)
Reviewed after 8 plays (6 solo, 2 multiplayer).
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