The Great British Pastry Show is an extremely fun and popular reality show to watch. Over the course of several weeks, 12 amateur bakers compete for the honor of winning the season. The show offers tremendous camaraderie among the contestants and it can be really fun to see these people compete. Recently, Ravensburger gave everyone a chance to feel part of the show as it launched The Great British Baking Show: the game. It is now available at your local game store or anywhere else you like to buy board games with an MSRP of $ 19.99. Ravensburger was kind enough to send me a sample to review and the following thoughts are mine.
On your sign, get ready … bake! In The Great British Baking Show: The Game, players compete to recreate the configuration of the baking papers shown in the recipe. Choose whether to move quickly at all costs, or whether to spend more time selecting the best flavors for their cooking.
Let’s go through some logistics first. The Great British Baking Show: the game is rated for 2-4 players aged 10 and over. At the start of the game, players must agree which category of food they will cook: bread, dessert, cookies, etc. Once this is resolved, you will need to prepare your deck and arrange the appropriate timer tokens. Then someone will count down and the madness begins. The game is played at the same time which means there are no turns, it’s just a crazy race. Scroll through your deck one card at a time looking for the ones that match the recipe card of the current round (there are 3 rounds per game: signature, technique and showstopper). When the penultimate person has finished, the round ends and points are awarded. This game is very simple and very fast.
Overall, the game works quite well. The pieces look great and have great craftsmanship. The concept is fun. Overall, the execution is fine. Overall gameplay is fine, but there are two areas that might really need some tweaking. First, the bin mechanic. Each player has a basket which allows him to discard any number of cards he has played once per round. In theory it sounds like a good idea as you can aim to finish your baking even if it’s just a soggy bottom. However, in practice, my group and I always forgot about it and could only think of one time when it might have been useful.
The other area is how the end of the round works. Then, with the written rules, you will have 1-3 green timer tokens which are claimed by the first 1-3 players who finish their cakes and then the last player gets the red timer token. When the last green token is taken, the last player must stop playing cards from their deck and can try to finish cooking using the top cards from their 3 discard piles. So, the scoring begins. To get points in addition to 1 red token, you must complete cooking. This can often result in players getting only 1 point per round while other players often get 5+ points. My group and I didn’t like the way it worked and so we changed it. Here’s what we did:
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When the last green timer token is taken, the last player must stop.
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The last player then plays as many cards as possible from the top of the discard piles.
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If cooking is not yet complete, the player can browse their deck and must use the first legal card they draw to fill in any empty spots.
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If the player goes through the deck and still cannot complete the firing, he cannot shuffle his cards.
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No optional cards can be played after the last green token has been taken.
We found this to be a lot more fun overall. Almost always all players get at least a Soggy Bottom score (2 points), but sometimes they get Great Bakes (5 points) and if they play smart and are lucky, they can also (very rarely) get a Hollywood Handshake (7 points). . Let’s imagine it’s similar to other bakers helping out another competitor after they’ve already finished their cakes or are just plain lucky. I would recommend playing with the rules as written first a couple of times and then if you don’t like it, try the method I outlined and adapt it to suit your group.
At the end of the day, The Great British Baking Show: the game is a fast, simple and fun game. It just needs a little tweaking to suit everyone’s tastes. I think it would be fun if they found a way to incorporate more bakers with a mode for more elimination-style gameplay on different games to emulate the show a little more. I don’t want it to be the primary way to play, but it would be fun as an optional ruleset.
by Tommy Williams
Source: Geek Tyrant
