Beastro

• Designers: Matteo Uguzzoni, Jason Corace 
• Publisher: Hello Mountain Games
• Players: 3-6
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Welcome to Beastro, where mythical beast chefs compete to make the best dishes! Beastro is a team-based trick-taking game with hidden roles where you have to figure out who is in your team and outsmart the others, collecting as many tricks as possible for your team.  Each round you: (1) wager to become the Head Chef and select your Secret Chef teammate, (2) Cook crazy dishes in order to win the most tricks for your team, (3) Play special cards to ruin dishes and get bonuses at unique Restaurants!  Every game you will play as of the mythical Chef and use their beastly power only once to turn the odds in your favour.  Beastro is played over a series of three round and the player with most point at the end will be the winner.

To set up, get out the role cards for the player count, and each player chooses a Character to play; each having a one-time use ability per game.  The deck itself is also set up for the player count; at most, there are 4 suits, ranked 1-14, as well as Sabotage cards and Secret Sauce cards.  The restaurant cards are shuffled and three are chosen at random (kept secret), and then the top one is revealed.  The Trump cards are placed below the Restaurant.

To start each round, the deck is shuffled and dealt out.  Then the players then bid for who gets to be the Head Chef – each player secretly and simultaneously chooses a number card from their hand, and the highest card wins the job of Head Chef.  If there is a tie, it is broken in favor of left-to-right suit order of the Trump cards.   The next highest card now gets to flip over one of the trump cards designating that the chosen suit will NOT be trump.  Continue in descending order of bid card until only one Trump card is unchosen – and this suit will be trump for the round.

The Head Chef then secretly distributes the role cards to the other players – and the roles remain a secret until the end of a round.  Once roles are set, the round is played as a must follow trick taking game.  The Head Chef and the Secret Chef are a team, and their goal is to win more tricks than the Line Cooks OR tie for tricks but have less Sabotage. 

In a trick, a player can always play  a Secret Sauce card – this card beats all previously played cards (even trump).  It can only be beaten by a Secret Sauce card played later in that trick.  Sabotage cards can also be played at any time, but they will never win the trick.  The winner of the trick takes all Sabotage cards and places them face up in front of them – the team with the most sabotage cards at the end of the round will lose points.

After all tricks have been played, players reveal their roles and the round is scored.  Again, the Head Chef and the Secret Chef will score points if they have won a majority of tricks or tied for most but with less Sabotage.  Otherwise, the Line cooks win.  There is a chart on the back of the rules to tell you how many points are earned.  Next, the Restaurant for the round may pay out a bonus.  Finally, the team which had the most Sabotage takes a penalty.

Repeat the process two more times, and the game ends at the end of the third round. The player with the most points wins.  Ties broken in favor of the player who scored the most points in the final round.

My thoughts on the game

Well, i’m generally not a fan of social deduction games – but I am a fan of trick-taking games…. So I was interested to see how this combination would work out.  Thus far, the reception has been mixed.  The trick taking part of the game is fairly standard – sure having the super-trump in the Secret Sauce cards is a bit of deviation from the regular, but otherwise, it’s a must follow game.

I’m thinking that there is probably some fascinating strategy in choosing which card to play from your hand and how that affects your voids and your ability to direct the color of trump – but I haven’t experienced it yet. Either, I’m playing a very high card as I want to be the head chef OR I’m generally trying to create a void to allow me to play trump should I have any.

As far as the social deduction goes, there really isn’t enough time in the game for this to be a featured part of the game.  Obviously the head chef knows who his partner is, and at least in our games, it has become fairly evident early on who the Secret Chef is.  In the short single hand, there just hasn’t seemed to be enough time for any sort of bluffing or feinting on your identity.   In the end, this turned out to be fine for me, as it reduced the social deduction part of the game – but if you were looking for that sort of interaction, there may not be enough here for you.

The scoring works fine, but I do wish that players had a reference of the somewhat convoluted scoring rules.  I have had to make copies of the one page in the rulebook for players to see – sure, it’s easy to know in general that you have to be on the right side of the bid to score points, but it’s hard to remember what exactly you score, especially as the score values change in the third and final round.   

It’s interesting to see how the bonuses for the different restaurants affects how people will play.  Sometimes, it turns out to be better to sabotage your own team if this means that you can get both bonuses.  Double bonus if you can get your team to win while you also get some of the restaurant bonuses!

For me, the game works fine as a trick taker, but I didn’t really feel much of the social deduction/hidden role aspect. 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it.
• Neutral. Dale
• Not for me…