Game Review: Paris Pastries by Gamrana

Paris Pastries published by Gamrana

In Paris Pastries, players are bakers in early 1900s Paris, making delectable treats for customers. The game accommodates two to six players and plays in about half an hour.

The game comes with a rule book and four decks of cards: Tools, Ingredients, Recipes, and Customers. Each player starts with two Tool cards. These give special abilities to use either one time or throughout the game. For example, the Coal-Fired Deck Oven lets the player make two recipes on a single turn or the Brass Balance Scale doubles the points on the first pastry made (so obviously a one-time use Tool).

Some of Tool Cards

Five Recipe cards and five Customer cards are laid out between the players. These constitute the currently available recipes that players can create. Each customer craves one special ingredient, marked in the corners of their card and written on the bottom.

Recipe and Customer cards

Recipes require three to five ingredients. Some of the ingredients are more rare than others. The Ingredient deck also includes some Wild cards that can substitute for any other ingredient. Each recipe has a point value in the top left corner of the card and a bonus if any current customers match an ingredient for that recipe. 

Some of the Ingredient cards

On their turn, each player can do one of two actions:

• Collect Ingredients (The Baker's Gambit)--Draw ingredient cards one at a time. The player may stop at any time to take all the drawn cards. If a duplicate ingredient is drawn, the player busts and can only keep one of the ingredient cards (and the player cannot choose a Wild card as the one to keep).
• Bake a Recipe--Discard all the ingredients required for one of the five displayed recipes and take that card and any customers who match an ingredient for that recipe. Once this is done, the Recipe and Customer lines are replenished to their original five. The baker also draws two ingredient cards from the deck with no penalty if the two cards are the same ingredient.

Play proceeds continues clockwise until the ingredient deck runs out. The deck is reshuffled and used for a second time. Once that runs out, in a game of up to four players each player has a final turn to complete recipes. In five- or six-player games, the ingredient deck is reshuffled a second time and ends after that runs out.

At the end, players total up their scores for what they have baked using the number in the upper left and adding a bonus for any customer cards for that recipe. Include any end-game bonuses from Tool cards. If the score is a tie, the player with the most customers wins. If that is also a tie, the player with the most leftover ingredients wins. 

The game provides an interesting combination of pushing your luck and collecting sets. The Recipe cards have a variety of ingredients, making it possible for players to focus on one or two recipes as their targets. But the element of chance is very strong. A player could collect all but one ingredient and start pushing to get the last thing they need for a recipe. The harder they push, the more likely they are to bust. It's hard to see five cards go down to one. The luck factor can be frustrating, either busting early or not getting that one ingredient in a long line of cards.

The game has a couple of balance issues with the Tool cards. The cards that provide endless Puff Pastry or Pastry Cream or Butter provide a very large advantage to the player who has one or more of them. The advantages don't necessarily balance out. Also, the player with the endless Puff Pastry might collect the Puff Pastry Ingredient cards and then those cards are out of circulation for the other players in the reshuffle. We have thought about but haven't implemented any house rules on that.

The art is nice, evoking a Paris from more than a hundred years ago. The icons are clear and easy to understand. The theme is delightful. Who doesn't like French pastries? We certainly do and find the game mouth-watering, even if we don't win at the end.

Mildly recommended--this is a fun but very light game and has an issue or two.