Wow, try saying that title fast, three times.
So, how has everyone been during this bizarre time? Are you managing to cope well? Fortunately, Cindy and I have been doing fine overall. She's been working from home full time and I've been working in the lab like normal. Other than work and the grocery store, we've done our part for social distancing and stayed home. The upside? We've been able to play a LOT of board games, and even remove some from our "shelf of opportunity." (Others would call it a "shelf of shame," and that's OK, too.)
Now that other businesses and venues are starting to open up, both Cindy and I look forward to diving with our friends, dining out, and eventually resuming game night. I'm looking forward to going to a food truck park and sampling the wares from several trucks, just because we can. Given my finicky nature, but still considering myself a foodie, food trucks offer a little of everything. An appetizer from one truck, entree from another and dessert from a third. Yes, please!
As a reminder to my faithful readers and for those who are new to my blog, you can click on any photo and a larger format will open in a new window. You won't lose your place here. Also, any hyperlinks will appear in blue and clicking on them will open a new window so you don't have to keep track of where you are. Give it a try. Click on the photo below to see a larger version. I'll wait.
Food trucks at a local food truck park
Back in the day, while a truck that carried and served food existed, the most common name for them was a "roach coach." While the name is off-putting, it didn't stop me from getting a snack when they dropped by the job site I was working at with my brother during those long, hot South Texas summers. Pre-made sandwiches, a bag of chips, and a Dr Pepper helped get me to lunch.
A classic "roach coach"
From the humble beginnings of the roach coach a true "food truck" emerged. These trucks offered made-to-order dishes, gourmet hamburgers and fusion foods limited only to the chef's imagination. No more pre-made ham and plastic-tasting cheese on white bread and a bag of partially-crushed potato chips. Nope, we're talking a bacon cheeseburger with donuts for buns. Yes, donuts.for.buns! That creation was from the Foreign Policy food truck we had the pleasure of dining from a couple of years ago. (Yes, please click the blue link above to open a new window and view their web page.)
Foreign Policy food truck
Check out their menu!
And the donut-bun burger:
Yes, it was delicious! Would I order it again? Probably not, as I prefer my donuts as a dessert rather than part of the entree. I would still encourage anyone who's interested to try it at least once, though.
I've pretty much covered the first line of my profile: "Happily married scuba diver, cruiser, board gamer and finicky foodie."
But what about the whole "fit" thing in the title.
What, pray tell, did I deem "fit for a finicky foodie?"
Well, I did mention board games and food trucks, right? How about combining two of my passions and playing a game about food trucks? Oh, heck yeah! Let's do this! I wrote one other food-themed game blog about Lord of the Fries, which you can find here. I've also written several other blogs about other board games we've played. I'll post links to them at the end of this blog to make it convenient for you. And yes, I will expand on the whole "food truck renaissance" thing in a future blog.
When I stumbled across Food Truck Champion by Daily Magic Games, I immediately put it on my wish list. And I'm glad I did! I'm even more glad that my sister gave it to me for my birthday. The base game and a mini-expansion called "Helpers" were both released in 2017. Now that I'm actually getting to the point of this blog, I'll stay more focused. I hope.
Nice artwork!
In Food Truck Champion ("FTC"), two to five players take on the role of a food truck owner. It's your job to effectively manage your food truck, hire the right staff and complete order tickets to become the most popular food truck at game's end. I'll walk you through the game components, setup, and sample play with the base set and the expansion. In a nutshell, this is a fun game!
This game took over a year to get to the table for a variety of reasons. At the top of the list, though, is the seemingly complicated mechanics of how to play. Normally when considering a specific game to purchase or play, I'll search for any "how to play" videos on YouTube. These are a great help, and watching an actual playthrough makes a huge difference in understanding the rules. Once Cindy and I watched an actual playthrough, a lot of things suddenly made sense. So, as Tyler Florence says in Food Network's The Great Food Truck Race: "Let's...get...rolling!" (Bonus question: What was the original name of this show? Lemme see your guess in the comments section below. The first person to guess correctly will receive a special shoutout in my next blog.)
The first choice to make is which food truck do you want to operate in our imaginary food truck park. I'm gonna call it "What's Cookin' Food Truck Park." Hey, I know! Just as with a real food truck park, you don't have to make any blind choices. Follow me as we explore each truck and what their culinary focus ("flavor profile" in the game) is. Then we'll choose. I'd much rather pick my own than randomly draw a certain role like some games have you do. We'll start clockwise, from the leftmost truck, and work our way around the park.
What's Cookin' Food Truck Park
Lady Josephine's Bakery: From salted caramels to rhubarb custard pie, Lady Josephine will satisfy any sweet tooth. Five-star dining on four wheels.
Bear Burgers: Burgers and fries and cherry pies....no, wait. That's a Charley Pride song. But, Bear Burgers does have a selection of burgers and fries, and even an apple pie. Good enough to accommodate any "meat and potatoes" kind of appetite.
Tacos de Muerte: Being a native South Texan, this truck immediately called to me. This is my go-to truck when we play unless someone else wants to play it. In that case, bring your own game! My house, my game, my rules! Just kidding! (maybe) Huevos rancheros, chili rellenos, and spicy queso are just some of the items on the menu.
Sol Sisters: A Filipino food truck? Yes, please! One of my co-workers and good friend is Filipino and when I showed her some of the order cards her eyes really lit up. Pork belly bites, chicken adobo, and house lumpia are three of many delectable offerings.
Herban Garden: Admittedly, this is the last food truck I'd want to play. While I'm glad to see a vegetarian truck for variety, in real life I wouldn't have any interest in their menu. For those that choose a vegetarian diet for whatever reason, great! I'm NOT judging anyone on their choices. I'm just being honest that I'm a Carnivore (yes, with a capital "C"). Forager's salad, a parfait or vegan "sushi" are some of the orders you'll hope to fill if you run this food truck.
Meet the owners:
Flipping the food truck cards over reveals the owners. This is actually an action in the game, which I'll describe later. You'll have the owners pop in every so often to "take charge" and move things along. Now that we've perused the different trucks, and made our decision, let's grab get started. Remember, I get the Tacos de Muerte truck. Just sayin'....
Your work area:
All of your activities will take place around your playboard. Starting with the top left corner, you'll see a thermometer representing your refrigerator space. ALL of the trucks have identical spaces except for the lower right corner, which is the specific flavor profile for that truck. The bottom left corner is the plating area, where orders are filled. Moving to the top right corner, the chef icon represents the hired staff area.
Notice that for the refrigerator, plating area and hired staff area, two of the four circles are colored yellow, and two are gray. All trucks start out exactly the same. The yellow circles are the current "capacity" of that space. At the start of the game, the fridge can hold up to two ingredients, you can work on two orders at a time (plating area) and you can have two hired staff. As you complete orders and gain favor tokens (more on that in a bit), you can upgrade your space by placing these yellow tokens on a gray space in the area of your choosing. This gives you the capacity to have up to four ingredients in your fridge, work on four orders at a time and have up to four staff working for you.
"But how do I get orders or ingredients? Where do I find my staff?"
Great questions. And an easy answer: the "Marketplace" Just think of the Marketplace as the "Wal-Mart" of the game, since it has a little of everything you need.
Two-player marketplace
The marketplace will vary in size, depending upon how many are playing. For a two-person game, the marketplace will have six cards available. For three or more players, eight cards will be used. These game cards are, pardon the pun, the meat and potatoes of the game. The cards determine the specific order to be filled, provide ingredients, and staff. The cards are life. Nope, strike that. The spice is life!
One of the game cards
At the start of the game, every player is given their starting order ticket and dealt four cards from the deck as their starting hand. A player can have a maximum of six cards in their hand at any time, including the owner card. I picked the card above to be my example, even though it doesn't come from "my" truck. I mean come on, just look at the name! "Elevenses scone?" How freakin' brilliant is that?
Starting order ticket
First breakfast, of course, would be the huevos rancheros from Tacos de Muerte. #duh Second breakfast would be the exception to my "not interested" philosophy and I'd snag a charred melon from Herban Garden. Then there's elevenses. I'll worry about luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner and supper when I get to it.
If you've paid even a shred of attention to my previous blogs, the above reference should be very familiar to you. If not, or if you are a new reader that is still trying to figure out my style, just click here and everything will be explained.
"Dude! Seriously! Can ya just focus for a while?"
Oops! Sorry about that. (not really)
The cards function in three different ways: As an order ticket, ingredient card, or staff card. How they are used is determined by the player. Since a food truck exists to make and serve food that a customer orders, we'll start with getting an order to your truck.
Order up!
By placing this card in your plating area (bottom left of your playboard), it becomes an order to be filled. In this case, it will require one ingredient: "grains" The grains ingredient is represented by that steaming loaf of bread you see above and to the right of the scone. For the most part, you'll want to select cards that either have your truck's logo (above and to the left of the scone) or ingredients that match your flavor profile.
Lady Josephine's logo
Order tickets will have dishes that have one, two, or three-ingredient icons. To complete this order, you'll have to find each required ingredient in the marketplace. After completing an order, you'll get a yellow "popularity token" with a number matching the number of ingredients used, one, two or three. These turn into points at the end of the game.
Depending on how many are playing, there will be a set number of these tokens for each value. Once any two stacks of tokens are exhausted, the end game is triggered.
Popularity tokens
Once you've selected an order ticket, and placed it in your plating area, you'll need ingredients from the marketplace. That's the genius of this game design, at least in my humble opinion. You don't have to manage three different decks of cards just to play the game. This also allows for some strategizing in what you'll take and how the marketplace gets refreshed. In our example, we used this same card previously as an order ticket. Take a look at the left section of the card below.
Ingredient card
This card can be used as a "meat" ingredient for one of your orders. FTC uses a combination of five different ingredients to complete all orders: meat, grains, dairy, fruit, vegetables and seasoning. The fun part of this game comes when not all required ingredients are immediately available in the marketplace. Only one meat available in the marketplace? You might want to grab it if you have the refrigerator space and keep it for a future order. Maybe your opponent needs a dairy ingredient to complete an order. Lucky for you you get to pick the next ingredient and you snag that card to prevent your opponent from taking it. The look on their face will be priceless.
We've got orders coming in and ingredients in the fridge. Someone needs to start prepping and cooking or your customers are going to go to another truck. Nope, not gonna happen on my watch!
Hired staff card
Need a prep cook? The card above will get you one from the marketplace. As we'll see shortly, the marketplace might have everything but what you need. Part of the challenge of FTC is obtaining all of your resources in a timely and wise manner. There are five different staff positions, each with their own function. These apply during a "staff action" phase.
Driver:
Move
a card from the Marketplace to your fridge as an ingredient OR swap an ingredient in your fridge with an ingredient
from the marketplace.
Cashier: Move
a card from the marketplace to your Plating Area as an order ticket OR swap an order ticket in your Plating Area with an
order from the marketplace.
Prep Cook: Move an ingredient from your fridge to an order ticket in your Plating Area.
Exec. Chef: Play a card from your hand as an ingredient onto an order ticket in your Plating Area.
Manager: Move
a card from the marketplace to your Hired Staff (for a bonus action in future
turns) OR swap a card from your Hired Staff with one from the marketplace.
Note: You may have multiple cards of the same type in your Hired Staff area.
Game night is here, your friends have picked their trucks (not the Tacos de Muerte truck, that one is mine, remember?) everything is set up and we're ready to go. Who goes first? The rulebook says the last person to have eaten at a food truck is the first player. Play then proceeds clockwise around the table. Give that person the first player card and active player token and off we go!
Active player & First player markers
During your turn, you may perform one of the following actions:
Market
Research: Draw 2 cards from the deck; discard down to 6. Your turn is over; pass
the active player token to the left.
2. Take
Charge: Take owner card into your hand. Your turn is over; pass
the active player token to the left. The owner card is a wild card and can be used for any staff action in a future turn.
Taking charge
3. Get
Help: Play your Owner card from your hand and place your food
truck token on a helper card to do the action written on the card. Once done, flip
the card over and take your token back. Your turn is over; pass the active
player token to the left. (This is only available if using the "Helpers" mini-expansion.)
At During setup, randomly select three of the six helper cards and return the other three to the box. The starting player chooses which side of each card to play first. Place these helper cards in a line near the marketplace and popularity token stacks.
Side one of the helper cards
Same set, other side
Helper cards in play
4.
Lead a
Staff Action: Done in 3 “loops” around the table. The best way to describe this is to show an example of how it would go in an actual game. I adapted this from a post on BoardGameGeek made by David, one of the game designers. I added an extra player to account for the mini-expansion and changed the names of the players. Other than that, all of the below is David's creation. You can find his original post here.
Loop 1
Player 1: Patrick announces that he will lead a DRIVER Staff Action by playing
a DRIVER card from his hand. He does not perform
that DRIVER action, just announces
that he will be doing it.
Player 2: Cindy says she will perform a Market Research action, but does not
take any cards yet.
Player 3: Dave plays a DRIVER card from his hand and announces that he will
follow Patrick’s DRIVER staff action, but he does not do the DRIVER action yet.
Player 4: Lisa says she will do a Take Charge action but does not immediately
pick up her owner card.
Player 5:
Shelby says she will do a Get Help action but does not place her token yet.
Loop 2
Player 1: Patrick now performs the
DRIVER action by taking a card from the marketplace and putting it in his
Fridge. (If Patrick has a Driver in his Hired Staff, he would also get a bonus
action)
Player 2: Cindy draws two cards from the deck as her Market Research, then
activates the DRIVER in her hired staff to follow the lead action.
Player 3: Dave, following the lead action, takes a card from the marketplace
and adds it to his fridge. He also has a DRIVER in his Hired Staff so he takes
another card from the marketplace and adds it to his Fridge.
Player 4: Lisa picks up her Owner card and adds it to her hand. She does not
have a Driver in her Hired Staff so her turn is complete.
Player 5:
Shelby selects one of the three help cards, places her food truck token on it,
and performs the written actions on the card.
Loop 3
Player 1: Patrick moves his played DRIVER card to the market place, filling an
empty position.
Player 2: Cindy did not play a lead/follow card so she does nothing more.
Player 3: Dave moves his played DRIVER card to the marketplace. Because there
are no empty spaces, he is able to place his card on top of a card with Lisa's
food truck logo, blocking her from a potential bonus point if she was planning
to get that card later with a CASHIER action.
Player 4: Lisa did not play a lead/follow card so she does nothing.
Player 5:
Shelby removes her token and flips the helper card over.
Patrick then passes the active player token to the left, Cindy and she begins her turn.
Play continues until end game is triggered or a player is triggered and flips the table over in a "rage quit." Luckily, I have yet to experience the rage quit scenario. That's the easiest way to get banned from game night at our house. While the "lead a staff action" sounds complicated, it's really not. Seeing it in real life makes it soooo much clearer.
When you complete an order, take a popularity token equal to the number of ingredients and place it face down on one of your gray circles on your playboard, as I described earlier. If that value of token is exhausted, take the next lower value if available. Place the ingredient cards in the discard pile.
If you noticed in the photo of the popularity tokens above, some of them were blue. These are critique tokens. When one of these are revealed, every player that has a completed order can move of the cards to the awards area (lower right) of the playboard. Players should pick the card that has the most ingredient icons that match their truck's flavor profile. For every complete set of ingredients in the flavor profile, you'll get 5 points at the end of the game.
Critique token
Here's a quick review of those flavor profiles for each truck. Notice how each truck has a different flavor profile, so picking the right orders to fulfill are important to collecting the right amount of ingredients matching the profile.
Flavor profiles
You'd think that collecting orders with just your truck's logo would ensure plenty of ingredients to fit your flavor profile, right? Not so fast. Some order tickets, especially the three-ingredient orders, might require an ingredient that's not in your truck's flavor profile. Two of the three might work, but the other ingredient won't help you with that part. Hey, if it was too easy, the game would be boring, right?
Tacos de Muerte order tickets
The flavor profile for Tacos de Muerte is Dairy-Dairy-Fruits-Vegetables. I completed two order tickets with my truck's logo, so I know I'll get at least two points just for completed orders with the logo. If there were any "3" popularity tokens, I'd get one for each of these orders as well as I completed the order. The huevos rancheros give me three-ingredient icons that match my flavor profile. The carnitas tacos order will only give me the vegetables icon. Go figure.
As the game progresses, your playboard will resemble something like below. You'll need to strike a balance between filling "large" three-ingredient orders and knocking out a bunch of smaller one-ingredient orders. Is your fridge large enough to accommodate all the ingredients you need? Do you have enough staff?
Cranking out the orders
Wow, what a game! Let's see how everything turned out and whose cuisine reigned supreme. Gaahh! Wrong show...again. (Double-bonus points: which show was I referencing?)
OK, flip over all of your popularity tokens and add them up. Next, determine how many complete flavor profile sets you completed and add five points per complete set. Finally, count all of the completed order tickets that have your food truck's logo and add one point for each one. While it's not complicated math, I don't want to overlook anything. I created a score sheet in MS Excel and printed a bunch out. Necessary? Not really. Helpful? Yes, definitely. Nerdy? Also yes. And that's fine with me.
Whaddaya think?
I hope you enjoyed reading about Food Truck Champion as much as I enjoyed writing it. Have you played this game yet? What other food-themed games have you played? How many movie/TV references did you catch? Let me know in the comments section below.
Following are links to other blogs I've written on games we've played. Please feel free to check them out as well.
Coming up next, I'll introduce you to the world of Tasty Humans. Sound intriguing? Stay tuned!
Until next time....
carpe cerevisi
