Grout twist on worker placement
Blog Andrew Joseph 07 Jul , 2025 0
from Worker placement board game Players assume the role of French cheese maker, responsible for making, aging and selling cheese. Thanks to the innovative spinning game board, players take turns taking turns at the same time. Each round, players focus on facing their quadrants, placing workers in making older cheese and collecting resources, all aiming to improve the highest score at the end of the game.
Each quadrant provides unique scoring opportunities and decisions in its mini-play style setting, keeping each quadrant fresh and attractive. Only limited workers are available, players must carefully balance the big points that go all out in one quadrant or strategically place workers in multiple areas to seize the option of easy points.
Fromage-chessboard game
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When it comes to board games, Fromage's box is on the bigger side, but it does pack some very interesting components. Fromage's main head is its rotating lazy Susan-style board, which has four different quadrants for players to interact with. The game board does require some assembly with its interlocking parts, but the configuration is not difficult. These four quadrants are linked together in an order independent of the resource tiles placed in the middle of the board in any direction, creating a random game board every time you play.
Depending on the number of players, there are double-sided inserts inserted into the bottom of each quadrant of the rotating game board, modifying the score and space that fits the number of players.
Like most modern board games, there are punch boards that contain various tokens for the game that you need to eliminate and separate before playing the game. Thankfully, send out two wedge-shaped resource trays, a label compartment with marking sets, and a plastic cover to make it a breeze when you finish. The sides of the game box even provide visual aids that can neatly put all the components back into the box, which is something I hope to do more games.
There are four double-sided player committees on one side that contain rustic farm artworks, as well as information about the individual pattern on the other side. Each player receives a set of components that include 15 colored wooden cheese tokens, three workers and three worker bases – hard, soft and Bleu cheese varieties.
Although not used in the first game, 32 structural tiles can be drafted before each game and placed on each player's board to add more strategy For those seeking greater challenges, diversity.
Rules and how they play
The gameplay involves placing workers on the quadrant of the spin plate per turn to score and generate resources while strategically blocking opponents from doing the same thing. The player with the highest score at the end of the game is the winner.
Once the spinning game board is assembled with the plug-in corresponding to your number of players, each player will select a random player board, along with a set of matching cheese tokens, workers and worker bases. All players start with two resources, depending on the player board they have. Resources include structure, livestock, fruits and commands.
All players play each forwarding at the same time, which not only allows everyone to participate, but also allows the game to move forward at a fast pace. During your rotation, you will use available workers to make a cheese and/or collect a resource in the quadrant facing you.
Each quadrant has a different venue, each with its own mini-play style goals and scoring opportunities. For example, Fromagie requires you to show cheese on as many shelves as possible to score and potentially earn reward resources, while the tavern lets you pair specific cheeses with restaurants for dining. The Little Man’s Field Mission You distribute cheese throughout the region of France to expand your customer base and scores, while the festival requires you to show off the cheese by placing it on each other to score. Despite performing the same core actions, each quadrant differs from each other and requires you to constantly adjust the strategies of each symbol.
It is very important that you place the cheese token in each turn. Each of your three workers specializes in different types of cheese: hard, soft, or Bleu. The space within each quadrant is represented by one of three cheese types and their desired age, which is represented in gold, silver or bronze in the color of space. Cheese that are older are usually more valuable, but require you to place workers on a one to three-loop space for cheese age.
This risk/reward mechanism makes the release so delicious. Are you playing safely and earning fewer points and resources, or doubling on a specific quadrant and losing a valuable worker? You need to weigh these decisions carefully or you may find yourself twisting your thumbs while everyone else’s turn is their turn.
This is also where the game board design that emits a rotating really shines. When the worker is placed on the space, it is oriented according to the age of the cheese. The golden aging cheese (best) makes your worker's face left, while the silver face is upwards and the right is bronze medal. Once all players have taken the action, the board will rotate 90 degrees clockwise to symbolize the aging of the cheese and put your workers in a new direction in the process. At the beginning of each turn, the player retrieves any workers facing them and continues to make cheese until someone runs out of the cheese token.
But making and selling cheese is not the only way to get a score. The various resources you collect during the issuance are also the key to your success. Collecting structure tokens allows you to build structures on the player board to give you unique abilities such as getting resources when placing cheese in a specific quadrant, or improving overall scores if certain criteria are met. The default player board structure provides some interesting strategies, but once you feel the game, you can draft new structural tiles to replace the default options before launching. If you get the right tiles, this allows you to create some interesting (sometimes broken) strategies.
Order Card Tasks where you make a specific type and cheese age and the number of points awarded to you based on the number of orders you complete in the game continues to increase. This resource is especially useful as it usually rewards you just for playing with older cheese. My only complaint is that unless it is consistent with your strategy, there is actually no real motivation to complete a more valuable cheese order, because despite the potential to kidnap your workers for multiple turns, they are not worth any extra points.
Some spaces require you to make fruit cheese or jam, which can only be done if you have fruit on hand. Like other resources, this can be ignored completely, but not collecting fruit effectively will prevent you from putting cheese on many spaces. This creates an interesting dilemma where you always want to try and have at least one fruit to make sure you can make cheese when you turn, otherwise you may fall behind other players. At the end of the game, the amount of fruit cheese and jam you make is multiplied by the reward points.
The ultimate resource, livestock can be collected and swapped for a specific type of elderly cheese during your turn. This allows you to bypass the standard rules by making other cheeses in the cycle and potentially catch you off guard by ending the game faster.
Although Fromage offers many interesting decisions throughout the game between four quadrants, I find there is no player interaction that I want as much as I want in the Worker Placement game. You can almost completely ignore your opponent and still stand out because there are many ways to win. At any given moment, it is also difficult to determine who is moving forward with a lot of sources, so you are never sure if you are actually in the way of your opponent or just wasting your own resources.
Although I like to spin the game board as a concept, I actually have multiple situations where the quadrant is separated when spinning. Thankfully, ongoing engineering includes a central locking shaft that keeps everything in 2026 debuts and along with the standalone extension Formaggio.
A sending also includes Solo modeequipped with an automatic called the company, which bent down in small cheese operations that are not open. Instead of playing in different quadrants, the company plays in your quadrant. At the beginning of each turn, the company draws the order card and places the cheese token where possible. This creates interesting dynamics because you can’t plan effectively because the company can easily disrupt your strategy. When you or the company runs out of cheese tokens, the game ends with the highest score. Overall, I found Solo Mode to be an interesting training opportunity, and its adjustable difficulty level makes it a challenge for players eager to test their cheese making abilities to solo.