Designer: Scott Almes Publisher: Button Shy Players: 1 Age: 10+ Duration: 20 minutes Played with a review copy provided by the publisher
Modern life is filled with constant worries: busy work, unpaid bills, health concerns, etc. Why not let the rich aroma of your favourite tea take over your mind and forget your burdens, even if just for a moment?
A Nice Cuppa is the seventh game in Button Shy’s Simply Solo series. Designed by Scott Almes, the game challenges players to deal with their worries over eight turns by carefully managing their cards. As worries unfold, life becomes complicated and distracting. Focus on your tea to clear away those sticky issues and calm your nerves. Once the tea is ready, evaluate your accomplishments.
A Nice Cuppa is an 18-card game from Button Shy Games. To begin the game, take the 7 numbered Tea cards, shuffle them and place them in a row on the table with their Focused (color) side up. Next, shuffle the 10 Worry cards and place one face-down on the table underneath each Tea card. Discard the 3 unused Worry cards out of sight.
The game is played over 8 rounds. In each round, follow these steps:
A) Choose a face-down Worry card and turn it face up.
B) Working from left to right, perform all of the actions on the face-up Worry cards. Each of these cards allows you to manipulate the order/position of the Tea cards.
C) Flip over each Tea card that is above a face-up Worry card.
D) Remove each face-up Wory card directly below the Focused Tea card.
E) Swap two adjacent tea cards if necessary.
In the final round of the game (you can tell because there are no more face-down Worry cards), you skip Phase A and complete the other steps before proceeding to scoring.
At the end of the game, store Tee Card #1 and each card to its right in their correct numerical order. Calculate your next score based on the remaining cards.
+2 VP for each Focus Tea card, +1 VP for each Distraction Tea card, -1 VP for each Worry card on the table
In the standard game, you succeed if you score at least 6 points. If you choose to play a more difficult game, you must score at least 8 points and get all the Tea cards in numerical order.
My thoughts on the game
A Nice Cuppa is a challenging game with a bit of a puzzle feel. The rules are very simple (you only need one turn reference card once you’ve learned the game), but there’s a lot to accomplish in the 8 short turns.
Worry cards are revealed in a random order, and you never know what will come out of the face-down Worry cards, so you always need to plan for all possibilities. Your main goal is two-fold: first, to arrange the cards as well as possible, and second, to remove Worry cards from the table. Interestingly, you don’t need to remove Worry cards right away, because a card manipulation action on a Worry card might be needed to arrange the Tea cards in the right order.
Each worry card moves the cards in a slightly different way, but things can get complicated if you end up with too many worry cards left on the board at the end of a round. Understanding how to manage the worry cards and their actions is key to success. When I started playing, my only focus was on getting the cards in the correct numerical order, because each card remaining at the end of the game was guaranteed to score points. Now that I can do that with some regularity, the challenge is to get all the cards in the concentration side while still moving them to the right places. My best score so far is only 10 out of 14, so I still have plenty of room for improvement.
The game now takes me 10-15 minutes, which was really useful on a recent flight. The entire game fits in your pocket (I have the card prototype, so it doesn’t yet come with the fancy card wallet that Button Shy games usually come with) or on a tray table. It’s been fun to play so far, and I think I’ll end up playing it at work, during my free time throughout the day. The game will be released on Kickstarter later this year.
Opinions of gamers with other opinions
Maricel E. – I love card sorting (is that a mechanic?). Games like Numbsters, Murderer’s Row, and Elevenses really tickle a niche part of my brain. They’re usually small and portable, and it doesn’t hurt that they barely weigh anything in my school bag. A Nice Cuppa is a great addition to my modest collection of card sorting games that can be played solo. I came for the art and stayed for the puzzles. I was a little confused figuring out the rules. You can move cards in any pair/group when instructed by the Worry card, but you don’t necessarily have to put the pairs/groups in numerical order. That made the game even harder. But after getting confirmation from the creator through Dale, subsequent games went a lot smoother. I’m not quite as leveled up as Dale yet, so I’m more focused on getting the cards in numerical order than I am on getting rid of the Worry cards, but slow and steady is the path to victory. Oh, and did I mention that PnP is super easy to put together? But I’m not kidding, I’ll definitely buy the published version when it comes out.
Reviews from opinionated gamers
I love it! I love it. Dale Y, Maricel E. Neither. Just not for me…
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About Dale Yu
Dale Yu is an editor at Opinionated Gamers. He also serves as a volunteer administrator for BoardGameGeek and is a former contributor to BoardGame News.
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