Summary
👥 A game for 2 – 4 players
⏳ Playing time is around 30 minutes
🏢 Publisher is Korea Boardgames
Introduction
You have a cafe on a busy street with other great cafes. Your cafe has a cozy vibe, tasty coffee and trends on social media. Although the customers come to your cafe to relax, sometimes it becomes a battleground to complete orders. It can be stressful if you can’t complete orders on time but it’s not good for your business when you complete lots of orders.
Can you complete the most orders and become the best barista?
Let’s get in on the table
Place the ingredient board in the middle of the table and place the ingredients nearby so every player can reach them. Place the Rush tokens next to the ingredients.
Every player receives 1 player board, 4 upgrade tile and 1 meeple in the same color. When you’re playing with 2 players, both players get 2 meeples in 1 color (so only red or blue, unless you have the expansion). All the players also receives 3 cups where they can place the ingredients in.
The starting player receives the First player token. Shuffle the order cards and give the first player 3 order cards and the other player 2 cards. The first player places them face up and 2 cards on tab 1 and 1 on tab 2. The other places place them also open and place 1 card on tab 1 and 1 card on tab 2.
Now we’re going to place the meeples on the ingredient board. The last player places the meeple on the board and take the ingredient and place it into a cup.
Let’s play
Turns proceed in clockwise order.
During your turn you complete the following actions in order.
Activate upgrades
Move
Pour Ingredients
Process Order
Turn End
Let’s dive a bit deeper into the different actions;
Activate upgrades: at the beginning of your turn you can select upgrade tile to upgrade it and it’s directly activated and you can use it now in your turn. To upgrade a tile, you have to discard 3 complete order cards.
Move: Move your meeple on the board and receive ingredients where you land, you can move 1 to 3 steps but in the beginning of the game only adjacent horizontal or vertical. When you land on a space, you receive the ingredients, even when there is another player. But at the end of your movement, you’re not allowed to end your turn there. On each ingredient can only be 1 meeple. During your turn, you can use the same ingredient different times and you can even land on the ingredient where you started your turn.
When you have a rush token, or even more rush tokens, you can move additional steps to gather more ingredients.
Pour Ingredients: Now you pour the ingredients into the 3 different cups to complete order cards. When an ingredient is placed into a cup, you can’t place it into another one. But you can discard all the ingredients from a cup to fill a new one. The ingredients that you can’t place into a cup are discarded.
Process Order: when you’ve pour the ingredients into the cup or cups you can check if you’ve completed an order or orders. When you’ve completed an order, you just place it on that order card. Take the ingredients out of the cup and place your completed order card to the top left of your player board. Now check if you have completed more order cards.
When it is a specialty menu, you also receive 1 rush token
Now the other player(s) receive the same number of order cards from the deck as you just completed. First the player on your left take all the cards, then the next player until every player has taken the same number of new order cards. These order cards are placed into tab 1.
When there are no more order cards left in the deck, the game ends. The starting player now flips the Starting Player token to the “closed” side.
Turn End: Now you turn is about to end. Move all the order cards on the right side of your player board one tab down. The cards that were on tab 4 are now placed on the bottom left to your player board, the other cards go from tab 1 to tab 2 etc.
Each order cards that leaves your player board, are penalty cards. When you have 5 penalty cards, the game also ends. If not we can continue playing.
You receive 1 rush token for each cards that turns into a penalty card.
If the game didn’t end, the game continues.
Upgrade tiles
Let’s take a look at the 4 upgrade tiles;
Double Meeples: You receive 2 ingredients on cells with another meeple
Diagonal Movement: You can move diagonal to ingredients
Double corners: You receive 2 ingredients on the 4 corners of the ingredient board
Double specialties: You receive 2 ingredients on caramel, chocolate, water and tea leaves.
2 player rules
There are some adjustments when you play with just 2 players.
Every player gets 2 meeples in 1 color, so in this case you can choose for blue or red. The meeples will be placed on the board like when you play with 3 and 4 players but now you receive 2 ingredients.
You can only move 1 meeple during your turn but when you have the upgraded tile Double Meeples, it also counts when you pass your meeple on an ingredient.
Check the number of completed cards that were completed, the other player receives that many order cards and place them on tab 1. When you’ve completed your turn you still move all the cards 1 tab down but you also receive 1 order card from the deck and place that card on tab 1. When the game ends when the starting player is at his turn, the other player can perform one last turn.
The Game Ends
The game ends when all order cards run out or if someone collects 5 Penalty cards. Then the points will be counted.
You receive 1 point for each completed order cards
You receive 2 point for each upgraded tile
Each penalty cards cost 1 point
Conclusie & eindscore
Difficulty: 1.81/ 5
Re-playability: 7
Our score: 7,5 out of 10 dice
Coffee Rush is a wonderfully hectic game in which you try to make as much coffee as possible each round! You move across 1 to 3 fields and preferably more to collect the necessary ingredients and get lattes, cappuccinos, teas and espressos to your customers as quickly as possible. It’s all about speed, timing and a bit of a lot of stress resistance.
The rules are easy to explain, the material is nice and inviting from but what really appeals in this game are the different ingredients and coffee cups. The fact that these look so nice and fun has really given this game an upgrade. In addition, the playing time makes it ideal for between games or as an energetic end to a game night. With 2 players but also with multiple players, this one is great to play but do keep an eye on your stress level, because that it will be stressful is obvious. You actually get cards every round and you want to get rid of them as quickly as possible to avoid getting minus points. The nice thing is that you can discard the cards for upgrades, in the base game there are 4 different ones and actually they are all useful and so far it doesn’t really matter which one you take first and that feels very strong.
The replayability is good, as you really depend on the cards you get and also whether you can use Rush tokens. The game is especially suitable for people who like speed and action, and who are not afraid of a bit of stress on the game board.
Are you ready to go to work as a barista and provide as many customers as possible with their cup of coffee or tea? ☕️
Thanks to Korea Boardgames for this review copy and the opportunity to write about this game.
