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Become a Tea Master: With Chai Board Game

chai-board-game-reviewMove over, Starbucks; tea is the next big wave! Try your hand at becoming a tea master in this firey board game: Chai!

Chai is a new game hot off of Kickstarter from Dan and Connie Kazmaier and Steeped Games.  Chai can play one to five players and takes about 20 to 60 minutes per game.

Chai Deluxe Board Game

Chai

In Chai, you will step into the shoes of a tea merchant, combining tea flavors to make a perfect blend. Specializing in either rooibos, green, oolong, black or white tea, you will buy and collect ingredients to fulfill your customers’ orders.

Chai — Deluxe Edition. Includes all unlocked Retail and Deluxe Edition stretch goals. Have tea with friends and family while playing this immersive board game!

Unique features to the deluxe include:

  • 30 metal coins
  • GameTrayz™ deluxe insert
  • Metal 1st player token
  • 2 dice for AI solo variant
  • 10 deluxe exclusive cards
  • 5 deluxe superfan-inspired cards
  • 5 deluxe wild pantry tokens
  • Spot UV box text
  • Upgraded deluxe dice (16 mm)
  • 5 wild tea ingredient tiles
  • Linen box finish
  • 3 unique customer tips
  • 3 NEW ability cards

Become a Tea Master: With Chai Board Game

Chai

In Chai, you are the owner of a tea house. Your goal is to fulfill orders by making various teas. You do this by acquiring flavors and pantry items to satisfy your customers’ tastes. At the end of the game, you will count up the points from fulfilled customer cards and any remaining money you have. The player with the most points wins.

Chai board gameEach player will have a personal tea house board showing which tea they specialize in. This can range from white, black, green, oolong, or rooibos teas. There are three main actions you can take toward your goal of completing orders. These consist of visiting the market, taking pantry items, or reserving a customer.

When you visit the market you gain three coins. You then can spend as much on flavor ingredients as you can or want. This has a sort of puzzle element to it as well. When you choose an ingredient, you take it and every contiguous matching ingredient connected orthogonally. You then pay the highest amount that the group is connected to. So, if only one tile is under the three-coin row, you pay three for everything for example. The ingredients then slid down and fill the gaps you left behind possibly creating better groups for you to purchase.

Visiting the pantry is a little more straightforward you simply take three pantry items.  This can be any combination of available tokens or blind draws from the bag.  Also, before choosing you can optionally pay one coin to reset the pantry if you don’t like what’s there.

The final action you can perform is to reserve a customer.  You take the customer you want and set it to the side of your tea house.  You also get to perform one of the three randomized special actions as a bonus.  These special actions will shift and rotate at the end of each round.

Once you take your action you may then fill an order.  This order can be a customer on your tea house or from the public row.  Each customer typically wants a specific combination of pantry items and/or flavor tiles.  The more complex the order the more points they will be worth.  The final ingredient on each order will be specific players’ tea leaf.  If the order is your tea color you take one of your supply and add it to the order.  If the tea leaf belongs to an opponent you pay them a coin to use their leaf.  This is not optional and the opponents cannot refuse this.  Once any players’ tea leaves are gone all order cards of that color are removed from the game.

When you fill an order you place all the ingredients into one of the teacups that still have a tip token left.  Once all tips are taken the round is over. After five rounds the game ends and players add up their points from completed orders and remaining coins.  Also when playing three or more players you gain a bonus point for each color order.

I really enjoyed my playthroughs of Chai.  The game is fun, easy to learn, and satisfying.  The art is beautiful and the deluxe edition has amazing components.  I think this one is gonna be a hit at game nights.  Hopefully, you get a chance to check out this fantastic game.

Get Your Copy of Chai Here!

board game wrapper

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About the Author: Christopher Guyton

When not driving forklifts for a living Chris can be found pushing cubes and chucking dice at Gamer’s Guild in Spring Lake, NC