Base price: $12.
1 player.
Play time: ~15 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy directly!
Logged plays: 4
Full disclosure: A review copy of A Nice Cuppa was provided by Button Shy.
Ironically, despite the Switch 2 launching this week, that’s not actually the reason that these reviews are so late. This time, I was at a wedding for the majority of the weekend and the impact on my sleep schedule and such really threw me off on Saturday and Sunday, so I’ve largely been asleep the last two days. It’s kind of odd how much time in your adult life you can spend asleep, but I’m not too mad about it. I’m just, once again, behind. I have another wedding next weekend, so I’m hoping to get a bit more ahead of the curve this time around, but it’s anyone’s guess what will happen. We will certainly see. In the meantime, since I’m packing for a big trip anyways, A Nice Cuppa and some more Button Shy titles caught my eye. Let’s dive in, but expect to see more soon!
In A Nice Cuppa, your goal is simple: you want to have a pleasant time with a cup of tea, far away from the worries that usually define your day-to-day. And there are many. Thankfully, a puzzle is just a process, and organizing your brain while you’re preparing your cup shouldn’t be too bad (unless you’re trying to observe a ceremony or something). How far away will you be able to push your worries to enjoy a refreshing tea?
Contents
Setup
This part’s not too challenging. Shuffle up your Tea Cards, and place them in a row, colorful-side up:
Shuffle up the Worry Cards next, and place seven of them on the table, one below each Tea Card.
You should be ready to start!
Gameplay
The actual game is pretty easy. Each turn plays the same way, including the first one.
To start a turn, choose any face-down Worry Card and reveal it face-up. Once you’ve done that, starting on the left and moving to the right, resolve each face-up Worry Card in the row. These will usually move around or swap Tea Cards, so expect that.
Once all Worry Cards have been resolved, any Tea Card above a face-up Worry Card gets flipped to its opposite side (both Distracted [sepia] and Focused [colorful] Tea Cards can get flipped). Any face-up Worry Cards below Focused Tea Cards (after the flip) are removed from the game. Play then continues with another turn.
The game ends once a turn is completed and there are no more face-down Worry Cards to flip face up. Now, to score:
- Discard any cards to the left of Tea Card #1.
- Discard any cards to the right of Tea Card #1 that are not part of an ascending sequence starting with 1. This should go 1 / 2 / 3 / etc. If you have 5 / 6 / 1 / 2 / 3 / 7 / 4, you would discard 5, 6, 7, and 4.
- Each Focused Tea Card is worth 2 points.
- Each Distracted Tea Card is worth 1 point.
- Each face-up Worry Card is worth -1 point.
If you scored more than 6, you win!
Player Count Differences
None! Solo game.
Strategy
- Balance is key. It’s not just flipping cards; it’s removing Worry Cards. It’s not just removing Worry Cards; it’s getting the cards into the right place. It’s not just getting the cards into the right place; it’s flipping cards to their Focused Side. You need to hold these three conflicts in balance to perform well.
- I like starting with the middle-most Worry Card, and then using that to inform if I’d like more actions before or after it. It gives me a sense of what might be happening a lot, or I can try to move a Distracted Tea Card there so it’ll get flipped to the Focused Side and removed from the game, I suppose.
- More generally, think about which Worry Card you’re flipping. You don’t want to just be doing that arbitrarily, especially since doing so will cause you to get stuck managing a very complex action queue (which may not work for everyone). Try making small adjustments and leaving Worry Cards that are helpful where you can. Compartmentalize those worries!
- Some Worry Cards will just disappear by virtue of not affecting the cards above it at all, which is fine. You don’t always have to actively work to remove Worry Cards. Several of my games saw a Worry flip a Tea Card, flip it back the next game, and then discard the Worry. Sometimes things are simple.
- Several Worry Cards push Tea Cards to the leftmost or rightmost edges, so you may not want to get the 1 / 7 in place until later in the game. Or, it might be worth keeping the 1 and 7 together to potentially anticipate cards like that? Who knows. This is especially tricky since some of the Worry Cards are left out at the start of the game.
- Eliminating Worry Cards immediately is nice, but it also limits the actions you can take. You might burn the convenient actions for moving lots of cards and then end up with actions that just reshuffle your hard-organized Tea Card row.
- Similarly, getting all the Tea Cards in order is nice, but it puts you in a position where you often have to mess them all up again. Your goal is to get them in 1 – 7 order at the end of the game.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- The art style is really nice! It’s charming, relaxing, and pleasant. It’s a really good combo for a game like this.
- I like this almost action-programming-adjacent thing that the game has got going on. I guess it’s a managed action queue, but it’s very fun to figure out how you want to add actions and how that affects subsequent turns. You also then get to figure out when and how to remove those actions, which is an extra challenge.
- The game plays quickly, but still with a good challenge. Definitely short and sweet, but that’s kind of par for the course with this line.
- The Simply Solo series writ large has been very impressive; I like how much they play with a fairly limited space and still manage to consistently turn out interesting ideas. I don’t know how Scott Almes manages to hit this so consistently.
- High portability is always nice. The Button Shy advantage is that you can take this anywhere, but this has a small footprint, so you can play it most of the places you’d take it as well! A great way to pass time for an event.
- I love a solo game with low rules overhead; it makes the game something I can play even after work and such. I’m still looking for great games to play after work that don’t have screens so I can avoid just going straight from The Bad Screen (work computer) to The Good Screen (TV / phone). This is a nice alternative.
Mehs
- Having to unmake a largely-correctly placed set of cards can be a little frustrating. It just makes me sad to have to unwind or be forced to mess up my perfected Tea Card row.
- Another game with a lot of card-swapping and lifting that would benefit from a playmat. You’re picking up, swapping, and placing down cards a lot.
Cons
- There’s some aspect of luck involved, which can feel bad if you end up drawing a bad Worry Card at the end of the game that messes everything up. I had one game where I drew the near-worst-possible card last (split a pair and place them on either side of the game. It’s not great when you’re so close to the end.
Overall: 8.5 / 10
Overall, I really enjoyed A Nice Cuppa! I was expecting something more complicated, I think, which filled me with a certain level of trepidation. Fortunately for me, it’s actually a very chill and relaxing game. It doesn’t quite have the same level of tile-covering goodness as the -opolis games, but it instead has this really interesting action queue (deque-ish) that you can add to or insert into to try and organize a line of cards in order. Even when I play badly, it’s easy to reset and start over immediately and I think the game feels like it wants you to get better. A Nice Cuppa also has a relatively small footprint, making it perfect for travel. I actually really want to play this one on a train; it feels like a perfect train game. I will say it feels kind of bad to have to undo a sequence when you’ve gotten it pretty close, but that’s planning games for you; you’re done when the game says that you’re done. And it’s a simple goal: get your Tea Cards in order by the time it’s finished steeping so that you can enjoy it. There’s a bit of luck involved, naturally (certain cards coming up later is just … bad), but A Nice Cuppa hits the balance of luck and strategy pretty well for me to consistently find it pleasant and entertaining. I needed a new relaxing puzzle game, anyways: a lot of the puzzly video games have been putting me to sleep lately. If you want to cozy up with a card game or you’re just a big fan of tea, A Nice Cuppa might be right uppa your alley! It’s 1AM; that joke stays.
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