CINEMATIC SHOWCASE Review of Chai and the High Tea Expansion!.

- Hi, I hoped you liked that Cinematic Showcase. Usually mine are dark and moody and a bit more dramatic, but it was nice to do a light and airy and fun B-roll, so I hope you liked that. Now today, we're talking about Chai's latest expansion, High Tea.

Now first, I do wanna give a comprehensive review of the base game, and then we'll talk about the expansion as it comes up. Now first off, this is not a sponsored video, but I did get the deluxe copy and the expansion for free thanks to Dan and Connie from Steeped Games.

But regardless of sponsored or not, these are still my genuine, honest opinions about what I'm reviewing. Now secondly, at the time of this upload, I am having a 2K Instagram Follower Giveaway that has been going insane, so I'll leave my Instagram details right here and in the description below, make sure you join in because the contest does end on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2020 at 8 p.m.

Pacific Standard Time, so make sure you check that out because I am giving away two copies of the Deluxe Chai, don't miss out. All right, so let's talk about the base game first. Now, in Chai, you're playing as a tea merchant who specializes in a specific type of tea.

It sounds like a superpower. Specializes in Oolong Tea. So you're specializing in one to five teas and then you're going to the market and buying different ingredients in order to fulfill a specific customer's request. Now, you can reserve more customers and as you do, you have the options to use different abilities which will expand on the ingredients that you have, allows you to switch out your different ingredients from the pantry and from the market and so on.

Now, in the expansion, you're now given Ability Tearooms, which lets you use different abilities once per turn, and you also have the option to use dice which will, in turn, remove different ingredients from the game, depending on whether you want to use one or two dice.

Now, as always, I'll start first with what I think the game can improve on, followed by artwork, components and then overall gameplay, so we end on a good note. So in one of the earlier copies of Chai, I did a video on it way back when, but in an earlier printing of the rule book, the first column of the market would get stuck because no one would want to use those ingredients, so they would just remain there, but I'm glad that in this issue or this reiteration of the rule book, the latest one, it's now actually part of the mechanics to remove that first column and then everything gets shifted accordingly, so I'm glad that that issue got addressed now.

Secondly, I did wish that one was the minimum for the tip jar when you're flipping over the random tips. The reason for that is because if you're spending all of these resources, 'cause essentially, it is a resource management game, when you're spending all of these resources to gather all these ingredients to match a customer's reservation and then you reach over and flip the coin and you get zero, but then the next player goes, turns in a two-ingredient card and then they score three coins from the tip jar and it's like, hold on, there's just a little something daunting about getting an award that is just zero, rather than one, so I think that is one minor change I think would definitely improve the game.

Other than that, it's hard to nitpick Chai, because Chai overall is a great, wonderful, family-fun, lighthearted game. It's probably one of the most thematic games that I've ever played. Let's talk about the artwork. It's very unique, I think the cards are my favorite actually, because there's so much variety in all the characters that are portrayed.

I think also that it's very cool and it's a very inspiring nod to see that this game, and tea in general, is something that is to be enjoyed by everyone, so I really like how inclusive that was and I really appreciated that. On top of that, my favorite card in the game actually was Uncle Iroh.

It took me a second, not to realize who it was, but to really take in the fact that he was in Chai and it fits perfectly, because obviously he was all about tea, so I think that was such a cool find and I just did a video on that game, so I think it was such a cool find for me to see that Uncle Iroh was in Chai.

Components next, clearly this is a beautiful game. Literally, everyone raves about how good this game looks and you can see for yourself by looking at all the components that I've shown you and from some of the photos that I've taken, the components are stunning.

From the tea tokens to the tea cups that hold your ingredients, even the thermometer is a round marker, how nicely woven is that? End game is the thermometer increasing in temperature and it gets hotter and hotter for you to make tea. Like, come on. And then the metal coins and visiting the pantry and turning in all these ingredients really makes you feel like a tea merchant, so I really love how immersive and thematic that part of the game is.

One tiny little thing that would've really thrown me over the edge was I thought it would've been really cool if they had little miniature milk tokens and sugar cubes, I thought that would've been really nice, but obviously, who knows what the costs would've been to manufacture five different unique miniatures, tokens, ingredient miniatures.

In High Tea, I also love how the dice are heat transferred, they're not little stickers or anything and all of the cardboard used in the game is very, very thick premium material and most importantly about any game as always is the gameplay, how does the game play? So Chai, I would say, is one of the best ways to get people in the hobby, it is a great, great gateway game and I would go even so far to say that it is deceptively light, let me explain.

Let's say you're buying ingredients in the market, you kinda have to anticipate how the tiles are going to shift, according to which ingredients are taken and what pattern that they're taken in. So any kind of anticipation strategy, I love that and when it's integrated into a game, where you have to think about your future turns and how different player moves are going to affect your own actions.

So for sure, there is strategy in that. So in the base game alone, there's already complexity added when you have all of these ability cards that are added to the table, it adds a whole bunch of dynamacism to the game. The reason for that is because it will change how you're going to exchange and buy different ingredients and interact with different players.

I love being able to sabotage other players. It is the theme of our game group. We just love to mess with each other and sabotage each other's plays, we're extremely competitive. Maybe a bit too competitive. So in High Tea, some of the ability tearooms will allow you to directly take tiles from different players or exchange it with other players, so that adds a whole other level of player interaction to the game.

So there's also a copycat ability, you can switch customers with other players in the ability tearooms, and like I mentioned earlier, the dice will let you remove different ingredients from the game, depending on whether or not you wanna use one die to remove a certain ingredient or both dice to remove two ingredients.

So as simple as the expansion looks, it adds a whole other level of gameplay to Chai, which I really appreciate. So overall, it's not just me that finds it really fun, my family and friends love this game, especially since tea is literally our go-to drink for every board game night.

We wouldn't even be able to play the game until there was Boba. Chai is deceptively light, super easy to teach, super fun to play overall, tons of player interaction, the components speak for themselves and it's a great game. Now again, make sure you check out my Instagram, if you don't wanna miss out on the giveaway for both the photo contest and for the general contest overall.