You are a pastry chef in charge of putting delicious fillings in a variety of cakes, pastries, and baked goods.
By coming to work early and making use of your full pantry of supplies, you will earn money, customer reviews, and critical acclaim. With a little luck, you might win out over your rivals and be crowned Star Baker!
Components
- 50 standard recipe cards
- 10 advanced recipe cards
- 18 chef cards
- 6 reference cards
- 6 turn order cards
- Instructions
Setup
Supply the Chefs: Give each player a set of 3 chef cards and a reference card, all with a matching border color. Place any extras back in the box.
Create the Recipe Deck: Return the 10 advanced recipe cards, with a red border, to the box (unless everyone has played before, or you have 6 players). Shuffle the rest of the recipe cards and count out 10 cards per player. Place any extras back in the box.
Create the Recipe Book: From the deck, reveal as many recipe cards as there are players, plus one, and place these in a row in the center of the table.
Recipe Cards
Each recipe card has two regions. On the left side of the card is a column of information that is important when the card is in your hand. The rest of the card is relevant only when the card is in the recipe book.
Icons
Ingredients are used to fill recipes.
Requirements specify which ingredients you need to fill this recipe.
Victory Points are how you win the game.
Special Abilities are extra effects that happen when you fill this recipe.
Game Play
The game takes place over a number of rounds, called days. Each day, players will use a card from their hand to determine the turn order for that day.
Then, each player in turn will either fill a recipe (claim a new card), or restock their pantry (pick up discarded cards). Finally, the recipe book is refilled.
Turn Order
At the beginning of a day, each player must place a card from their hand face-down in front of them. This is the player's time card for the day. Once everyone has done this, all players simultaneously reveal their time card.
The times printed on these cards determine the turn order for the day, earliest to latest. If you like, you may distribute the turn order cards as a visual indicator of this order.
Note: The recipe book is not replenished after a player's turn, so earlier players will have more choices than later ones.
On each player's turn, the player must first discard their time card into their personal discard pile, and then perform either a fill action or a restock action.
Fill
If a player chooses the fill action, they must play one or more cards from their hand. The ingredients on the left side of those cards must cover all of the requirements listed on one of the recipe cards in the recipe book.
Then, the player must discard all of these played cards, and pick up the fulfilled recipe into their hand.
Note: Since the time card has already been discarded at this point, it is not available for the player to use in fulfilling a recipe.
Some recipes have a special ability icon, which is immediately resolved at this time. These abilities are explained in the Special Abilities section of the rulebook.
Restock
If a player chooses the restock action, they pick up all of the cards in their discard pile and return them to their hand.
In addition, the player reserves one of the cards in the recipe book by returning it to the top of the deck. This prevents other players from fufilling that recipe this day.
Special Abilities
Some cards have special ability icons on them, which take effect immediately after a player fills that card's recipe.
Bonus fill. The player may optionally fill another recipe to claim another card. The ingredients used must come from newly-played cards.
Bonus restock. The player immediately returns all discarded cards to their hand.
Note: Unlike a regular restock action, the player does not have the option to reserve a recipe.
Advanced Cards
Once you are familiar with the game, you can introduce the 10 advanced recipe cards into the deck. These cards each contain one of two new special abilities.
Bad batch. After claiming this card, the player must immediately choose one of their cards and remove it from the game. The chosen card may come from the player's hand or discard pile.
Arrive early. Unlike other special abilities, this has no effect at the time the card is claimed. Instead, this ability replaces the time on the card. In the turn order phase, a player may select this card in addition to their time card to subtract one hour from the card's time.
End of the Game
After all players have taken their turn, refill the recipe book with cards from the top of the recipe deck until there are as many cards available as the number of players, plus one.
If there are not enough cards to fully fill the recipe book at the end of a day, the game is over. Otherwise, begin a new day with the turn order phase.
At the end of the game, award points as follows:
- Collect the cards in your hand and discard pile.
- For each victory point symbol at the bottom left of the cards, score 1 point.
- For each complete set of 3 different victory point symbols (
), score an additional 2 points.
Example: Claire scores 9 points for her victory point symbols, plus 4 points for her 2 complete sets, for a total of 13 points.
The player with the most points is crowned Star Baker!
In the case of a tie, the tied player with the most total cards wins. If there is still a tie, the tied players share the victory.
Unusual Situations
What if nobody can (or wants to) fill any of the recipes in the recipe book?
If all players choose the restock action two days in a row, then collect all of the cards in the recipe book and place them on the bottom of the recipe deck before refilling the recipe book.
What if there is a tie for turn order?
This can only occur due to the use of multiple arrive early cards. If this happens, the player who played more arrive early cards takes their turn first.
What if a player has no cards to play for turn order? Players will always have at least one card in their hand because of the previous turn's fill or restock action.
If the player has only arrive early cards, though, they will reveal this card as their time card, will play last, and must take a restock action.
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