Cheese Factory
Cheese Factory Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Objective
Get 20 Cheese Points from Making Cheese!
Gameplay Overview
Players will build their own cheese factory and then make different kinds of cheese!
On your turn, players will have 3 actions to divide between buying new machines, gathering ingredients, starting cheese fires, and using ingredients to complete recipe cards to make cheese.
The player who most recently ate cheese goes first. Play goes clockwise from there with players taking 3 actions on their turns.
Setup
Shuffle the Craft Deck, Recipe Deck and the Machine Deck. There should be room for a discard pile next to each one.
Lay out 4 Craft Cards, 4 Recipe Cards and 4 Machine Cards in 3 different rows so they are visible to all players. This creates "The Market".
[Setup illustration: an example Market. Craft row: Snek Milk, Moon Rock, Wayle Milk, Marbo Chonk. Recipe row: Wheel of Bluff Cheese, Wheel of Mucho Cheese (its card reads "Craft by discarding any 4 machines."), Wheel of Marbo Cheese, Wheel of Moos Cheese. Machine row: Ingredient Plucker, Coloration Station, Vat O' Milk, Conveyer Belt.]
Each player chooses a Chef Card at random.
Deal out 3 Craft Cards to each player for their hand. Then deal out one Machine Card to each player which is shown faceup.
This is the beginning of your "Factory".
On Your Turn
You have 3 ACTIONS. You can use your actions for any combination of the following:
- Draw a Craft Card from the deck (One Action per card)
- Draw a face-up Craft Card from the market (Two Actions per card)
- Buy a Cheese Machine for the listed action cost
- Start a Cheese Fire (One Action per Cheese Fire Card)
- Craft a Cheese Recipe once you have the proper ingredients (One Action per Recipe Card)
After performing your actions, if you have over five cards, DISCARD from your hand down to five.
Market Stacking
When there are duplicate cards in the market, they are stacked face-up on top of each other. When taking that card, players would simply take the top card and not the whole stack. This prevents duplicate cards from reducing player options. If you run out of cards, reshuffle the discard pile to make a new deck.
Cheese Fires
You can play a Cheese Fire card against another player to destroy one of their machines.
Defending players can immediately use a Non-Flammable Token card to prevent the cheese fire from happening.
Players can use their Non-Flammable Tokens to put out fires for other players as well.
Cheese Fires and Non-Flammable Tokens are discarded after use.
Machines
Players can buy different machines to gain different cheese-making abilities in the game.
Players benefit from the ability listed on the machine until the end of the game or until the machine is destroyed.
Many of the machines give you a free ingredient towards certain recipes you might try to make. Others give you unique abilities that you can use throughout the game.
You can have more than one of the same machine giving you the benefit of having that ability multiple times.
The number next to the wrench symbol shows the action cost.
Special Abilities
Each chef has a unique special ability that can be used on their turn once per game. Special abilities do not consume actions.
The ability is shown on the front of the player's Chef Card. Players must shout the catchphrase shown on their character card for the ability to take effect.
[Illustration: the chef catchphrases shown in speech bubbles: "Safety First!" (with the caption "Keep your cheese safe"), "Free Market!", "Let's Trade!" and "Le Yoink!".]
One-Off Cards
Curd Foam: This causes an explosion of curd foam that allows you to discard all of the Craft Cards, Recipe Cards or all of the Machines from the market, replacing them with new cards from the respective deck. This card does not take an action to use.
Orb of Madness: This is a wild card for any ingredient you need.
Scoring
Once you have the necessary ingredients to make a Recipe Card from the market, you can use an action to make that cheese and score those points.
[Illustration of an example Recipe Card, "Wheel of Moon Cheese": the ingredients needed are Moon Rock x 2 and Goat Milk x 2; the points are 11.]
Place any scored Recipe Cards face up in front of you and deal a new Recipe Card to the market. Discard any ingredients used to make the cheese.
Winning
When a player gets 20 Cheese Points or more, turns continue until all players have had an equal number of turns. The player with the most Cheese Points at the end of that round wins!
If players tie, play continues with an even number of turns until there is a clear winner!
Machine Clarifications
Firestarter: You do not need a Cheese Fire card, the Firestarter is enough to destroy another player's completed cheese if it is worth over 6 points. A non-flammable token can be used to defend against it. It takes two actions to buy this machine and one action to use it.
Vat O' Milk, Stink-A-Tron 5000, Paperwork Cube, Ingredient Plucker, Greasinator, Curd Dispenser, Coloration Station: These cards provide one of the listed ingredient in lieu of a Craft Card. They can be used multiple times for different Recipe Cards unless destroyed by a cheese fire.
Solidification Chamber: If this machine is destroyed, the player can no longer complete their secret recipe.
Conveyor Belt: After removing the rightmost cards in each row of the market, shift all cards to the right and add new cards from each deck to the left side. It should kind of work like an actual conveyor belt where the cards consistently move towards one side!
If an issue arises that isn't answered here, please reasonably choose a solution with what to do in that situation. If your game group is not reasonable at all (common enough), the designer of the game can offer a binding decision on all your cheese woes.