Dulce Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Object of the Game
• Components
• Setup
• Card Anatomy
• Gameplay
  • 1. Draw Phase
  • 2. Action Phase
    • Build a Café
    • Plant Fields
    • Harvest Crops
  • Feed the Chickens
  • 3. Scoring Phase
    • Score
    • Create Byproducts
    • Repeat
• Game End
• Solo

Object of the Game

Each round, players draw a card and decide simultaneously to build a café, plant fields, or harvest crops. Players all draw the same card, so what you do with that card is paramount to your success!

Making confections in your cafés is how you score points. To get the ingredients for these confections, you'll need to plant different types of beans (cacao, coffee, peanuts, and vanilla) and then harvest them from your fields.

The trick? Products from one café can be ingredients for another. So you can make confections for free, as long as you build strategically!

Components

• 4 player boards
• 96 double-sided cards (24 for each player)
• 115 resource cubes: 25 cacao, 25 coffee, 25 peanut, 25 vanilla, and 15 eggs
• 4 player aids
• 4 player meeples
• 4 chicken meeples

Setup

1. Give each player the player board, deck, player meeple, chicken meeple, and player aid that matches their player color.
2. Place your player meeple on the zero space of the track on your player board. Place your chicken meeple flat along the top of your player board, above the zero space of the track.
3. Place all resource cubes in the center of the table, arranged by type.
4. Choose a lead player. That player shuffles their deck, returns four cards randomly to the box (they will not be used in this game), and then places their deck café-side up on the table for all other players to see. This player will stay the lead player for the entire game.
5. All other players arrange their deck in ascending order (1-24).

Card Anatomy

Front

1. Café name: The type of confection.
2. Card number: Referenced when the lead player draws the card for the round.
3. Ingredient space: Includes two factors, type and level.
   • a. Type: There are four different types of resources a café might need: cacao, coffee, peanut, and vanilla.
   • b. Level: Shown by the number of rings. The levels are pure bean (3 rings), ground bean (2 rings), and butter (1 ring). These determine what byproducts your café leaves behind. See Scoring Phase (page 6) for more information.

Back

4. Fields: Each card has a unique 2x2 grid of four fields that can be placed on your player board to grow the associated ingredient.

Gameplay

Each round has three phases: draw phase, action phase, and scoring phase. After twenty rounds, the game ends, and the player with the most points wins!

1. Draw Phase

The round begins with the lead player drawing the top card of their deck and calling out the card number. Then, the other players search their deck for the card with the same number. This means that every round, all players will be playing an identical card, but there are multiple ways each card can be played, and your strategic choices are all your own.

2. Action Phase

Once all players are holding the same card, they simultaneously choose and perform one of three actions: build a café, plant fields, or harvest crops.

Build a Café

Place your card beside your player board with the café side faceup. You can overlap the cards so that only the ingredient spaces on the left are visible, to make room at the table.

Every café (besides the four that start on your player board) has two spaces for resources. All spaces must be filled (using the harvest crops action, see page 5) to score points, and for the most efficient production line, you'll need cafés that use different levels of resources as ingredients (see Scoring Phase, page 6). The three levels are shown by the number of rings around the resource icon:

• Pure bean (3 rings)
• Ground bean (2 rings)
• Butter (1 ring)

Players start with four cafés already built, one on each corner of their board. These cafés function identically to other cafés, but have only 1 ingredient space instead of two.

Plant Fields

Place your card field-side faceup on a space in the 4x4 grid of your player board. Then, gain a resource cube from the supply for each of the four fields on the card and place them in the corresponding square.

Example: Christina chooses to plant her fields with card 6, which has two peanut fields and two cacao fields. She places 1 peanut resource on each peanut field and 1 cacao resource on each cacao field.

You may:

• Rotate cards as needed.
• Place cards on top of the starting cafés on your board. If you do so, you can no longer place resources in that café to earn points!
• Place cards fully or partially on top of previously placed cards.

When you place cards on top of other cards:

• If you place a card on top of a field that has one or more resources, discard those resources and move your chicken meeple up the track on your player board that many times. (See Feed the Chickens, page 5.)
• In addition, if you place a card so that a field matches the type of field directly below it, place an extra resource of that type on top of the new field. The field below does not need to have a resource cube on it to gain this bonus!

Example: During a later turn, Christina places card 24 partially on top of card 6 (a). Since she covers up a field with a cacao resource on it in the process, she discards that resource (b) and moves her chicken meeple up once (c). Then, she places one corresponding resource on each field of the new card (d), plus an additional peanut resource on the top left field because it overlaps a field with the same type of resource (e).

Harvest Crops

Instead of playing your card faceup or facedown, you may discard your card to harvest. When you harvest, choose one row or column of your player board, gather all of the resources in that row or column, and then place those resources in the ingredient spaces of your cafés.

Resources collected from the field are considered pure bean (3 rings). Resources can be placed in an ingredient space that are equal to or lower than their level. That means that when you take the harvest action, all of your newly harvested resources can be placed on any ingredient space that matches the type, regardless of level. Level will be important during the scoring phase (see page 6).

Note: Resources may never be placed on an ingredient space that doesn't match their type. Cacao must always be placed on cacao spaces, vanilla on vanilla spaces, and so on.

If any resources you gathered are leftover and cannot be placed, discard those and move your chicken meeple up on the track of your player board for each discarded resource (see Feed the Chickens, below).

Resources cannot be held and then later placed partway through the scoring phase.

Feed the Chickens

Some resources that haven't been completely used can be fed to the chickens. There are three ways this can happen:

• In a plant fields action, a player can plant over a field that has resources on it.
• In a harvest crops action, a player can harvest resources that cannot be placed onto an ingredient space of a café.
• During the scoring phase, a player can have pure beans (3 rings) and ground beans (2 rings) that cannot be placed onto an ingredient space of a lower level.

In any of these cases, the unused resources are discarded, and the player moves their chicken meeple up on the track of their player board for the number of resources discarded.

When players harvest crops, they may move their chicken meeple back three spaces to gain an egg as many times as they want. Eggs act as wild resources and can be placed on any ingredient space.

Note: Eggs do not create byproducts (see Scoring Phase, page 6). Once a café with an egg is scored, the egg is discarded.

3. Scoring Phase

During this phase, players score their cafés. Each café with all of its ingredient spaces filled scores 1 point. Each time a café is scored, the resources are either discarded or they create byproducts. When you have no more cafés that you can score, the phase ends.

Note: If you did not pick the harvest action this round, you will not be able to score your cafés.

Eggs are necessary for patching holes in your production. Don't forget to Feed the Chickens during the harvest action before you score, and place them wisely! Even though they don't create byproducts (and so can only be used once), they can make your production much stronger.

Score

First, pick a café to score that has no empty ingredient spaces (you may score cafés in any order), and earn 1 point. Track your points by moving your player meeple on the track around your player board.

Example: Christina has built two cafés: Brownies (card 5) and Fudge (card 17). She has both spaces of her Fudge café filled, and just the peanut space of her Brownies café filled. Therefore, she has only one café to choose from to score (Fudge). She gains 1 point for it, so she moves her player meeple up once on the track of her player board.

Create Byproducts

Then, check the level of the ingredient spaces in the café you just scored. If the resource is butter (1 ring), discard the resource to the supply.

If the resource is pure bean (3 rings) or ground bean (2 rings), the resource creates a byproduct! What that means is that you can move that resource to an empty ingredient space in any of your cafés that is of a lower level than the space it just left. Ie, resources can move from 3 rings spaces to 2 rings or 1 ring spaces; resources can move from 2 rings spaces to 1 ring spaces, but they cannot move from a 2 rings space to a 3 rings space.

If a pure bean (3 rings) or a ground bean (2 rings) cannot be placed on an ingredient space of a lower level, discard that resource to the supply and move your chicken meeple up once on the track (see Feed the Chickens, page 5).

Example: Now that Christina has scored her Fudge café, she creates byproducts. She moves the cacao resource from the 3 rings space on the Fudge café to the empty 2 rings space on the Brownies café (a). She has no cafés with an empty 1 ring peanut space. Therefore, she discards the peanut resource from her Fudge card (b) and moves her chicken meeple up one space on the track (c).

Repeat

Finally, move on to scoring the next café. It is possible you will have more cafés to choose from now, because of the byproducts you created. You may score cafés more than once during the scoring phase, if their ingredient spaces have been refilled.

When you have run out of cafés to score, the scoring phase ends. If any cafés have partially filled ingredient spaces, those resources are left as is to be used in the next round's scoring phase.

Example: Now that Christina has finished scoring her Fudge café, she can score another café. Even though the Brownies café started the scoring phase half empty, now it is completely full, so Christina can score it! She gains 1 point for the café (a), moves the peanut resource from the 3 rings space to the 2 rings space on her Fudge café (b), discards the cacao resource (c) because there is no 1 ring space to move it to, and moves her chicken meeple up once (d).

She now has no cafés with completely full ingredient spaces, so the scoring phase ends.

Game End

Once twenty rounds have been played, the game ends. The player with the most points wins!

If multiple players are tied with the most points, the tied players gain eggs for each 3 spaces their chicken meeple is along on their track. Then, the player with the most eggs and the most resources left in their field wins the game.

Solo

If you would like to play Dulce solo, set the game up as described in Setup (see page 2), using only one player color set of components. Shuffle your deck and remove four cards as if you were the lead player. Then, play as normal.

At the end of the game, compare your score to the chart below. Play again and see if you can beat your last high score!

Score	Title	Description
34 and below	Baking Beginner	There's no shame in store-bought cookie dough.
35 - 44	Kneading Novice	You know what it means to "proof" bread, which makes you the best baker in your group of friends.
45 - 54	Pastry Professional	You always sell out during bake sales, and everyone begs you for your recipes.
55 and up	Macaron Master	Your delicately crafted patisseries could possibly be the meaning of life.