Fromage Components Overview and Impressions
Fromage came out of nowhere for me, but it’s a game I definitely wanted to have in my collection. Now that it is here, getting it to the table has been a breeze thanks to the fantastic production. While I don’t have the version of the game with all the wooden tokens, the retail release is still pretty amazing! Let’s take a look.
Fromage uses a nifty mechanic where you place out workers onto the board, and at the end of each round the board turns 45 degrees and the next round begins. The base version of the game does not include the pieces to spin the board, so it’s not quite as slick as the Kickstarter version; it would have been nice, but it’s not a deal breaker I suppose! Each quadrant has a randomly inserted board slid into it, which is also a really cool feature, and probably made this production just a bit tougher than it otherwise would have needed to be. I like that you can change up the sheets you put into each quadrant each game. Very cool.
There are a ton of cardboard bits in Fromage, and while this might be a game that actually benefits from the upgrade pack, the quality here is still pretty dang good except in one particular area. The majority of the cardboard tokens is the animals, fruits, and buildings. The animal and fruit tokens are fine: nice thickness and are easy to pick up and move; the buildings, however, are just a bit small for my preference, and a bit cumbersome to manage. The quality is still really good, but the size makes them a bit harder to manipulate when needed.
Version 1.0.0
The player pieces are nice little wooden cheese pieces, with the workers consisting of a little standee on a cheese chapped plastic wedge. This will be placed over cheese pieces on the board. I thought this made the game look cheap in some previews I saw, but it works out really well and looks fine when tabled.
The artwork across all the boards is phenomenal – I really love the look of each person’s player board, which has a ton of nice artwork but is also really user friendly with a ton of information printed front and centre.
All of this is housed in two trays you can just lay out on the table. I love when games add trays in the box that you can just remove and place on the table. And this one includes two trays, so if you are playing with 4 players you can have a tray on each side of the table. This is obviously not an necessity, but its a welcome addition for sure!
Overall, I think the production here is top notch. The cardboard is great, card quality is great, and the design team blended user friendliness with great artwork throughout. The nifty system of sliding sheets into the quadrants is also a nice touch, and will provide some variability when playing!
Article By Adam
