Session Report & Review 13.08.2003

Session Report & Review 13.08.2003

Author: Moritz

at the table: Andrea, Aaron, Hans, Günther, Peter, Moritz

on the table: Tutanchamun, Restaurant, Medici, Bluff

1. Restaurant

   This older game from the otherwise pretty reliable and long defunct company Flying Turtle
   did not rock our world – instead it garnered laurels as being one of the worst rated
   games in our group ever! The theme and cards remind one immediately of a more long-lived
   game: “Café International“, but whereas in “Café International” the
   goal of the game is placing the guests for victory points, “Restaurant” deals
   with fulfilling orders to become the most successful waiter.

   The game consists of two phases: In the first phase players collect orders from the
   various tables by “exploring” the orthogonally adjacent table next to the last
   explored table and leaving a pawn of their own colour on the empty space. You’ll find
   various menus ranging from 100-600 points worth, “Jump cards” (enable you to
   choose any table as your next table), “Go twice” cards, which enable you to,
   well, go twice, and “Fast food” cards, which let you steal menus from other
   players (drawn blindly). There are also “reserved” cards, which let you place
   the orders you collected until then in a “safe” stack that cannot be robbed.

   The phase continues until either all tables have been explored, or the players have
   manoeuvred themselves in a dead end (which you can’t until at least 30 tables have
   been uncovered). Now points are counted and the lowest scoring player begins the second
   round. Now you have to place the cards on the tables, i.e. “serving”
   them. Only cards you place on your “own” spaces (with a pawn) will give you
   points, therefore it is important to have your pawns well spread in the first phase. The
   other cards can be used like before, with the difference of the “fast food”
   cards, which can now be used as worthless cards to be placed on other players tables (if
   you can’t reach your own ones). For some strange reason the “cover at least
   30” rule does not apply here, therefore the game can end very quickly by a player
   moving into a dead end (and the leading player will always do that). Now the cards are
   counted again, but this time the cards in your hand count negative (and the
   “reserved” cards double negative). The scores of the two phases are
   added and determine the winner.

   Many problems become apparent in the description
   already. The worst aspect of the game is the fact that the luck of the card draw is
   actually heightened by being able to use them twice (you keep all your cards and go
   through them again). The “Jump” and “Go Twice” cards are the
   worst offenders. “Jump”, for example, not only gives you the ability to
   spread your pawns to other areas of the board, no, you can use it again to
   safely place your cards on your tables in the next phase (which otherwise is very
   difficult to achieve). This makes the drawer double lucky (and the other players
   look on sheepishly). In our game I only drew menu cards and two reservation cards.
   Most of the cards were stolen by other players with their “fast food”
   cards, until I could use the reservation cards to protect the other cards. The
   second phase started with Peter and then Guenther played a jump card to place an
   order in a dead end, thereby ending the game without giving anybody the chance to do
   anything. As he had earned the most points in the round before, he therefore also
   became the winner. My reservation cards now pushed my negative points to the max,
   and I didn’t even get to have a turn!

   From the perspective of Guenther this was the best play, but of course a mechanism which
   allows this makes for a very unsatisfying game, in which you certainly feel
   “played” rather than being a player.

   For a German game this one has a very high luck factor, and there is practically no
   decision making, so it is easy to say that this is simply not a good game (and the
   artwork is bad and uninspired, too). The only thing going for it is its short length, but
   you can play more interesting games that have the same trait. Avoid, if you can…

   Moritz Eggert

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   How to win “Restaurant” – a well-researched and extensive strategy guide by
   Moritz Eggert: Draw the right cards!