Formosa Tea 台灣製茶錄 – Kickstarter (Pre-Order)

Welcome to Formosa Tea, an innovative worker placement board game that takes you on a journey through the history of tea production in Taiwan! First published in 2019, Formosa Tea was launched to acclaim and quickly sold out at Essen Spiel. Now remastered and streamlined, we are bringing a new edition to the table with improved balance and more strategic options for even greater replayability!

In Formosa Tea, you and the other players are striving to become the owners of the most prestigious tea farm. Wisely deploy your workers to pick the most suitable tea leaves, produce tea while upgrading your tea processing technology, and sell to domestic and international markets.

Specifically, in each turn, your workers may take one of 5 possible actions:

• Send a worker to harvest tea leaves
• Send a worker to a tea factory to process tea leaves
• Retrieve a worker from the tea factory after tea processing is completed
• Send a worker to sell tea in the domestic market
• Send a worker to sell tea to international merchants

How is this different from other worker placement games? Well, a couple of particular mechanisms stand out: One we like to nickname “worker push-ment” – that is, when more workers (from any player) are sent to harvest tea in the same row, the tea masters on the corresponding tea processing track can take additional processing steps. These processing steps improve the quality of the tea and are the actual steps taken in the real-life tea production industry.

The second mechanism is that when their tea master is pushed, players have a choice to take those additional steps to improve the tea’s quality or send their tea master to the end and rush the production so that their tea master is available to take more actions in the same round. As a result, some players may take more actions than other players, potentially trading off higher tea quality for quicker production cycles (i.e., more turns).

As a result, players need to plan ahead on the type and quality of tea they plan to make. While high-quality tea is worth more points, there is a market available for everything – good tea and below-average tea!

Since the campaign has reached its funding goal (THANK YOU!!), we have planned a few stretch goals that add more diversity and replay value to the game. We look forward to unlocking them through our backers’ support and bringing the best version of Formosa Tea to all of you!

Let’s unlock the 2nd Stretch Goal – 1964 Yabukita Green Tea

Formosa Tea is a worker placement game. Each turn, you will send a worker to perform one of the following 5 actions:

1. Send a worker to harvest tea leaves

Choose an unoccupied plantation and collect all tea cubes of the same color OR one cube of each color into your tea basket. The tea cubes must be placed on the corresponding water level (0, 1, or 2) as shown on the weather tile.

1. Send a worker to a tea factory to process tea leaves

Move all tea cubes of one color to the corresponding tea factory respecting the tea cubes’ water levels, and execute the effect of the Tea Processing Track (to dehydrate and fragrant the tea cubes).

1. Retrieve a worker from the tea factory after tea processing is completed

Evaluate the quality of the batch of tea based on the water level and fragrance. The retrieved worker can be deployed again in the same round.

1. Send a worker to sell tea to international merchants

Pay tea cubes required by the Merchant card to score VP and perform the bonus action indicated on the card.

1. Send a worker to sell tea in the domestic market

Pay 2 tea cubes of the same color OR 3 cubes of different colors to advance on the Domestic Market track to earn VP and bonuses.

Once all players have no more workers in hand, the round ends with a Clean-up Phase to resolve the Event card, advance the Tea Masters on the Tea Processing Tracks, adjust the weather tiles, and replenish tea cubes.

You may read the rules draft for the 2nd Edition HERE. The formatted PDF file will be ready soon. Before that, you may also glance at the rulebook for the 1st Edition HERE as a reference.

Please note that the rulebook is not final. We welcome your comments on the clarity of the rules. Please, don’t hesitate to provide your feedback via the comments on the Kickstarter page, via social media (see “Going Social” below), or by emailing us at taiwanbgdesign@gmail.com.

We have Japanese rules coming soon. But for the ease of Kickstarter fulfillment, we won’t include the printed copy in the game box.

WHAT’S NEW in the 2nd Edition

While much of the game is the same as when first published in 2019, here are the key differences:

• Minor updates to some of the actions, cards, and tokens available on the tracks (e.g., export actions, Merchant cards, bonus action tokens, technology tokens)
• Improved graphics and cosmetics (e.g., improved symbology and more tea cube components)
• A mini-expansion including 2 modules: Updated Domestic Market track and Tea Tree cards!

You may also read the rules changes summarized HERE.

“I love the fact that the only game that could ever replace Formosa Tea for me … was Formosa Tea itself.”

“Formosa Tea’s theme is pervasive throughout all the actions. There are not many turns in the game – so make the most of them! Timing the completion of your tea is vital as this gets a worker back in your hand thus giving you an extra action in the round… Also figuring out how to chain actions together (or get extra actions through the advancement of your workers on the factory track) is vital to overall success. It does make for a complex puzzle, but one very satisfying to figure out.”

Reviews on Formosa Tea 1st Edition

If you want to hear more about how people feel about Formosa Tea, there are a few videos below that review the 1st Edition of Formosa Tea.

The Tea Leaf mini-expansion is the first expansion introduced in Formosa Tea. You will be able to cultivate different types of tea trees to further improve the quality of your tea! You can also apply the Domestic Market tiles on the market track to explore more diversified strategies in the game! We will show you more details about these 2 expansion modules in the Updates. Stay tuned!

Components in the mini-expansion:

• Tea Tree cards x6
• Tea Tree tokens x 12
• Domestic Market tiles x4

You can play Formosa Tea on Tabletopia! The new features from the 2nd Edition are not implemented yet, but you may still have a taste of the game.

You may check out the intro video about the Soso Studio and some experts in the tea industry who helped make Formosa Tea a reality in 2019.

More Information: Link