Behind his cheerful delivery and presentation, it turns out that Max Miller, known for turning historical recipes into entertaining yet educational YouTube lessons with his show Tasting History, is also quite serious about board games. Now, game designer Michael Shinall (Marvel Zombies, DCeased, and others) and publisher Salt Games are working with Max to bring him from his kitchen straight to your tabletop with a brand-new worker-placement game based on his popular series, which launched on Kickstarter this week. Recently, we had the chance to sit down with both Max and Michael to hear about how this new adaptation will play, a bit about how it all came to be, and why, whether you are coming at this as a fan of Tasting History or board games, there will be something on this plate you may like.
In Tasting History: The Board Game, each player works to collect ingredients from various locations on the board, which they use to cook and prepare delicious, historically accurate recipes. They host parties and progress through ages, watching the offerings grow with the passing of time. Featured in the base box will be three different historical periods, including ancient Rome, medieval Europe, and the American Frontier, each highlighting 25 unique recipes from the period and various historical events.
The game itself is split into five rounds, with 1-5 players taking turns placing their four chefs at the various spots on the era’s board, and is completed in only about 60-90 minutes. Each of the six main locations allows players to gather ingredients required to complete their recipes and provide other benefits.
Additionally, players may collect special Insight cards, which Michael elaborated on: “[Insight Cards] are different little bonuses that let you cheat in some way or gain an advantage when the conditions are met. These can range from giving you free ingredients to giving you extra bonus victory points to letting you do things when other players move into your space and whatnot,” acting a bit as the “take that” mechanic in Tasting History that they describe as “forced assistance.”
In addition to their own boards, each of the three eras will feature period-authentic decks of cards to really help sell the showcase that time in history. These include decks of recipes to cook, events from the period that will serve as special goals each player can complete during the game--along with specifying their starting resources--and each era will have a special ingredient that, if played alongside the other requirements for a recipe, can gain you additional rewards. Rome, for example, will feature the fermented fish sauce garum, which Max previously did a whole episode on.
It’s also with these eras that I have my biggest question marks and concerns. The fact that the base game comes with the three different boards, each with their own set of recipes, events, advancements, and more--many of which you won’t see every game--could give it a great amount of replayability. However, I worry that instead of feeling interesting and exciting to play in their own right, they will just feel like a reskin, swapping out Roman snails for cowboy beans. If you are going to pack in two extra boards and a couple hundred more cards to play with, I want there to be something that makes me excited to check them out.
One thing that both Max and Michael made very clear is that it is designed to be a standalone board game, and it just so happens to be themed around Tasting History, meaning it can be enjoyed even if you don’t get the whole “hardtack” shtick.
“It's all about the gameplay first,” Max explained. “I have played a lot of board games that are very on-theme for certain properties, and I've played them once and never had a desire to play it again because I think, ‘Oh, that was fun. Next.’
"My goal is to have a game along the lines of Wingspan [or] Lords of Waterdeep that I can play 50 times and enjoy it as much on the 50th time as the first time.”
Don’t worry, though, fellow tasting historians--Max isn’t forgetting about you: “If you do watch the show and you're a big fan, there are so many little nods to the show specifically in this, [and] not only the fact that most of the recipes I have already done,” he said.
The idea is to incorporate the “history” aspect that is such a critical part of the show into this tabletop rendition. Max said, “We're working on possibly getting a way to actually link to those recipes within the game.”
Michael elaborated on one idea being thrown around involving QR codes on the recipes: “For example, ‘Oh, I want to learn more about sweet and sour beef and why that's really cool in the setting.’ You just scan that with your phone and, boom, you get to watch, you know, 20 minutes of Max just talking about it immediately.” As someone who loves both the educational and cooking qualities of the show, I appreciate that it’s even being considered.
Both Max and Michael are well aware of the fine thread they are balancing, trying to make a game that can appeal to board gamers--offering them replayability, depth, and worthwhile decisions--and the channel's 4.5 million subscribers, who might be playing their first board game that isn’t Uno or Monopoly and need something approachable and fun.
“We also want this [Tasting History] to be accessible,” Michael said. “Max happens to be a board gamer, but his audience is not necessarily a bunch of ravenous board gamers. So, we want this to have a level of accessibility.”
Getting to that place, though, has been quite the adventure in and of itself. “Before I had first talked with Max, I was envisioning something like a Ticket to Ride or even a lower-level Catan... I say this affectionately, but like, baby's first board game for when people are coming [to] this from the mass-market stuff. Then after one conversation with Max where it's like, ‘Oh, he's an actual board gamer, and he wants this to be a board game first and foremost,’ that changed the entire direction of where the project went,” Michael revealed. These changes even include turning away from a cooperative experience in favor of the final competitive setup.
“One of the earlier versions of the game was that you had a communal feast [during which] you would draw every game that the players were trying to accomplish, but kind of competitively, communally together. You know, you got bonuses for completing it first, but the goal of the game was everyone was trying to complete it.” Michael explained. “It was more cooperative-leaning in that regard. The expression on Max's face when I said, ‘Now, we can make this full co-op...’I am sitting here assuming Max Miller, the learned, ‘I'm trying to spread knowledge and insights to the internet masses here,’ would be more like, ‘Let's all work together to complete a goal.’ And then he just goes like, ‘Oh no, no, no. I want this to be competitive.’” Michael chuckled, before Max chimed in with a laugh, “I'm not huge into co-op games. Once in a while, but I like winning!”
Swapping my Tasting History subscriber hat for my board-gamer one, hearing Max and Michael showcase Tasting History’s mechanisms and flow, I’m impressed with how well it seems to have come together to create that sort of approachable depth that other mass-market-appeal games like Wingspan or Ticket to Ride have. That said, I haven't played it yet, so how successful it is remains to be seen, but there are certainly qualities and designs here that would make me feel comfortable betting on their success.
One example is not locking out a space just because someone else got there first. Much of Tasting History reminds me of Everdell (one of my wife’s and my own favorite games and one I would recommend anyone to play) with its worker-placement and time-progression aspects, but here, you can freely place a chef somewhere that is already occupied. That eliminates a good amount of the “meanness” that this could have had and makes the whole thing feel more approachable. Though some of those Insight cards will cause a bit of that “forced assistance,” it's not quite to the same detriment for the other player. Other considerations like simplified setup options are being included to further assist and give options to board-game newcomers, which should lower that barrier of entry even further.
For other interested historians and board-game aficionados, the folks at Salt Entertainment has a prototype mod of the game on the popular digital tabletop client Tabletop Simulator, which you can find over on Steam. Unfortunately, I don’t think the solo mode that lets you go up against Max himself will be included, which sounds like all sorts of fun. “Solo mode is currently in development, [in] which you'll be playing against Max Miller himself. We're currently balancing him because he went from being way too hard to being a little too easy, and now he's in a general good area. He does kind of cheat a little bit, but you know, that's kind of fun. He literally has his card where he just says, ‘I don't like the ingredients I have. I'm just going to clack some hardtack together and just improvise a recipe here,’” Michael laughed.
“Created for families, history lovers, food enthusiasts, and gamers alike” is one of the big slogans featured over on the game’s Kickstarter page. As someone who is a longtime fan of Tasting History and even longer a fan of board games, what Tasting History: The Board Game looks to deliver is a great choice both for a quick game after putting the kid down or at my next game night with my group of friends who tend to get competitive. Time will tell whether all the ingredients come together in a feast worthy of Ceasar, or something that would have been better served at Emperor Domitian's Feast of Death.