Tea Witches is a competitive worker placement and contract fulfillment game for 2-4 players in which you take on the roles of competing businesses trying to become the most popular and successful over the course of four rounds. Is the result as dry as that ‘elevator pitch’ sounded, or does the gameplay live up to the sweetness of its fantastical premise?
Let’s Get Brewing
Every player starts with a player board, a matching deck of “basic witch” cards, and two matching “Tea Pups”, which are magical four-legged teapots that serve as your workers. You start every day drawing cards from your basic witch deck in a push-your-luck mini-game to draft customers and what bonus resources you receive. After that, you’ll take turns sending out tea-pups onto locations on the board, gaining even more resources and taking location-specific actions like purchasing upgrades for your shop, gaining one-time-use powers, or serving Celebri-Tea witches with strong bonuses but demanding requirements. You’ll also spend your turn serving some of the witchy customers you drafted at the start of the round, as well as fulfilling to-go orders for bonus coins and victory points.
At the end of the round your tea pups return, dropping their held tea into any open spots on your player board (of which you start with just one). Any witches you served also become Loyal, meaning they’ll show up in addition to whoever you draft each day, but they’re fickle and must be served each day or placated with Loyal-Tea coupons or they’ll go right back to the discard pile. You also gain a third “Tea-Pup” starting on the third day, and at the end of day four the game ends and you tally everyone’s scores based on loyal witches, shop upgrades, fulfilled to-go orders, and your left-over resources.
Spinning Kettles
With two Tea Pups on days 1 & 2, and three on days 3 & 4, Tea Witches only gives players ten full ‘turns’ worth of actions to turn fill their empty shelves, ward their shop front, and build up a loyal following of customers before the game comes to an end. With three hex ward slots, 24 spaces for shop upgrades, 12 potential customers plus another 12 Celebri-Tea witches up for grabs, not to mention fulfilling To-Go Orders with clever pup placement, you’ll quickly find trying to accomplish it all is pure insani-tea.
Rather, Tea Witches is a game about opportunity costs. For example, obtaining a hex ward on the first round is a great way to earn more coins and retain loyal customers, protecting them from being discarded by an unlucky draw when pushing your luck. On the other hand, shop upgrades can get expensive but they can also let you hold more tea or even multiply any you obtain, letting you serve more witches on future turns. On the other other hand, nabbing a Celebri-Tea witch early means potentially four days where you gain their substantial bonuses, which can include gaining shop upgrades or huge amounts of coin or loyalty to regain other witches.
When you combine all of that with powerful Special Teas for purchase, fulfilling To Go Orders for extra coin and points, and the flow of shop upgrades from the market to the much cheaper Were-House, it can feel overwhelming at times. If you can get past the analysis paralysis issue the game moves at a steady pace, which is still a chunky 30-40 minutes per player, quite a bit longer than you’d expect based on the more family-friendly presentation. The overall experience is one that does not overstay its welcome, even if the last few turns feel a bit tea-dious.
Cozy Vibes and Bitter Dregs
The artist for Tea Witches is Sandara Tang, whom you might know from Flamecraft or Critter Kitchen, and it absolutely brings to life the setting and tone of the game. I’m genuinely not certain that I would enjoy Tea Witches as much as I do if the artwork was stripped away and the game re-themed to something far dryer. Sandara’s designs create a world that’s mystical, evocative, and cozy all at once. Notably, every player has both unique artwork on their player board and inside most of their basic witch deck. It would have been easier to cut corners and I appreciate that they didn’t.
Speaking of quality, the game’s insert is fantastic and holds everything precisely in place, with a sturdy board and plastic rotating central fountain, and decent quality cards and cardboard tokens. However, there’s also a deluxe component ‘upgrade’ pack which is quite disappointing. While the wooden topping tokens are quite nice, the replacement tea tokens are abysmal, translucent beads that lack the symbology of the cardboard tokens, with the green ones being nearly indistinguishable from the yellow ones. It’s a baffling oversight when the game itself is so well produced. Likewise, the game includes four day tokens, which contain a very, very small piece of artwork. Sandara has posted the full versions online and they’re spectacular, and it seems a waste to make them so small.
That said, my main criticism of the game comes down to the worker placement. The board has six BOOtiques and three spots each to place your tea pups. In a 4-player game you’ll be contesting these spots often, but in a 2-player game, this really isn’t possible. This changes the interaction rate between players from low to near-zero. Yet, since the game already takes at least 30 minutes per player it feels at its most interactive when it also takes 2+ hours to play. I think the game would have benefited from printing a 2-3 player version with two spots per BOOtique on the reverse side of the board. My personal solution was to come up with an automa (or Au-Tea-Ma) that simulates another player taking up spaces on the board; you can find it here on BGG.
Overall, I quite like Tea Witches. While the game’s core mechanisms can feel a bit dry at times, there’s a great deal of harmony between the actions you take, the results you obtain, and the visuals and theme the game presents along the way. The results are like high tea; a sweet, satisfying, and prolonged experience, best savoured slowly with a group.
