Max Miller's Tasting History: The Board Game

TASTING HISTORY: THE BOARD GAME

HISTORY IS SERVED.

Travel through time. Gather ingredients. Prepare dishes from the past. And prove that history’s greatest chef just might be you.

1–5 Players • 60 Minutes • 3 Historical Eras

PULL UP A CHAIR, TASTORIANS!

If you’ve ever watched Tasting History and wondered what it would be like to step into the kitchens of the past, now’s your chance. Max Miller's Tasting History: The Board Game turns the food, history, and wonderfully strange stories you love into a competitive board game for your table.

Choose a period in history. Send your chefs out to gather ingredients. Learn the culinary secrets of the era. Prepare Recipes. Build an unforgettable feast against a background that's being shaped by historical events. And, naturally, try to outcook everyone else at the table.

THREE ERAS. THREE MENUS. ONE GAME.

Every game begins with one important question:

Where and when do you want to eat?

ANCIENT ROME

Stroll through the markets and kitchens of the Roman world, gather the ingredients you need, and discover why no respectable Roman chef would dream of cooking without a little garum.

MEDIEVAL EUROPE

Journey into the kitchens and marketplaces of the Middle Ages, where familiar ingredients meet very different tastes, and verjuice might be just the thing your next Recipe needs.

THE American Frontier

Head west in search of ingredients, opportunity, and enough molasses to turn frontier cooking into something worth writing home about.

[IMAGE: AF board + Af Recipes, feasts and events + special resource]

Each era features its own:

Game board • Recipes • Events • Feasts • Advancements • Special Resources • First Player piece, but the basic rules stay the same. Learn the game once. Then explore three different Eras from the past.

HOW DO YOU PLAY?

You can learn the basics in about a minute.

[This section should be one large four-step infographic rather than a wall of rules.]

1. SEND OUT YOUR CHEFS

Every player has four workers.

On your turn, place one on a location and take the action there.

Visit different places throughout the era to find ingredients, gain Knowledge, and prepare for the Recipes you want to make.

2. GATHER YOUR INGREDIENTS

Fill your Kitchen with the things you’ll need to cook.

Wheat. Meat. Fish. Fruit. Vegetables. Dairy. Spice.

Plus the unique Special Resource of your chosen era.

[IMAGE: Ingredient tokens moving from the board into a player Kitchen]

3. PREPARE A RECIPE

See something delicious waiting to be made?

Gather the required ingredients and complete the Recipe.

Score points, earn bonuses, and add it to your growing collection of culinary accomplishments.

[IMAGE: Ingredient tokens → Recipe card → Completed Recipe]

4. BUILD THE BEST FEAST

Complete Recipes, pursue your personal goals, improve your options, and make the most of every Chef you place.

After five rounds, the player with the most points wins!

BECAUSE HISTORY NEVER MAKES THINGS THAT EASY.

At the beginning of every round, an Event changes what’s happening around the table.

Maybe resources suddenly become easier to find, a location works differently, or history has simply decided it has other plans for dinner. Whatever happens, you’ll have to adapt.

Events keep every game moving and changing without burying you in extra rules.

ONCE YOU’VE GOT THE BASICS…

There’s plenty more happening beneath the surface.

Feasts give you personal goals to pursue and rewards to unlock.

Inspiration Cards provide clever tricks and opportunities.

Advancements improve the locations you visit.

Specializations and Challenges give you new ways to score and encourage different strategies from game to game.

It’s easy to start playing, but there’s plenty to discover once you do.

THE REAL STAR OF THE SHOW?

THE FOOD.

At the heart of Tasting History are 75 different historical Recipes, represented by 225 Recipe cards across the game.

Some will be familiar. Some will surprise you. And some may make you extremely grateful for modern refrigeration.

[BIG RECIPE GALLERY: 6–9 especially colorful, strange, funny or recognizable cards]

Every Recipe gives you another little glimpse into how people ate, what ingredients they valued, and how surprisingly familiar, or wonderfully bizarre, dinner could be.

Real food. Real history. One Recipe at a time.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX?

CHOOSE YOUR VERSION! The Standard Edition is the complete game. The Deluxe Version makes everything fancier.

[BIG STANDARD EDITION COMPONENT SPREAD - the below can be a single graphic:

PLEDGE TIERS

Standard Edition

$49

The Standard Edition includes the complete game:

• 4 Game Boards:
  • Action Board
  • Ancient Rome
  • Medieval Europe
  • American Frontier
• 225 Recipe Cards
• 60 Inspiration Cards
• 30 Event Cards
• 10 Challenge Cards
• 6 Specialization Cards
• 18 Feast Cards
• 240 Punchboard Ingredient Tokens
• 45 Advancement Tokens
• 15 Completion Tokens
• 30 Special Resource Tokens
• 20 Wooden Chefs
• 3 First Player Tokens
• 1 Wooden Round Tracker
• 5 Player Kitchen Boards
• 5 Player Reference Cards
• 5 Wooden Score Tokens
• 1 Rulebook

Everything you need to play Tasting History!

(next graphic)

Tastorian Bundle — $99

More history. More flavor. One delicious deal! Get the complete Standard Edition, all three neoprene era mats, and the Drinking History expansion together. Give every era a beautiful place at your table! Save $14 compared with purchasing separately.

(next graphic)

DELUXE EDITION

$160

The complete game, with with fancy, upgraded components... and hard tack.

[BIG DELUXE COMPONENT BEAUTY SHOT]

The Deluxe Edition upgrades the pieces you’ll be touching, collecting, moving, and displaying throughout the game.

Instead of 240 punchboard Ingredient tokens…

You get 240 wooden Ingredient tokens.

And somewhere to put them.

[IMAGE: Spice Tower]

THE INGREDIENT ORGANIZING SPICE TOWER

Keep all those delicious little wooden Ingredients organized and ready for the next Recipe.

The Deluxe Edition also includes double-layer Player Kitchen Boards, upgraded wooden Special Resource tokens, and expanded Feast content with 18 Feast Cards.

And your workers get a little more personality.

Each player receives four matching wooden characters based around one of five different themes:

Cowboy • Roman Legionnaire • Chef • Knight • Waiter

EVEN TIME GETS AN UPGRADE.

Each era has its own Deluxe Round Tracker.

ANCIENT ROME

A Candle

MEDIEVAL EUROPE

An Hourglass

THE OLD WEST

A Pocket Watch

[IMAGE: all three trackers]

AND THEN THERE ARE THE FIRST PLAYER TOKENS

Because simply handing someone a marker would have been far too reasonable.

[IMAGE: all three]

For Ancient Rome:

AN ACRYLIC GARUM AMPHORA

For the kitchen:

A TEACANDLE STEWPOT

And for the Old West…

TWO HARDTACK CASTANETTES

[ANIMATED GIF: Max clicking the Hardtack castanettes]

(next graphic)

Deluxe Tastorian Bundle — $199

The deluxe experience, with extra helpings! Enjoy the Deluxe Edition’s premium components, all three neoprene era mats, and the Drinking History expansion in one generous bundle. Bring history to your table in style. Save $25 compared with purchasing separately.

(next graphic)

Max Miller Signed & Numbered Collector’s Bundle  $299

One of just 100. Signed by Max.

Bring home a special piece of Tasting History featuring an individually numbered, Max Miller–signed bookplate affixed inside the box lid.

Your collector’s bundle includes the Deluxe Edition, all three neoprene era mats, the Drinking History expansion, and the wooden hardtack castanettes.

Limited to 100 collector’s bundles.

(make table) STANDARD OR DELUXE?

Choose Standard if you want the complete Tasting History experience at the best possible price.

Choose Deluxe if you want your table to look like Max raided three centuries of kitchen cupboards.

Add+Ons

WANT TO ADD EVEN MORE TO YOUR FEAST?

(Graphic) OPTIONAL ADD-ONS

DRINKING HISTORY

$19

Raise a glass to the past.

Add 30 new cards inspired by the drinks and drinking history that accompanied meals through the ages.

[IMAGE: Drinking History box/pack with cards spread out]

Food tells one side of the story. But the real history happens over drinks.

NEOPRENE MAT SET

$45

Upgrade all three historical eras with a set of three large neoprene playmats.

Each mat combines the Era Board and Action board into one easy-to-use playing surface.

3 MATS — ONE FOR EACH ERA

[IMAGE: all three mats unfurled]

JIGSAW PUZZLE SAVINGS BUNDLE

$60

Sometimes you want to play with history, but sometimes you just want to put it together one tiny piece at a time. The Puzzle Bundle contains four puzzles featuring artwork from Tasting History: The Board Game:

1 × 1,000-piece puzzles featuring the box artwork

3 × 500-piece puzzles featuring the Era Board artwork

[IMAGE: finished puzzles / puzzle boxes]

(new image that offers the puzzles individually)
$19 Rome Era 500 piece (does not have locations, just the bg art)
$19 Medieval Era 500 piece (does not have locations, just the bg art)
$19 American Frontier 500 piece (does not have locations, just the bg art)
$24 Cover 1000 piece (has the logo)
 

HARDTACK FIRST PLAYER TOKENS

$14

Two wooden pieces of Hardtack. That work as castanettes. Because of course they do.

[GIF again!]

(garum pack promo pack)

$9 

You can never have too much garum! Add 10 cards to your Tasting History collection with a pack celebrating everyone’s favorite ancient fish sauce. Adds new game play options! An extra helping of fishy fun for the devoted Tastorian.

FOLLOWERS GET THE GARUM PACK FREE.

[IMAGE: Garum Pack]

Did you follow Tasting History: The Board Game on Kickstarter before launch? Then this pack will be added to your physical pledge automatically for free! Thank you for showing up early. We brought the fermented fish sauce.

(Feast pack promo expansion)

[IMAGE: Feast Pack]:

$ 8 - Feast promo pack

Featuring 6 additional cards that adds fun gameplay twist in each era.

Backers who are Tasting History patrons at any level will receive this pack free. It will be automatically added to your physical pledge. Just our way of saying thank you for helping support Tasting History long before there was a board game sitting on the table. In order to receive this for free, you must be a campaign backer at any physical pledge tier, and you must be a patron of Tasting History on patreon.com at the time when you complete the pledge manager after the campaign.

A BOARD GAME MAX ACTUALLY WANTED TO PLAY

Tasting History: The Board Game was never intended to be a piece of merchandise with a game wrapped around it.

The goal from the beginning was simple:

Make a genuinely good board game that also happens to be filled with everything we love about Tasting History.

Max is a board gamer himself, and a competitive one, so the game needed real decisions, real strategy, and plenty of moments where you look across the table and realize somebody else just made the Recipe you were planning to cook.

[PHOTO: Max playing]

DESIGNED BY MICHAEL SHINALL

[PHOTO: Michael]

To turn Tasting History into a tabletop game, we teamed up with veteran board game designer Michael Shinall.

Michael set out to create a game that would be approachable enough for someone who simply loves Tasting History, while still giving experienced board gamers plenty of decisions to sink their teeth into.

Easy to learn. Fun to explore.

HOW TO VIDEOS & PRESS

Pull up a chair and watch us play.

WATCH HOW TO PLAY

[EMBED: Board Game Co How-to-play video]

WATCH A FULL GAME

[EMBED: BGG livestream / gameplay featuring Max and Michael]

NEVER USED KICKSTARTER BEFORE?

DON’T WORRY. IT’S EASY.

Kickstarter can look a little unfamiliar if this is your first campaign, but backing a project works a lot like placing a pre-order.

1. PICK THE VERSION YOU WANT

Choose the Standard Edition, Deluxe Edition, or another available reward.

2. MAKE YOUR PLEDGE

Select your reward and enter your payment information.

3. THE CAMPAIGN ENDS

Kickstarter uses an all-or-nothing funding system.

If the project reaches its funding goal, your pledge will be collected at the end of the campaign.

If it doesn’t, you aren’t charged.

4. WE MAKE THE GAME

After the campaign, we’ll move into final production and keep you updated as the game is manufactured and prepared for delivery.

That’s it.

Welcome to Kickstarter.

WHY KICKSTARTER?

Kickstarter gives us the chance to make this first printing together with the people who care about Tasting History most.

It lets us determine the size of the first print run, produce components like the Deluxe wooden pieces and Spice Tower, and offer extras that would be much harder to include in a traditional retail release.

And throughout the process, you’ll be able to follow the game from campaign to factory to your table.

[GRAPHIC: Prototype → Manufacturing → Finished Game → Your Table]

SHIPPING

[SHIPPING GRAPHIC / TABLE]

This section should be extremely simple once final shipping prices are locked:

Where we ship

Estimated shipping cost by region

When shipping will be charged

Estimated delivery window

Then put the detailed fulfillment information in the FAQ rather than burying casual backers in logistics.

READY TO MAKE SOME HISTORY?

For years, Tasting History has explored the extraordinary stories hidden behind the food people ate throughout time. Now it’s your turn! Gather your ingredients, choose your Recipes, build your Feast, outcook your friends, and see what you can make with a little help from history.

[FINAL FULL-TABLE BEAUTY SHOT]

TASTING HISTORY: THE BOARD GAME

HISTORY IS SERVED. Let’s get cooking!