Last modified April 4, 2025 by jarjar

Overview
Fromage is a strategic board game, designed by Ben Rosset (The Search for Planet X), developed and published by Jeffrey Chin & Andrew Nerger (Canvas), where players take on the role of early 20th-century French cheesemakers, striving to produce, refine, and sell artisanal cheeses to gain prestige.

The game is based on a worker placement mechanism, where everyone plays at the same time! Participants place their workers to collect resources and make cheese in the quadrant of the board facing them. After each round, the board must be rotated by one quadrant, simulating the aging of the cheeses during maturation. This rotation forces players to anticipate and adjust their plans each turn, making the game dynamic, engaging, and really fun. Each section of the board offers different mini-games such as finding a majority, creating pairs of cheeses, occupying various shelves, or maximizing adjacent cheeses.

First impressions
Discovered recently during an après-ski evening at the chalet with friends, we liked the game so much that we played another game the next morning.
The game offers a rather particular, rather imposing visual, with this big wheel which reminds us of a large cheese board. This board is used like a Lazy Susan (Planet Unknown), you have to turn it a quarter turn between each round. In the basic version, there is no Lazy Susan to make it turn, it comes with the Limited Edition and I admit that it is missing, the experience must be definitely more pleasant with this mechanism. So I kickstarted the Limited version expansion which provides this mechanism 😉

Otherwise, the game, without being too complicated, still offers several interesting and sometimes heartbreaking choices. You have to plan well because some workers that we will place will not come back to us until 2 or 3 rounds later (recalling the mechanics of Tzolkin et Barrage). The 4 small games present on the quadrants are not complicated but the more the game progresses, the more complicated it is to place these cheeses because the space becomes restricted in addition to the color restrictions already present.

It's super fun to turn the board and see how many cheesemakers will be available for the next round, and to discover the choices we have left. We must of course keep an eye on the other sections of the board to coordinate our actions and try to block our opponents. The graphic choice is unusual but very well done. I like the little additional descriptions of the cheeses even if I haven't taken the time to read them all yet.

We feel like having a little wine and cheese while playing, we'll try that soon :). The game is super well done, fast and effective which will please a lot of people (experienced or not). For my part, it's a good gaming slap because I didn't expect so much fun playing it.

You can try it on Boardgame Arena: https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=fromage
The rules are available in French here.

GAME FACTS
There have been errors in the names of the cheeses, a BGG user suggested these corrections: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3427941/name-improvements-for-reprint

There are mistakes in the naming of cheese names: Pont-l'ébishop is written without a capital letter in é (otherwise it is the name of the city, not the cheese); the same for Brillat-savarin (otherwise it is the last name), Holy-nectarian, and Holy-paulin, and Ébad luck takes on an acute accent.

Meaux cheese : there is no cheese with this name. There is the Brie de meaux but there is already a map Brie…My suggestion for a reprint: replace Meaux cheese by Brie de meaux, and Brie by Brie de Melun (which are the two types of brie recorded).

Compared to all other cards, Sheep seems a bit different to me because it is too generic (this means goat (cheese), and a third of registered French cheeses are made from goat's milk). According to the drawing on the map, shouldn't it be Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine ?

Young Cantal is a subtype of Cantal, so it's strange to have two different maps. However, there are two registered types of Cantal: Young Cantal et Matured Cantal, so for a reprint I simply suggest adding refined à la carte Cantal current.

EXTENSION: FRAMAGGIO
An expansion called Fromaggio is in the works, which adds an Italian touch to the game, including wine. Four new quadrants will be available for use:
– Pair your cheese with wines at Vigneto (vineyard).
– Sell cheese to restaurants along the canals of Venezia (Venice).
– Distribute cheese across the Regioni (regions) of Italy.
– Deposit cheese at the Banca (bank). (Yes, there really is a bank in Italy that accepts cheese!)

The crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter is underway here.

TECHNICAL SHEET
Number of games played: 2
Best player configuration: 4
Level: family +
My best score: 64

MY FIRST IMPRESSIONS
  I loved :
>> Everyone plays at the same time, no downtime!
>> Despite the simple rules, there are several interesting decisions we face.
>> Some satisfying sequences to do.
>> I like this possibility of being able to block other players in their strategy, it creates interesting discussions 🙂
>> Great replayability with this draft of building tiles for more advanced games, several tiles available and new ones coming with the expansion!
>> Short playing time but with good depth nonetheless.

I liked less :
>> I don't like big boxes, they take up too much space, our game libraries are full :/ There would have been a way to make them smaller despite the size of the main board.
>> The game is hard to find right now, a reprint is coming at the end of 2025. So you'll have to be patient to get your hands on this great game!

An exceptional discovery and a pleasant surprise: accessible, allowing simultaneous play, fast, while offering interesting choices. An effective and truly fun game!

FUN FACTOR 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂