Mint Delivery - First Play

8th June 2023

​We're in Aldershot on a Thursday night for some gaming goodness and today's first play is Mint Delivery.
It turns out that somewhere out there mints are big business. There's even somewhere called Mintopia City and it's the centre of mint production!
​Players take on the role of delivery drivers fulfilling orders to the surrounding minty named towns.

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What's in a game?

• Mint tin: I don't usually bother talking about packaging but it's worth mentioning here. The game comes in an actual metal mint tin which is both cool and appropriate.

• ​Cards: Mint Delivery utilises various different types of cards.
  • Map cards: There are 9 of these double-sided cards. One side is used for the main game and the other for the solo-player version.
    The 9 cards are put together in a 3x3 grid and each one depicts a mint themed location. Mintopia city sits in the centre of the map while in each of the 4 corners is a town
    Each card also displays several pieces of information including locations/towns/blank spots and the roads that connect them as well as which actions will be available to players at that location.
    Finally cards feature some minimalist illustrations
    
  • .

A minty-themed map!

• Order cards: These little square shaped cards (Half the size of the map and truck cards.) contain as the name suggests orders of mints that players must fulfil. Each order card depicts:
  Location: Where the order must go to. This will always be 1 of the 4 'corner' towns.
  Order: Which mints must be in the order.
  Victory points: How many victory point (VPs) the completed order is worth.

2 orders for Peppermint Pines.

• Truck cards: There are 5 of these, 1 in each player colour and each has a illustration of a truck with 4 spaces in its container. Truck cards are also numbered to improve accessibility.
  Additionally, these are also double-sided and contain 'A.I.' drivers on the flip side for the solo game.

Green player's truck.

• Ability cards: These square cards are optional cards that can be used to give the game some extra strategy by providing players with an extra ability or 2 (When gained.).
  Each ability card will list the requirements to acquire that ability and what benefit that ability confers on the player.

Abilites

• Tokens: Mint Delivery also employs a variety of tokens.
  • Truck tokens: Should these be truckeeples? There are 5 of these wooden truck shaped tokens and their colours/numbers correspond to the 5 player colours. 

Trucks!

• Mint tokens: Little wooden discs are used to represent the game's titular mints and they come in 3 types; white for standard mints, green for sugar free and red for cinnamon. 

Minty fresh goodness.

• Ability tokens: These card tokens are used to track which abilities players have accumulated.
• Road condition tokens: These are also card tokens and also optional, they can be randomly placed on the map to add some extra complexity to the game. They can sometimes help or hinder the player.

The first player token is definitely some kind of, I just can't remember which?

As mentioned above, the game comes packaged (Crammed more like!) in a small mint tin which yes, is a gimmick but a nice one particularly since the tin feels robust.
Token quality is for the most part good, the mint tokens and trucks are pleasingly made of wood although the card tokens are an average quality. 
While the cards have a linen finish, they do feel a little flimsy but unless they are abused, they should be fine.

There isn't much room for art in Mint Delivery and thus there isn't much! What are there is mainly appears on the map cards and it's a sort of minimalist unobtrusive and uncluttered style which I generally quite like and I feel fits the game's light, almost minimalist quality well.

There's not too much iconography. most of it is straightforward; icon for mint types is clear and icons it simply refer to matching icons elsewhere in the game.
There shouldn't be any problem understanding the icons.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Map: Take the 9 map cards and placed in their allotted places in a 3x3 grid. This layout is always the same in all games.
• Players: Give each player the truck card and truck meeple in their chosen colour. All players should place their truck on the Mintopia space on the central map card.
  Order cards: Shuffle the order cards into a face-down deck, then deal 3 face-down to each player.
  Then all players can decide to keep any number of those cards, provided their total combined VP value does exceed 6 VPs. For the time being, players should keep their chosen cards hidden.
  All discarded order cards are returned to their deck.
• Orders: Now shuffle the remaining order cards into a new face-down deck.
  ​Next; deal 7 order cards adjacent to each of the 4 towns.
  Then, from each of the 4 decks, reveal 2 cards.
  Players should now reveal the order cards they chose to keep. For the rest of the game, players should keep unfulfilled orders always face-up.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Mint Delivery, players will be looking to acquire order cards and then fulfil those orders by taking the required mints to the required location. Completed orders earn players their respective VP values.
Mint Delivery follows a traditional turn structure with the active player taking their turn and then play progressing to the player on their left.

• ​Active player: In their turn, the active player may perform up to 2 actions. This can be the same action twice or 2 different actions in any order they see fit.
  In addition, players may also take a free action.
  The actions are:
  • Fulfil order (Free Action.): If the player has met the order conditions of one of their order cards and is at the correct location. Then, as a free action, they can spend the required mints to fulfil that order! The completed order cards is then flipped face-down.
  • Load/unload mints: If the active player's truck is at the right location, they may load 2/4 mints on to their truck (Up to the truck's 4 mint limit.). They may also unload mints.
  • Move: For 1 action, the active player may move their truck to an adjacent space.
  • Take order: If the active player's truck is at 1 of the 4 towns and they have less than 3 unfulfilled order cards,  they can spend an action to acquire one of the town's 2 face-up order cards. This is done by performing the following steps.
    Add mint: A mint must be added to the order card not being taken.
    Take order card: The player takes the order card they chose - if this has a 1 or more mints on it, then they also acquire the mints, provided it does not go over their truck's storage limit.
    Replace order card: A new order card must be from that town's order deck and placed face-up in the relevant space to replace the one just taken.
  • Upgrade mint: If the active player's truck is at the relevant location, they can upgrade a mint as determined by that location.
    2 white mints can be discarded to gain a green one and 3 whites turned into a red.
• End of turn: Once the active player has completed their actions, play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
Play progresses until the endgame is triggered by 1 of the following criteria is met:
​
If 2 towns have no face-up order cards remaining
Or.
All 4 towns have no cards left in their face-down decks (Regardless of whatever face-up cards remain).

Play then continues until all players have had equal turns. Players then calculate the VPs they've earned on their completed order cards.

Points are tallied, highest score wins - and is pronounced 'Employee Of The Month​!

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Overall
Thematically, Mint Delivery is a collect-and-deliver game and the mint theme is arguably bit extraneous but on the other hand, it's a good a theme as any. The fact that the tokens being delivered look a bit like mints and the game comes wrapped up in a mint tin I think is fairly pleasing.

Mechanically, Mint Delivery is actually quite straightforward, perhaps a little too straightforward. The game's map layout never changes, the 4 towns will always be in the corners, Mintopia in the centre and the factories in the 4 cardinal points. It would have been nice to have some kind of layout randomiser but I imagine space inside that tin is at a premium!
Where the game does offer variety is in how order cards appear and since this is a game about fulfilling orders, that's pretty important.
Mint Delivery is essentially a race to deliver orders and players will need to mix planning the most optimal moves using the cards they currently possess with adapting to changing circumstances as they arise to exploit opportunities as they appear.
There's also randomisation in the form of road conditions which can change things up.
Finally, ability cards offer the opportunity for some asymmetrical play that potentially opens up more choices to players and meaningful choices are always a good thing.

There's not too much more to say really. Mint Delivery is a stripped down, bare bones collect-and-deliver game, if that's what you're looking for and you want it in clever little package, it's worth a try.
It's perhaps a little too long to be a simple filler game and not quite long or deep enough to be the main game of a gaming session but nontheless, I found Mint Delivery to be a fun, light  experience with a fairly quick play time and imagine it will play well with non-gamers.