F@#$ Keyflower

F@#$ Keyflower

What makes a good game as opposed to a meh game?
What makes a great game?
What makes an astonishingly wonderful game that makes it into your personal top 5?

I need to slow down, I've only played Keyflower 4 times (and only once correctly), so I can't put it in my personal best just yet.  But this game certainly has the potential to make it onto my all time favorites list.

Theme:

Build the bestest colony in all the land!

Not the greatest theme integration in the world, but certainly not the worst.    Pretty solid if that's something you look for.

Gameplay:

It's worker placement, with auction/draft and tile placement aspects.  

Everyone starts with some end game tiles.  These tiles are auctioned for round 4, so you know some of what's coming and maybe can plan accordingly.

Everyone starts with 8 secret and random Meeples in the 3 base colors:  Red, Yellow and Blue.

The round one tiles (Spring in game turns) are revealed.  I don't know the total number of tiles included, I think it's 12 total, and the amount you lay out is based on how many people are playing.

Tiles do something for you when you play there.  You get base resources (Iron, Stone, Wood), you get a wild card resource (Gold), you get more meeples, you can move resources around, and some other stuff.

You can bid on them to purchase or activate them with your meeples.

First the bidding.

One of the unusual things about this game is that it uses table position to track who has bid on what, and not player color.  The tiles are hexagonal and you place the meeples corresponding to where your sitting.  Here's a picture to show that

The tile in the foreground is currently going to the head of the table, and the one in the background is going to the player to his right. 

So meeple color.  That's a worker "suit".  First one to play on a tile, either by activation or by bidding determines that tiles suit for the round.  So both highlighted tiles are suited Yellow.

So high amount of workers wins the tile, and at end of the round bring it back and place it in your tableau.

Oh yeah you can also bid on incoming boats.  In the above picture those tiles to the left with stacks of meeples on them are the colonists arriving this round that you can use next round.   You bid like normal on boat draft order, with the earlier selections usually getting the boats with the more doobers loaded on them. 

Next, tile activation

To activate a tile, you place a worker on it.  Here's another pic courtesy of board game geek (like the above).

So 1st activation costs 1 worker.

2nd activation costs 2 workers.

3rd and final activation costs 3 workers.

So in the above pic, both tiles with doobers on them have been activated twice, and you can tell that because there's 3 total guys one each hex.  

Meepless used this way are recycled by the tile's owner for next round.  So whoever owns those 2 tiles above is getting 6 dudes!  Meeples used for winning bids aren't recycled.

So that's the game play.  You can do two things with your workers.  Bid on tiles or activate them.

Wait, What?

The genius of this game lies in the tiles.

First, you can upgrade them.  They give better rewards and victory points upon activation.  Like get moar resources or move moar stuff.  It's a game of competitive cooperation; you've spent your turn upgrading your tile which makes it more appealing, and now have to wait for the turn to come back around for you to use it yourself.  Good chance you won't get the cheap activation.

Second, some careful though went into which round should certain tiles appear.  Round 1 is pretty heavy on resource production.  Round 2 is kind of a hybrid round, a little resource production, a little utility, and a little meeple recruitment.   Round 3 is victory point heavy, and round 4 is all victory points all the time.

Third, I haven't even talked about the Green suit!

The Green Suit

The Green suit isn't trump, it's just a regular old suit except rarer.

You have to specially recruit Green Meeples using the in-play tiles.  

Now, because they are (usually) so rare, bidding on something with a green is akin to marking your territory.  If someone wants to over bid you with two green, that represents a substantial investment for that there tile.

Games within Games

I count two major ones and another two minor ones.

Playing on tiles is a game within a game.  You get the stuff, but you're setting up your opponent better for next round.  Upgrading is the same way in reverse.  You're making it more appealing to play there, which means people will, blocking you out of the cheap moves.

Managing your green guys is a game within a game.  So you've recruited a green guy, now what?  Well if you bid with him this round he's gone.  If you use him on one of your own tiles, well you've successfully recycled him but also spiked that tile so no one else will ever play there.  Or if you just save him, you deny yourself another move.

End Game Boats are a minor game within a game.   The end game boat draft gets you VPs in varying ways.  One of the VP boats grants exponential boats based on how many boats you own; the only way to get more than one boat is to bid on one during round 2.   Those boats seem limited.  They give you some useful utility but can't be upgraded or played on.  They are truly not worth much unless you get a bunch AND the exponential boat.

Gold is a minor game within a game.  Just having gold on hand is worth a VP.  But you can wild card gold of any basic resource type.  Is that wild card worth it?  Probably!  But if you're using two gold as wild cards on one upgrade it probably is worth your while to go acquire an Iron, Wood or Stone.

 

Tips

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've won once and had two solid games out of the four played so far.  But that's completely just based on good tactical plays and no underlying strategy.

I think you need to look for good value.  Like a 1 meeple play on your opponents upgraded tile is almost always going to benefit you more than him, so look for those.  

Keep disciplined on early round bids; given the fog of war (because next rounds tiles won't revealed until this rounds is complete), it's hard to justify anything but a green meeple recruiter being worthy of a 3 bid.

Keep doubly disciplined on Summer boats.  They have neat powers, but the lack of an upgrade to VPs and no playing on them is a really big trade off.

If you can, save a stack of one color for late in the round.   Play them on your own tiles because they're coming right back too ya.