F@#$ A Keyflower experimental strategy breakdown

A Keyflower breakdown, focusing on a failed game.

If you want a refresher on the mechanics go here

Part One:  Background (or how the hell did I get myself in such a hole that an experiment seemed like a good idea)

Simply put, I had an epically bad Spring round.  My opening tactic was getting cheap tiles.  I wanted at least two, hoped for three, and came away with one.  This unfocused opening could've been fine, but I needed to update my definition of 'cheap' to a two meeple bid.  I got cut twice and accomplished nearly nothing that round.  A one tile spring round can be fine, but that tile better be awesome.

Through Summer and Fall, I continued to take good value moves, entering winter with an upgraded trade one meeple for three more meeples tile, and a stable full of green guys.  I was absolutely not going to win, Mike already had 30+ points points on the board with his stone collector (pending resource movement which is just a problem and one that is difficult to thwart) and Greg had a fantastic tableau that was capable of generating points in multiple ways.  One of those two were going to win, so my choice was play for a respectable 3rd or try something new.

Part two:  The Plan

I started Winter with ~6 yellow, ~ 4 red, 6 green and 1 (ONE!) blue.  

I was going to come out swinging for the Chapel (12 points, no additional actions required) and then spend green guys making generic guys on the tile I owned..  Hoping to...

1. Spike the 1 for 3 meeple trader for the rest of the table.
2. Use the newly acquired dudes to make further VP bids
3. Get the green guy VP counter cheaply.

Of those 3 goals, the only thing accomplished was spike the 1 for 3 trader.

Part three:  Why this idea had merit

Greens are tricky.  Practically speaking greens guys can realistically capture two VP tiles.  In a 5 player game (last night's game) there's 9-14 things to bid on, and in typical play, the first two rounds are bidding on tiles.  If everyone bids all 3 times you can get 3 tiles claimed, but since you have green, there's obviously green meeple makers so opponents either have them or can make them to thwart your bids.  

When faced with a player that has a load of green guys you absolutely have to bid your generics early to get the tiles properly suited.

Spiking your meeple making tile isn't a bad idea.  Early on it's cost effective to play there and in late stages it's a viable option opponent's can use it de-color screw themselves.  Limiting options for the other players is a perfectly acceptable use of your resources.

No one targets the green guy VP tile.  It is always an afterthought.  "Well 1 blue guy for 2 points at this late stage is good value"

Part four:  What went wrong

The plan really really broke down on item #2.

The big problem is that the plan was overall as slow developing as just bidding green guys on tiles.  By the time I was ready to start placing meeple bids, every tile that would have advanced my game was claimed, and claimed in force.

A smaller problem with the plan was the one blue guy.  I could have salvaged something if I had a better color mix, and I tried to remedy that by playing green and yellow guys on various meeple makers (mine and Juan's primarily).  Blues were not forthcoming early in the round.  Which tells me that this plan really counted on good random meeple draws (or a better meeple mix going into winter).

The plan also broke down on #3.

By the time I accepted that Plan Point #2 was was not going to happen, I was already deeply deeply invested into getting the green guy VP counter.

This presented two pretty big problems.

#1 - There are certain VP tiles that it just does not pay to hyper-maximize.   You end up spending so many actions and resources maximizing them that you neglect the rest of the game.  So yippie!  You got 30 points from that tile and 45 total meaning you still lose by 30.   The green guy VP tile and the gold resource tile ARE ABSOLUTELY THE WORST to hyper-maximize on.    Green guy tile because you spend so many resources to get the green guys in the first place and the gold tile because you spend a lot getting gold AND gold is worth VPs end game anyways.

#2 - It's a juicy target.  You stack up all your green guys on your tiles and it becomes worth it to snipe the green guy maker.  This happened and I was upset for a good hot minute before I realized it cost me about 10 points total.  So how the game shook out, I lost by 35 points instead of 25.  BFD.

Part five:  Is this idea worth repeating?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe.

You have to start the conversion later.  Get your VP bids in, then see if the Green meeple spiking is viable.

You have to accept that 4-8 points for the Green meeple VP counter is a good return.

And you have to have a versatile generic guy mix.  The point is to convert your unplayable green guys into an asset by getting different colors.  It helps to start with 2+ meeples in each generic suit.