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Main Catalogue | Board Games & Card Games | Wattsalpoag | Fruit Fair

Fruit Fair

Price: £19.99

Board Game; 3-5 Players; Ages 10+ by Wattsalpoag You secretly assign your pickers and planters to the different orchards. Then everyone executes their actions. The people later in the round may get cut out of the fruit picking. Next each person in order has a chance to send their fruits to the fair to win prizes (vp) or hire another worker. After that who ever has the most fruit in each of the four types wins a special ability. The ability you can win with each fruit can change at the end of the turn. When there are only a certain number of prizes left the game ends and you add up your prizes and remaining fruit to see who wins. Despite the name, no food fighting involved. GAME REVIEW BY COUNTER MAGAZINE Wattsalpoag 3-5 players, 45-60 minutes designed by Kris Gould reviewed by Stuart Dagger This was one of the games in the ``coming soon\'\' section of Martin Leathwood\'s report from this year\'s ``Gathering\'\', where he described it as a family game but one that calls for a fair degree of planning, and that is as good a short summary as you\'re likely to get. The theme, the appearance and some of the mechanisms make it clear that the family market is the intended target, but there is enough in the way of content to ensure that gamers can have fun with it too. The main part of the board shows a set of four fruit trees - best identified by their botanical names of blue, green, yellow and red - and the idea is that players send out their workers (represented by cards) to pick the fruit. This fruit is then used to acquire both permanent and temporary benefits. The permanent ones are extra workers and victory points, while the temporary ones come in the form of four special tiles which give you useful benefits in the next round of play. Each player starts with an identical set of cards consisting of four tree cards (one for each colour) and four workers, two of which are fruit pickers and two of which are gardeners. At the beginning of a round everyone arranges their hand in such a way as to assign each worker to a tree. This is done secretly and simultaneously. The plan is that the pickers will come back from their assigned tree each clutching a piece of fruit, while the gardeners will set up next year\'s harvest by taking a piece of the appropriate fruit from the general stock and placing it an area known as ``the wheelbarrow\'\'. The next step is for the player who currently controls the raccoon (one of the special tiles) to remove one piece of fruit from each of two different trees and set them to one side. The reason for doing this is something I\'ll come back to; for the moment just note that it is a game mechanism to do with the special tiles. In turn order players now reveal their hands and send their workers to the orchards. The gardeners will carry out their orders and the pickers will attempt to carry out theirs. It is possible that some of the latter will fail as a result of earlier pickers having got there first. If this happens, the player concerned can do something called a ``fruit swap\'\'. This is a forced exchange with another player: one of your fruit for one of theirs. All fruit is worth the same when it comes to buying things and so at first sight this doesn\'t look like much of a deal; but in fact, although it is definitely a second prize, it isn\'t actually a bad one, for if you get it right, it should lead to your gaining control of one or more of the special tiles. Once everyone has had their turn in the orchard it is time to decide what to with your fruit and here the options are * hire migrant workers * buy victory points * retain it The options are not exclusive and the only restriction comes in the form of a limit on how much fruit you can hold over for next time. You can have up to two migrant workers and, as is right and proper for a family game, there are exactly enough available for everyone to get their full quota. The only wrinkle is that those who hire early pay less. The migrant workers are again represented by cards, which become permanent additions to your hand. A migrant worker is both a picker and a gardener. The victory points come in five categories: red, green & blue ribbons; silver & gold medals. In each category there are three face-down tokens and each token comes with a price attached. You do not know the value of a token until you have bought it, and once you have bought it you keep the value secret from the other players. Buying blind obviously introduces a significant element of luck, but you are at least told the range of values in each section. So, the red ribbons cost 4, 5 and 6, and they are each worth 8-10 victory points. At the other end of the scale are the gold medals and here you are paying 8, 9 or 10 for a token that will be worth between 19 and 23 VP. When I met the designer in Birmingham I asked him the reason for the blind buying and he said it was to avoid turning the endgame into an exercise in arithmetic, with everyone adding up how many points each of their opponents have and doing a lot of ``if he does this, then I have to do that\'\' analysis. For a family game there is a deal of sense in this, but if gamers want to play with the tokens face-up, there is clearly nothing to stop them. Just be aware of Kris\'s reasoning before you make the experiment. The final phase of the round sees the assignment of the special tiles. These are ``first player\'\', ``migrant worker\'\', ``raccoon\'\' and ``the truck\'\'. Each will have spent the round at the base of one of the four trees - one tile per tree - and will be given to the player who has most fruit of the corresponding colour still in their possession. In the event of a tie for first, the tile is not assigned - except for ``first player\'\' which obviously has to be. The ``first player\'\' is actually a complete determination of the turn order for the next round. Players are ranked according to how many pieces of fruit of this colour they own, with any ties being broken in favour of the player who was furthest back in the order for the current round. Being late in the turn order seriously damages your chances of collecting the maximum amount of fruit and so a lot of the ``fruit swaps\'\' I mentioned earlier will see players trying to influence this one. The ``migrant worker\'\' doesn\'t operate like the ones on the cards in your hand. He doesn\'t need to be pre-assigned to a tree. Instead he takes a piece of fruit from a tree of your choice, with the choice not having to be made until it\'s your turn to go to the orchards. The main virtue of the raccoon is that he gives you discounts on purchases of both migrant worker cards and victory point tokens. The other business - the one with the two pieces of fruit being taken from trees - is a device for switching tiles from tree to tree so as to stop one player hogging a particular tile by hoarding one type of fruit. Recall that the two pieces of fruit he took were of different colours. The tiles from these two trees will be switched at the end of the round. Being the person who decides which two colours are involved gives you the chance of moving the tile you\'d like to get to a colour where you are strong. The truck is useful if you are going to be late in the turn order, for it enables you to ignore the phase 1 assignment of workers and instead wait until you see what the situation is at the start of your turn in the fruit picking phase. Holding this tile, you might not get the particular fruit you want, but are just about certain to get the desired amount. A game in which a fruit stealing raccoon has a starring role and where the graphics, though well executed, are in a style and colour palette that is reminiscent of the illustrations you get in a book for 8-year olds is never going to become a favourite with a group like mine, who will also gib at the fuzziness surrounding the values of the VP tokens. But then, as I stated in my opening paragraph, groups whose strong preference is for gamers\' games are not its target market. This is a family game and should be judged as such. Doing that, I think the game has considerable merit, as underneath the kiddie book surface there is a game of substance with some clever ideas and scope for subtle play. If you have a family with children in that 8-12 bracket, Fruit Fair is well worth considering, for it is the sort of game that adults and children could play together without either feeling bored or that this is something they are doing mainly to please the other.

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Main Catalogue | Board Games & Card Games | Wattsalpoag | Fruit Fair

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