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Main Catalogue | BOARD GAMES & CARD GAMES | Rio Grande Games | Key Harvest

Key Harvest

Price: £39.99

Board Game; 2-4 Players; Ages 8+ by Rio Grande Games The object of the game in Key Harvest is to score the most points. Players score points by placing tiles on their own country board. Each player has the same board, but there is only one of each tile, so there is competition when two players want the same tile. One point is scored for each field tile in the player’s largest group of connected field tiles and two points for each tile in their second largest connected group. ++++++++++++++++++++ Counter magazine review ++++++++++++++++++++ 2-4 players, 60 minutes designed by Richard Breese reviewed by Simon Weinberg Last year I missed out on the whole Fowl Play experience, and when I heard that Richard Breese, one of my favourite game designers, was bringing out a new game for this year\'s Essen I immediately ordered my copy and asked him for a slot at the fair to teach me. It was gamer\'s heaven to be sitting in Essen, having Richard teach me the game, and the fact that he fearlessly thrashed me will no doubt be forgiven in the fullness of time! Fifth in the `Key\' series which has made him so well known, Key Harvest comes in a Puerto Rico or Caylus sized box and those of us who like Richard\'s sister Juliet\'s designs will be pleased to recognise her artwork immediately. Inside the box we find a smaller, decorated version of the usual Richard Breese screens in each player colour which are better than those of Keythedral because they are less prone to fall over. Otherwise, there are a number of cylindrical hexagon wooden crop counters in 5 colours, four of which cleverly match the four player colours and so can be used as score markers at the end of the game. There is a central board representing Keytown, containing a ``registry\'\' to store 6 hexagonal field tiles which are pulled from a bag, plus a score track and 10 spaces to store event tiles, pulled from the same bag. Event tiles mark out progress to the end of the game: there are 14 in total, and when ten are pulled from the bag, an end phase is triggered after which each player has 2 turns to finish. Cleverly, on pulling the 7th event tile from the bag a check is made of player progress: if the 7th event tile has been pulled too early in the game then two event tiles are removed and thus the `timer\' moves backwards allowing for a longer delay until the game end. In addition, 6 `townsfolk\' worker hexagonal tiles are stored on the central board, and players receive 6 `farmhand\' worker tiles in their own colour. Placing these worker tiles correctly is the key to a successful game: worker tiles may be used to manipulate field tiles when placed into a player\'s own board; and will also earn him victory points at the end of the game. Neatly, every worker and event tile has a small letter marked on it - the crystal clear rules, which stretch to 12 pages but can actually be summarised in ten minutes, contain detailed explanations of each tile, which have so far covered every eventuality. Tiles are double sided in German and English, and instructions are available in the box in both languages. Each player receives his own `country board\' which is beautifully illustrated with abundant crop fields on the backside, as well as a help card in English and German summarising the rules and victory point conditions. A special note must be made of the player colours: these are vibrant orange, yellow, green and, well a deep autumnal brown and are really very colourful, as are the wooden pieces. Very nice. Each player also receives a `store\' board in their own colour. The store is the intermediate point between the registry, where field tiles are first placed, and the player\'s own country board, where he can place the field tiles ready to produce crops. Each store contains space for two field tiles, and space for players to register, in crop counters they already owns, a price for each tile. Other players may buy field tiles from a players store for the price set by the payer: if no-one buys the tile a player may on a subsequent turn pay the price himself to place the tile on his board. Thus if a player buys a tile from his own store, he loses the crops he set as the price; if an opponent buys the tile the player receives his pricing crops back together with the same number and type of crops from his opponent. This nice pricing mechanism forces players to value correctly the tiles they most need and to carefully monitor what crops an opponent grows if they wants to set the right tile price to either attract or deter him. During the game each player takes turns to perform two out of four possible actions, with the objective of collecting and hopefully grouping field tiles onto his own board, harvesting crops, and placing worker tiles, all of which earn the player victory points at the end of the game. Each player\'s country board is identical, containing a staggered bulging grid of 56 hexagonal field tiles, labeled alphanumerically A1 top left to G7 bottom right. Each player starts with two different evenly-spaced field tiles on his board, and a few crop counters. Each field tile in the bag is individually labeled with a letter and number ``grid reference\'\' and therefore will only go in one place on the player\'s board - or on any other player\'s board. And there the similarity to `Battleship\' ends! The first two possible actions concern field tiles. In one, a player may buy up to 2 tiles from his own or another player\'s store. In the other, he may buy up to 2 field tiles from the registry and place them in his store, replenishing the registry from the cloth bag as he goes along. But a player may never buy tiles from the registry as a first action and then place them from his store onto his country board as his second action: the tiles must stay in his store at least one round before he can play them. The third possible action allows a worker tile to be placed or removed onto the player\'s board. Each farmhand or townsfolk tile has a number and an action on it. The number indicates two things: the number of victory points a player will get for having that worker on his board at the end of the game, and how many surrounding field tiles must be present for this tile to be placed. The six farmhand tiles which players have at the beginning of the game are numbered from 1 to 3 and the six townsfolk tiles, which are placed on the central board and thus up for grabs, are numbered 4 or 5, making them very desirable but difficult to place. Once a worker is placed, it brings a one-off benefit which varies from the ability to harvest an additional crop from a field to the ability to remove a field tile from a large group to split it into two smaller groups - useful at the end of the game to maximise scoring. The final possible action is harvesting. Field tiles placed on the field are decorated with a crop motif - hops, vegetables, cider apples, wine, and wheat. Harvesting is allowed on contiguous groups of tiles, and involves turning the field tile onto its back side, which shows a smaller crop symbol, and claiming the appropriately coloured crop cylinder. Once harvested, only the use of certain worker or event tiles can flip the field tile back over again - and this is where things get really crafty, particularly where worker placement is concerned. If a field tile is placed on a player\'s country board on a hexagon where a worker resides, the rules allow the worker tile to be removed and replaced somewhere else for free. One key technique then (pardon the pun), is to place the worker on a spot for which a field tile is already available in a store or in the registry. Obtaining and placing that field tile then allows the worker to be redeployed for free - thus benefiting the player twice. Of course for this to be successful the player must possess enough crops to pay for the field tile he wants; or, if he takes the crop from the registry, he must price it unattractively enough that no-one will spoil his fun. If a player is clever enough, he can construct multiple uses of his workers within his two actions, such as: Action 1: play a `labourer\' worker on field A4, and use it to get 2 crops of his choice; Action 2: use the crops to buy and place the A4 field tile from an opponent\'s store, and replay the labourer on field C5 for free, obtaining two more crops which can be used to buy field tile C5 and replay the worker again. Note that a worker must always be played legally, i.e., adjacent to the correct number of hexes. Planning these kinds of sequences and monitoring opponents\' crop stocks are both important in winning the game. Just when you thought the game was a deep, linear affair, along comes the event tiles to muck it all up. Each time a field tile is removed from the registry, a new tile is fished out from the cloth bag to replace it. If the tile is an event tile, all players may, or occasionally must, act upon the instructions on the tile before the player continues his turn. These event tiles actually liven up the game considerably with an element of randomness which is often fun but sometimes unpleasant. Examples of event tiles range from the delicious but risky ``lucky dip\'\' - players may pay any 2 crop counters to pull a field tile from the bag and place it on their board, - to the dubious ``Windfall\'\' - the active player chooses and gives a crop from stock to each player, - and the dastardly ``Exchange\'\' - where each player may swap any one of the field tiles on his board for an unconnected field tile from a player\'s board. In our games, while there was almost always a collective groan when an event tile was pulled out, I think most players enjoy them, despite the fact that an unlucky tile can really screw your plans up. Reading the hints and tips in the rules indicates that players should always try and have spare tiles on their country boards to ensure that the damage from some events can be dealt with. The event tiles often interrupt a player\'s train of thought, so in my latest game, we tried a house rule restricting event tiles to one event tile per player turn. We applied the rule until we got to the 7th event tile and then let fate have its course after that, partly because we felt that the event tiles weren\'t coming out fast enough. Try it for yourself and see how you get on.... At the end of the game, players score 1 Victory Point per field tile in the largest group of tiles on the board, and 2 VPs for the second largest group. Workers do not count as being part of a group. Players also score 1 VP per colour for each crop in which they have the majority (so only up to 5 VPs is available to win for crops ``currency\'\'); and they score between 1 and 5 VPs for every farmhand and townsfolk tile placed on their board by game end. One question I have found myself asking is how to classify this game in terms of its weight. I have played Key Harvest 4 times so far, and it\'s certainly a very interesting game design which I enjoyed every time. Looking at it superficially, you may be wondering how the game succeeds in avoiding being too luck-based - after all, you may say, players draw tiles from a bag and if they get lucky, can place field tiles optimally on their country board to maximise worker use and points. However, the effect of luck is almost neutralised by two things: firstly, the delay forced between taking a tile and being able to use it effectively allows access of each player to another\'s luck; and secondly, provided the edge-of-board tiles are avoided in the early part of the game, each tile is surrounded by 6 other tiles which means it is usually relatively easy to find two useful tiles from a selection of 6 in the registry plus several in other players\' stores. And if not, one can always take a tile which another player wants and price it steeply. The only potential mistake a player can make, therefore, is not to take advantage of this balance of luck: I noticed that new players tend to put tiles into their store on one turn and then transfer them into their country board on the next turn, without looking around too much. If everyone plays like this, the game can become predictable and will rely on too much luck; conversely, if players stay alert in the game this will not happen and the game will feel very different. So I think the conclusion of the above discussion is that this game is deceptively heavy. Original, cleanly done, pretty to look at, interactive and intriguing: Key Harvest owes its heritage to both Keythedral and Reef Encounter but is a different game from either and I can see myself playing it for a long time to come. And if I do, maybe next year I will be able to get my revenge on Richard!

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Main Catalogue | BOARD GAMES & CARD GAMES | Rio Grande Games | Key Harvest

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