LogFAQs > #898586738

Design - But I don't think it's all just the serotonin bonus of winning. Keyflower is a real joy to play. It's got a ton of rules to cover - you need to explain a handful of Winter Tiles before you even start the game, due to the fact you're dealt a few before the game even begins; and you need to understand upgrades, which you can't even start doing until Summer.

But once you start, it's pretty fucking great. Each turn is one action, and you're always faced with interesting decisions. Your Keyples are both your bidding currency and your Workers to place. Place them in your own village, and you get to keep them, great! But place them in an opponent's village at the right time, and it won't matter that you missed out on that sweet four-horse tile. So where are your Keyples going?

There's also the fact that being the first person to bid on or to activate a tile in any given round lets you dictate color - all Keyples used to bid on or activate a tile must be of the same color. Red, Yellow, and Blue Keyples are equally common, but if you have a large set of any given color, you can scare off others early off your tiles, or bait them into overcommitting to overbid you while you send your other Keyples elsewhere. But you can also use special abilities to get Green Keyples, and being first onto an area with that Green Keyple can be massively clutch. The mix of worker placement (a fairly obvious, mean mechanic) and bidding (a mechanic that tests timing and valuation) and then the color-coded Keyples on top of it, all using the same "currency" - it results in a highly interactive system that should never play out the same way, even if you play with all the hexes every game.

On top of the phenomenal bidding game and war for hex activation, Keyflower has almost a different game going on where you want your village to be nice and pretty. The tiles you win get laid onto your board, but most of the early tiles aren't worth VP unless they're upgraded! So you can activate other tiles (using workers) to gain resources, and then use the special horse tiles to transport those resources to the hexes you want to upgrade. In an awesome mechanic, all you need to do to upgrade, physically, is to flip the hex upside down - it will have the same borders, but it will now be better and be worth VP. The process of laying out your village and physically transporting stone, wood, and iron across your hexes is relaxing and pretty - even if acquiring those resources and competing for the movement actions can be vicious.

Due to the one-action-a-turn system, Keyflower is beautifully fast-moving. As I mentioned, I didn't feel I was suffering in a six-player game. That's virtually unheard of for a turn-based strategy game. And it's also been amazing to dig in at the less chaotic three-player count, with a bit more control over your destiny. Can only imagine that a two-player game is a slugfest.

My only complaint with Keyflower is how it's a bit of a bear to teach and set up. Otherwise, thanks to its unique blend of mechanics, juicy and frequent decision points, low downtime, and fantastic scaling, it's almost certainly my favorite eurogame.

Future - Keyflower is very high on my strategy games wishlist, along with Food Chain Magnate. I get the feeling it's not quite as beloved among the rest of my groups. It'll be interesting to see how much I enjoy it when my beginner's luck runs out.

Bonus question - What is your favorite genre of games? What is your favorite game in a genre that is not your favorite? What is your favorite eurogame?

Hint for #4 - it has very little to do with voltage divided by current
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness