Keyflower

Product Information

But don’t be deceived, much like Agricola the artwork is inviting but doesn’t quite convey how heavy and deep this game actually is. Importantly, once a colour of meeple is used to bid on or activate a space, any further bids or uses of that space must be performed with the same colour meeples. This is good because it creates a balanced set of resources available, no one ever needs a resource but doesn’t have it available to them. Each player starts the game with a “home” tile and an initial team of eight workers, each of which is colored red, yellow, or blue.

Bidding pilgrims are placed on the edge of the hexagonal tile on the side you are facing so each player knows what they have bid regardless of colours (I really like this feature).The next big change in KttCL was that there are six different types of resources and in the first two rounds of the game, there are tiles available to bid on for all six of them. iSlaytheDragon would like to thank Game Salute for providing us with a review copy of Keyflower (and an additional thanks for their patience).

However if a worker is already someplace at this tile you must bid in the same color workers and you must beat the previous bid. And, when activating a tile, whoever activates it first selects what color is used for activating it. The clever combination of worker placement and auction mechanics makes for an incredibly tense game that keeps players involved and constantly adapting throughout the whole game. One of the marks of a good game is that you are forced to decide the "better" move between two good moves.

The auction mechanism, where players bid following a color system from a fixed resource pool is amazing. Some paths are more flexible than others but they can all pay off greatly given the right game conditions. If you want to play Keyflower with new players KttCL provides gameplay which is close to Keyflower, but much more approachable in terms of strategy and learning the mechanisms.

The first thing that I like so much about Keyflower is the incredibly clever combination of worker placement and auction mechanics by having the workers double as currency. The unique meeples can only be gained through tiles and are a powerful resource when bidding given their rarity. Therefore if the initial usage is with 2 workers, not 1 worker, then the next usage will cost a minimum of three workers, a total of 5 workers.You aren’t merely trying to take actions solely for the purpose of scoring points in the early game but rather you are trying to set yourself for success in Autumn and Winter by being more efficient with your actions than your opponents. Cabins can be added to home tiles, and it gives one extra upgrade action when players use the home tile. Last up you have transportation tiles that let you move goods between tiles in your village and upgrade buildings. Since there’s no main game board it can be a hassle at first to track all of the actions that are in the game, whether they’ve been upgraded, and where they are. It manages this by providing the players with workers that can be used to either activate tiles (the worker placement half) or bid with and spend to acquire tiles (the auction half).