Thursday 16 October 2014

Key-ping up appearances.

With the ranks of the RBS due to be decimated by attendees to Essen and my day trip to Harrogate optimism for any games this week seemed low. However, with two members pledging that they were going to turn up I prayed to the gods of motorway incidents that they might smite road users elsewhere rather than my route. They half obliged and through tempestuous skies I emerged into the Abbot Cook at 7.30pm to see Dave and Matt sitting there looking at the pub menu. On my tense journey home it did strike me as odd the lengths I go to just to push some wooden cubes around a table but then I used to play football, and if you break that down it really does seem like madness.

Anyway, my reward for my extended trip was a game of Keyflower. Patchhistory had been mooted but nobody had played a game of it before and the rules were perceived to be terrible...

Keyflower with 3 feels slightly different (In the same way Agricola does) from the 5 of my last game.  It scales nicely and the turns zip by but there seemed to be less interaction this game. Auctions for tiles were given up on quicker and, when built, players tended to use their own home tiles for resources. I slipped into the same strategy as last time winning the resources tiles and hoping for a complementary winter tile to aid my scoring. One didn't come.

Boats - strangely two tone

There was a curious lack of 'tool' resource tiles, which I needed, to upgrade some of my home tiles and when Matt used a yellow worker to produce some for himself I was undone. My solitary yellow worker was not enough to get what I needed. I also ballsed up my resource movement thinking two of my tiles were connected when it only kinda looked like they did..... You have to watch for that in this game. It's easy to make a small mistake. I think I reused a green worker when I should have chucked him back and I'm pretty sure I made other errors too.

Matt - 51
Chris - 45
Dave - 31

Next, to my surprise, Biblios was up. Still not clever enough at this game to forge a solid strategy but when Matt and Dave both kept increasing the brown dice which I had thirteen points in I thought that was as good a plan as any! I kept strong in another colour and helped down vote green.

Chris - 9
Matt - 6
Dave - 0

Lets see that Biblios table now!!!

3 comments:

  1. I'm interested in Keyflower, it's highly rated too, eh. Mainly though I am pleased you steered clear of smutty post titles though, Master Smith.

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  2. That little tool tile makes me want to play Stone Age! I LOVE STONE AGE!

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  3. Hey! Two smutty post titles does not a summer make!

    Keyflower is very good. Lots of replayability and nice levels of interaction. Negatives, if you were looking for them.
    AP could be a problem with some people that like to calculate everything. - You soon learn that it's tough to do it 100% because there are a fair variables that crop up.
    A little point salady - Not a problem for me I like that feature.
    Learning it. I'd say you will definitely need to use the first game as a "oh well lets get on a learn it" type thing. You will need to refer to the rules to clarify the icons and it's impossible to convey context of moves.
    There's some stitch up. People out bid you. Especially if your going for a tile that will give you a massive score.

    If those things don't bother you I'd wholly recommend it.

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