Key Harvest

First up was a new Essen game, Key Harvest. It took a little while to grasp the strategy and game play and by then it was too late. But the game did seem interesting. And I want to try it again. But who knows if everyone will want to play it again.

Basically, this is a set collecting game. You want to collect two groups of tiles that are close to the same size. You score one point per tile in your biggest group and two points per tile in your second biggest group. In order to acquire the tiles, you want to sell tiles to other people to get money in the five different kinds of currency. You then use that money to buy tiles from other people. Or, you can get the tiles for yourself. But you give up what money you put on it as its cost to other players (which you would have gotten back if they bought it).

There are also workers which “farm” the tiles. They score points at the end of the game. They cannot touch each other and must touch a minimum number of tiles as its victory points. Since it costs you turns to put them down and pick them up, you want to place them such that you get a free rearrangement action when you place a new tile on the spot that they were occupying.

Tichu

To finish out the night, we played some Tichu. Our team was doing quite well. But then the luck went the other way. And the opposing team caught up. In the end, I should have dogged my partner to set Jon’s Tichu call. But I chose not to and we lost.