This post got delayed a bit because of April 1st and 15th falling on Mondays, allowing me to post a few special articles. And then I got sick. (Sigh.) But this is still my “New to Me” post for the first three months of the year. As usual, these are games that I played for the first time (no matter how new or old they are) with a rating of how much I liked them (as a medium-weight eurogamer).
The Great (“I Would Buy This”)
Key Flow (2018). Take Keyflower (2012), a game that I found most brilliant for its interrelation of auction and worker placement. Keep the worker-placement and resource-management elements of the original game, but replace the auction mechanic with a different sort of action selection: card drafting. Voila! You have Key Flow.
Though I think that Key Flow cuts out some of the best parts of Keyflower, the card drafting is a perfectly acceptable alternative, and the result is a game that’s a bit shorter and more approachable. Even though I love Keyflower and will continue to play it, I think Key Flow is pretty good too, just in a slightly different category.
This one is also a bit more solitaire and really, really intensive in its end-game scoring. (There really should have been a score sheet.) Continue reading