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Welcome to Which Game First where we boldly explore the hilariously huge world of board games. Did we unearth any hidden treasures you’ve been missing out on? Let’s find out!
First up: We’re growing the fullest and fastest produce we can in Fruit Picking
Next: We picky pruners hoping to satisfy the Queen of Hearts in Paint the Roses
And lastly: We’re picky farmers rounding up just the right animals in Tiny Farms
Fruit Picking
Designed by: Jun-ichi Shinde
Published by: Korea Boardgames Co., Ltd. (2020)
Players: 1 – 4
Ages: 8 & up
Playing time: 15 – 30 minutes
In Fruit Picking the players become fruit farmers who will plant and pick fruit and trade them for market cards. The goal is to collect a set of market cards that satisfy one of the four possible victory conditions: 4 of the same fruit, 5 different fruits, 3 pairs of fruit, or a full fruit house (3 of a kind + 2 of a kind).
Players start by taking all the seeds from one space on their fruit island board and then distribute them mancala-style in a clockwise direction. The last space a player puts a seed on becomes their active pick farm for this turn. They then choose to either add more seeds on that pack farm, or trade the seeds from that pick farm for a fruit market card.
Keep a close eye on the 4 cards available in the fruit market, because an available fruit card could be outrageously expensive on your turn, but then it could become a practical bargain on your future turns!
OK team, it’s time to go bananas! Orange you glad I didn’t say Strawberry?
Paint the Roses
Designed by: Ben Goldman
Published by: NorthStar Game Studio (2022)
Players: 2 – 5
Ages: 11 & up
Playing time: 50 – 70 minutes
Paint the Roses is a co-operative race game where players are the gardeners for the Queen of Hearts in Wonderland. The gardeners try to stay ahead of the queen who has a penchant for decapitation.
How does the gardener stay out of the range of her majesty? Players will draw whim cards, which are cards that describe a type of pattern that the gardener is looking to make in the garden of roses.
There are 3 types of whim cards: easy, medium, and hard. Easy whim cards will always show a pattern of 2 colors, a medium whim card could be a pattern of 2 colors OR 2 shapes, and a hard whim card could be 2 colors, 2 shapes, or some combination of both color and shape.
On your turn, depending on any whim card in your hand, place a tile on the garden and then let others know if it satisfied the conditions of any of your whim cards. The other players look at their whim cards and they will also declare if any of their cards were achieved.
Now without directly telling, players deduce HOW a whim card was EXACTLY satisfied. Correct answers advance the gardener away from her majesty. Incorrect answers DOUBLE the movement of the queen as she chases you around the outside of the game board.
To win, players must fully place all tiles in the garden before the queen catches up to the gardener on the game track. Now I must be getting on, I’m late for a date with a white rabbit.
Tiny Farms
Designed by: Ben Pinchback, Matt Riddle
Published by: Dice Hate Me Games, Motor City Gameworks (2020)
Players: 1 – 4
Ages: 6 & up
Playing time: 20 – 30 minutes
In Tiny Farms, you are a farmer managing TWO farms, Blue and Red, aiming to be the best farmer in the county.
For each color farm, there is one community meeple farmer. So although we each have a red and blue farm, all players will move the same two meeples around the fields.
To move a meeple to the field you want, draft one of 4 rolled community dice, and move one of the meeples that many spaces. Whatever animals are in that field you can move into either one of your farms. Players also start with some milk tokens that can modify the values of dice by ±1.
Collect various types or combinations of animals to score in different ways.
The game ends after ten rounds (with your farms hopefully now being full), and players score points. Each animal has different scoring conditions, such as sets of adjacent animals of the same kind or different kinds, or the most animals of a kind between all players. You also get points for unused milk tokens, BUT you will lose points for any size difference between your two farms.
So let’s go play with the whole Farmily!