Keythedral

Tonight my board game friends and I played Keythedral for the third time.

It is a "gather resources and build" game in a similar vein to Settlers of Catan (my gold standard for these sorts of games), with a few differences. Notably, other than the initial board layout, there are no dice used in this game - nothing is random.

In Catan, you shuffle the board tiles and lay them out in a fixed pattern. In Keythedral, each player takes a random tile and chooses where to place it. So board layout, while random, is less so than in Catan. In addition to placing a tile, you place one of your cottages in the map, and each player takes a turn until the board is set.

After setting up the board, players send out workers to harvest resources from the various tiles, and then use the resources to purchase blocks of the Keythedral (i.e. purchase victory points).

We've played three times, and while the game is fun, something is lacking. Part of the problem is the game is won or lost on initial tile placement. This in turn is because placing a tile/cottage after another player gives you an advantage over them as you can react to their placement for your own advantage. Of the three games we've played, the last player to go has won each time. During the game, moving before someone is an advantage, but that is constrained by initial tile placement, making the board setup so crucial for the rest of the game.

Resource management is also weakly implemented. In this game, the basic resources (stone, wood, grass, water, wine) are essentially all equal, once past the very early game. You can freely trade any two resources for one of your choice. Crafted resources (iron, stained glass, gold) which can only be bought, are also easily obtained: two, three, or four of a basic resource will purchase a crafted resource. In Catan, you can trade three resources for one of your choice, and if you compete and own a port, you can trade two of the port's resources for one of your choise. In Keythedral, resources are too easy to switch between and shortages never arise.

One game dynamic we haven't really tried is blocking another player's cottage from harvesting resources. This is difficult to do without teaming up, and while some players are quite competitive, each person mostly plays for themselves and doesn't try to team up and take down someone else.

Anyway, everybody is a bit neutral on this game so we might play Power Grid again next time.