Harvest Dice – the analogue farming simulator
The last round and all I can do is feed the piggy. Unfortunately it doesn’t get enough and so I lose a few victory points. But at least my whole field is filled with tomatoes, lettuce and carrots. So life as a farmer doesn’t seem to be difficult, at least in the world of Harvest Dice.
Harvest Dice – A field for the gaming table
Harvest Dice belongs to the category of fast dice games. It is quickly explained and quickly played. But there is one thing that makes it right: It is a fresh game idea, no other game has been specially designed for dice games. Thus it comes along newly and unused.
The speed in Harvest Dice comes from the fact that you actually play almost simultaneously. The starting player throws his dice and you take one of the dice from that roll in turn. This continues until only one die is left. Then the starting player changes and you start over again. Each cube represents a vegetable and must be entered in the column with the corresponding cube eyes. You may only plant new vegetables next to existing vegetables of the same type. Of course, at some point you will not be able to place every vegetable. When this happens, you will need to feed the remaining vegetables to your piggy so that it can grow and thrive. In the end, this will give you extra points.
The special trick
What makes Harvest Dice so different now? First of all, you have to paint your vegetables on the fields yourself. Little triangular carrots, round tomatoes and square lettuce leaves. It’s cute or disturbing, depending on your doodling skills. It is also amazing how different you can depict these simple everyday vegetables. This little detail makes Harvest Dice stand out from other dice games.
As a special strategic element there is the remaining dice. After each round, this increases the point multiplier for your vegetables on the field, but only for those vegetables that nobody wanted to plant. So if you grow a lot of vegetables of the same type, the multiplier will not be as high. You have to weigh up which cube I choose and where I put it in each turn, and then maybe a high cube will be left over, so I can feed the piggy?
Harvest Dice – a benefit for the board game collection
That’s what Harvest Dice is all about for me: I can play it highly strategically and try to generate more points than my opponents. Although everybody has a different tactic. Or I can just play it without planning too much. Even if I then only have a low cube to choose from, which doesn’t fit on my field and doesn’t let my pig grow very much, the fun is simply in the foreground here. If that is not enough for you, you can go for the professional sheets, where there are even more possibilities to score.
For me, Harvest Dice therefore falls exactly into the category of dice games such as Encore! or Qwinto. After the game is actually already before the game again and I’m already looking forward to the next time this little agricultural game comes on the table.
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