The board game Keyflower from the online store Woodcat

Back in 1620, a ship named Mayflower arrived in the United States. This ship carried the first Pilgrim settlers to New England, who began building colonies in North America. These are all pages of history that have long since been written. But nothing's stopping you from writing your own history in board games! Build your settlement in close competition with your neighbors in the board game Keyflower. Make good use of every man and every resource.

Place your bets, gentlemen!

Welcome to the world of Key, created by game designers Sebastian Bleasdale and Richard Breese in their most famous game, Keyflower. Two to six players will develop their settlements, bid on tiles, use them, and try to earn as many victory points at the end of the game for the tiles placed in their settlements and the gold they earn.

The game will last for four seasons. Each player begins with only one house tile and a random selection of kipples (the local name for the familiar worker meeples). Players also receive winter tiles, which generally allow them to plan their actions for the best chance of winning points.

Each turn you have a choice of using your kiplas behind a screen (your opponents should not see your kiplas or skills) or from an outbid:

• place a bet on a tile to claim it for yourself at the end of the season or extract kipla and skill tokens from it;
• use a tile in your village/another player's village/at the current season's tile market.

There's an important rule for both options: the kiplas on the tile being used or around it (where bets are placed) must always be the same color. For this purpose, the game has four different kipla varieties: blue, red, yellow, and green. This means you can significantly disrupt your opponents' plans if they don't have the right color!

More about local colonization:

Bets are simple: place your stacks on your side of the hexagonal tile. Each new bid must be greater than any other existing one. If your bid is outbid, all stacks from it can be used for another bet or for the use of another tile (but splitting them is prohibited).

It's not that using tiles becomes more complicated—it simply adds a lot of options. Multiple players can use the same tile (even other players can visit your settlement). It's important that each subsequent use of the tile requires at least one extra meeple after the initial use. So, the first player can send one meeple, the second two, and the third three. A tile can't be more than six meters long. But there's nothing stopping you from sending, say, three meeples at once, to prevent anyone else from using that tile...

What do local tiles provide? Resources, victory points, kipla, the ability to move resources between tiles, and the ability to upgrade tiles for greater benefits. Each tile is unique, so learning how they interact will be a lot of work!

At the end of each season, players collect the tiles they won bids on, determine the turn order for the next season, and receive workers and skill tokens from the boats that arrived. Importantly, kyplas from outbids, kyplas in your settlement, and kyplas on tiles you won go behind your screen (unlike the winning bids). During winter, no kyplas arrive—instead, you'll collect boat tiles and place them in your settlement.

At the end of the fourth season, players earn victory points for tiles in their villages, as well as gold tokens. The player with the best score wins and has the best village until you play a new game.

New settlers arrived on legendary boats

Keyflower is a global strategy classic. Unlike many other games in the genre, it features a high level of interaction, requiring constant adaptation. The game allows you to constantly try new strategies and challenges you to fully engage your brain to find optimal ways to obtain the necessary resources or Boiling Water. Clear mechanics and a dynamic table environment are the secret to the game's success, which has long held its place among the best in the world.

Specifications:

• Number of players: 2-6.
• Age: 12+.
• Game duration: 90+ minutes.
• Section: Expert.