Seasons might be all over the place these days but Harvest: Fall Festival!, the first expansion to Keymaster Games’ Harvest is a satisfying addition to what was already one of the most enjoyable games I have. Successfully Kickstarted last year, Fall Festival adds two new characters, one new location, and more ways to score, leading to new challenges for players.
What’s In The Box?
As a reminder, Harvest comes with a whole lot of pieces to set up the town and all the farming essentials for 1 to 4 players, and pieces that go with Mayor Gairy who shows up in solo and 2 player games. The expansion adds Francie, the Field Springer and Finn and Maisie, the Field Mice (who are played together) and wooden animeeples. There are also 4 wood baskets, the festival board, 15 pie cards, 15 novelty cards, 1 new sunrise tile, 2 new Gairy tiles, scoring tiles for crossing 50 and 100 points, a festival reminder token, and more solo challenges.
Like the base game, all the pieces are of high quality and I really love the art on the character cards and the festival board.
How’s It Play?
Harvest is a worker placement game where each player works to score the most points by planting, tending, and harvesting crops which is done in various ways by visiting the general store, fields, workshop, farmer’s market, and the trading post (can also build on their land). Players go back and forth until their three wheelbarrows are placed during three phases, with the full game completing after four rounds.
In the expansion, players can also take their basket and go the festival to either gain 2 coins and purchase a festival card or perform a harvest action. Like the rest of the areas on the main board, there’s a space where any number of players can aplace their basket. There, you can purchase one fall festival card or gain 1 coin.
The Fall Festival offers two types of cards. Pies give you end game points with points dependent on the variety of pies bought (set collection!). Novelty cards grant you bonuses during the game, but you can only use them once and must discard them after. If you don’t use them, you get one point per card at the end of the game.
Of course, there’s also our new neighbors! Francie never has to pay fall festival card costs, while Finn and Maisie only get to go twice. However, Finn never pays the coin cost on anything and Maisie gets an extra action when she goes to a location in town. Essentially Maisie is two of the three actions that a player would get with any of the other characters.
The rest of the game plays like the original.
The Verdict?
Expansions are super popular in board gaming but I don’t regularly get them because I love the base games as is, but when I saw the Kickstarter for Fall Festival, I knew I’d want to grab a copy. Even if I hadn’t been provided a review copy, I would have purchased it! I love the challenge presented by playing with Francie or Finn and Maisie. You might think not having to spend money (either as Francie at the Festival or as Finn…anywhere), or getting two actions at a location might net you the automatic win, but that’s not the case. When my friend and I played this the first time, we totally expected that he’d win out by having Finn and Maisie, but I actually managed to get ten more points by focusing on using the Festival location and harvest actions to my advantage.
Harvest is already a ton of fun and no two games are the same especially if Gairy is in the way and dependening on which characters you play as, and adding two new characters and a location definitely shake the game up in engaging ways. I plan to play with and without the expansion pieces and if you liked the base game, think you should get the expansion available now on Keymaster’s website!
Images and review copy courtesy of Keymaster Games
Have strong thoughts about this piece you need to share? Or maybe there’s something else on your mind you’re wanting to talk about with fellow Fandomentals? Head on over to our Community server to join in the conversation!