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West of the Mississippi, the grasslands of Middle America contain some of the richest farm land in the world, producing corn, soybeans, wheat, hay, and livestock. Purchased from France as part of the Louisiana Territory in 1803, the region was divided into square mile plots for the settlers from the east. In this game, players take the role of these settlers, developing the plots of land and establishing farms in America’s “Heartland.”
The game, entitled “Eine Frage der Ähre” in German, is a three-dimensional tile-laying game. Each tile contains two types of crops to be planted as well as a certain number of “barnyard points.” When placing tiles, players must always choose between scoring immediate “harvest” (victory) points or developing their farms through the barnyard points, which will provide victory points over the longer term. In addition, there is a race to the top of each barnyard point track in order to acquire the most valuable animals for the farm. Players may also “rotate crops” by using their tiles to cover up fields that bring their opponent’s points, possibly expanding their own farms in the process. This translates into an hour-long game aimed at families and gamers with multiple paths to victory.
Source: Jeffrey D. Allers
- scoring victory points immediately or developing farms for long-term victory points.
- developing farms
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- tile laying — A three-dimensional tile laying game where colorful columns of cardboard crops can accumulate one atop another.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- These are the top ten games that recently stood out from the crowd to us and are now on our radar.
- Heartland first published back in 2009 was reimplemented in 2018 as Gùn Mò with a new theme set in feudal Japan but this recent resurgence and buzz for the game was likely due in part to a recent reddit post which listed games that people enjoy that are in need of a facelift and that reddit post led to the publication of an article on opinionated gamers calm covering the same topic and that article led to this segment about the game which you are watching right now.
- Volt Robot Battle Arena is somewhat reminiscent of 2000's BattleBots.
- It's just the way cartography works.
- The shivers is the game on my personal radar this month because I mean just think about all of the things that I just said to describe it and what you know about me and my taste in games it's got storytelling it's got role-playing it's got puzzles so I mean it's got mystery you've got pop-ups pop-ups pop-ups pop-up books I don't know really what else I need to say but pop-up books pop-up books.
- Is this Stockholm Syndrome in the card game Race for the Galaxy which comes in at number four this month.
- also the vending machine is out of Fresca.
- The game that made the biggest blip on our radar this month is that Terraforming Mars Big Box which recently wrapped up its Kickstarter campaign after around 23,000 backers raised over 2.7 million dollars to finance its production.
- Like every gamer all of them the Terraforming Mars Big Bucks is not only a storage solution for all the Terraforming Mars material released to date including the base game five expansions and the first player rover but it also includes a set of 3D terrain tiles to dress up the game because you don't want your game to be too casual you want it to be dressed up it's a sign of respect that your game dresses up a little to impress you when you get together that was so weird why would I say that.
References (from this video)
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Shared board interaction — groups benefit other players; you balance size for yourself vs others
- Tile Placement — placing tiles to create and optimize groups
- tile placement / placement groups — placing tiles to create and optimize groups
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- multiplayer RPG in a box that you kind of just Choose Your Own Adventure through and play and have fun with and laugh about
- every word matters because you're going to use strategic word play to create a chain of single word Clues to lead them through the jungle
- it's a big heavy Euro by my standards
- it's a thinky Euro with a ton of actions to choose from
- Far Away is just an exceptional little game
- it's just such a lovely calming game
- it's very complicated