Family
Alter 12
Spezial
The Key to the Carribean
Key West
Plantations, tourists and ships
Dazzling sunshine, clear blue sky, this is the weather of the moment, and of course that puts one in holiday mood! My dream: A cruise through the Carribean with my husband. But for the near future work is the motto of the day, so I need to get close to my dream in a different way!
So of course, I pick out the game „Key West“ from publisher Spiele-Idee, the topic seems to be what I want. Right! The cover of the game immediately puts me in a good mood. It depicts a beautiful sandy beach with a lighthouse, with a man smoking a cigar under a sunshade and seemingly enjoying total relaxation.
The description of the game on the box features all what I want from a holiday in the Carribean, so let’s see if my expectations are really met.
Players in the game are asked to build hotels and plantations and to manage those, furthermore you need to set up cigar factories and produce cigars or you can go diving for treasures and shipwrecks.
When opening the box you are confronted with lots of components: 40 diving tiles, 42 Key West cards, 27 harvest tiles, 3 dice, 1 game board, 6 covering tiles, 1 starting player marker, 220 Key West dollars in denominations of 1, 2, 5 and 10 dollars, and for each player a set of 11 wooden discs, 6 action markers, 1 victory point marker and 1 marker for the cigar track.
The game board features „Florida“ in the top and in the middle the 3 groups of islands, „Upper Keys“, „Middle Keys“ and „Lower Keys“. Furthermore there are 40 spaces for the diving tiles, then the cigar track, the wrecked ships and the action track with 9 different action spots. Between Florida and the islands of the Upper Keys Group there is a bridge space, as there is between Upper Keys and Middle Keys, and Middle Keys and Lower Keys as well.
Each player starts the game with 20 Key West Dollars and a set of 11 wooden discs, 6 action markers, 1 victory point marker and 1 marker for the cigar track in hgis color. The 24 Key West cards are shuffled face-down and laid out in 7 stacks of 6 cards each next to the board.
Finally, you shuffle 9 1-dollar bills and 3 2-dollar bills face down – the value is only printed on one side of the bills – and distribute them as follows: 3 on the bridge space between Florida and the Upper Keys, 4 on the bridge space between Upper Keys and Middle Keys and the remaining 5 on the last bridge space between Middle Keys and Lower Keys.
As long as dollar bills are present on those bridge spaces the bridge is deemed to be not built yet and cannot be used.
On the three groups of islands there are spaces for several fruit plantations, hotels and cigar factories. In relation to the number of players some of those spaces and also shipwreck spaces are covered.
The game comprises a total of 8 round and each round is made up of two phases, the Auction Phase and the Action Phase.
Phase 1:
At the start of this phase the 6 Key West cards in the first stack are displayed. These cards are now auctioned. Each player closes dollar bills for his bid into his hand. The special feature of the auctions in Key West is that only the highest bidder must spend money, and this in a special way: He pays to the player with the lowest bid the sum equal so the difference between their bids. The player with lowest bid also receives the starting player marker and starts actions in Phase 2. The winner of the auction takes best the rest of his bid, and all other players keep all the money they did bid.
The advantage of being the highest bidder and winning the auction is that you can choose first from the Key West cards and take 2. Then the player with the second-highest bids takes 1 card, and finally the player with the third-lowest bid takes 1 card, too.
The remaining two cards go into a discard pile. This ends the Auction Phase of the round.
Cards that you won in auction are always laid out on the table face-up, they enable you to the following actions: “Build bridges”, “build bridges and plantations”, “build plantations”, “build bridges and turn up harvest tiles”, “dive +1”, “dive +1 and turn up a harvest tile” or “capacity +1”. You can always execute all actions featured on your cards or use their abilities.
Bridges and plantations you build immediately after winning the corresponding Key West card, harvest tiles are revealed immediately, too. These building actions and the revealing of harvest tiles are a once only action and must be done immediately.
Key West cards featuring the actions „dive +1“ or „capacity +1“ entitle you to additional possibilities for the action „dive“ in phase 2. These abilities can be used once per round.
When diving you can locate shipwrecks. If you do, you place them immediately onto the shipwreck area on the space with the lowest available value and score the points for victory points.
Furthermore, you can bring up sponges with a dive. These diving tiles are also revealed immediately and earn you Key West dollars in relation to the number of sponges depicted on them.
There are also diving tiles featuring three kinds of treasures.
In more detail:
Build bridges: The Key West card for building bridges shows the bridge. You pick up the top dollar bill on this bridge. By winning the Key West card for this bridge you not only got the right to build part of it by taking the money but you also acquired – case the bridge gets finished – one share of the bridge with each card.
Build a plantation: The Key West card shows one kind of fruit (bananas, oranges or avocados). You place one of your wooden discs on a plantation. For each kind of fruit there are exactly three plantation spaces on the islands. During the course of the game it can happen that all spaces of a kind are taken. In this case you place your wooden disc on a plantation space all the same, and give the disc already there back to its owner, he receives no compensation whatsowever for the loss of his plantation.
Reveal harvest tile: You turn up two harvest tiles and place them on the „Florida“ part of the game board.
Phase 2:
In this phase each player can place 2 of his action markers on the action track.
On the action track you can find the following 9 spaces for different actions: „Dive“, „“Buy hotel“, „Buy Hotel and/or manage it“, „buy factory and/or manufacture cigars“, „Buy factory and/or market cigars“, „Manufacture cigars and/or take 8 Key West dollars“, „Score shares of two bridges“, „harvest two plantation groups“, „take 1 action of your choice“.
Dive: You can take a look at up to 3 diving tiles and take one of them. If you take the first or second one, your turn ends. You may look at the 2nd tile and then decide to take the first one.
The Key West card „Dive +1“ allows you – during the action Dive – to take a look at one additional tile. If you hold several of those cards you can look at one additional tile for each of those cards.
Buy a hotel: You place one of your wooden discs on one of the hotel spaces on the islands and pays 5 Key West Dollards to the bank. During the game it can happen that there are no hotels left; in this case you can take over the hotel of another player, he places his wooden disc on this hotel. For this, though, he has to pay 8 Key West Dollars to the owner, but he does not pay anything to the bank. The dislodged wooden disc is handed back to its owner.
Hotels can score you victory points in two ways. Each Hotel belongs to a certain category and has a number of stars accordingly. At the end of the game all players add the number of stars of all their hotels. If you have the majority of hotel stars you score 8 victory points, if you hold the second-most number of stars you score 4 points.
The second possibility is to manage a hotel:
Buy hotel and/or manage it:
For this action you can either buy a hotel, manage a hotel that you already did buy or buy a new hotel and manage this new one and all other ones that you already own.
How to buy a hotel has already been mentioned. To manage a hotel all bridges between the location of the hotel and the “Florida” part of the board must already have been built. If this is not the case, you cannot manage this particular hotel.
Hotels that are already connected with a bridge to the land mass of „Florida“, can score victory points in the following way: There is a die for each group of islands. If you manage your hotels, you receive the die for each of those island groups where you own a hotel, regardless whether these hotels are already connected via a bridge to “Florida”. It is also not important how many hotels you own on an island group. You roll all the dice you are entitled to roll and only the die with the highest result is important: You count all hotels that have a bridge connection to “Florida” and multiply this result with the highest result shown on the dice. The result of this multiplication you divide by 5 and score this numb er of vic tory points. Should there be a rest to this division you are paid the amount of this rest in Key West Dollars.
Buy a factory and/or manufacture cigars:
Again, you are entitled to implement both or only one of the two actions from the card. The buy of a cigar factory is done in the same way as the buy of a hotel. Here, too, you either pay 5 dollars to the bank or 8 dollars to the previous owner of the hotel.
With the first action of manufacturing cigars the cigar production is started. Again, you take one die for each island group, in which you own at least one cigar factory, and roll all dice. Then you count all your cigar factories and multiply this result with the number on the highest die. Again, you divide the result by five and move your marker on the cigar track accordingly. For the scoring of cigar factories it is irrelevant whether bridges have been built or not.
Buy factory and/or market cigars:
Once again you can implement both actions or only one of them. How to buy a factory is the same for this card. When you market cigars you change cigars into victory points. 5 cigars result in one victory point, you advance the victory point marker accordingly and, of course, move back the marker on the cigar track.
Manufacture cigars and/or take 8 Key West Dollars:
Again you can decide to make use of one or both actions.
Score shares in two bridges:
You can only score shares in finished bridges that have a continuous connection to “Florida”. For each Key West, card openly displayed in front of you, that shows such a bridge you score 1 victory point. Should all three bridges be finished and you own cards for all three bridges you must decide for which of the two bridges you want to score victory points.
Harvest 2 groups of plantations:
There must be harvest tiles in „Florida“ corresponding to the kind of fruit on your plantation. If no such tile is in „Florida“, this action does not yield anything.
If you should own more than one plantation for more than one kind of fruit you can score a harvest tile for a maximum of two kinds of fruit, provided this tile is available from “Florida”.
Take on action of any kind:
In a round of the game a player can place 2 of his action markers, each action space can hold only one of your action markers. Only when a player has used up all his action markers after three rounds of the game, all players get back all their action markers and all actions are again available.
Each action space takes one action marker. To enable a player to repeat an action within the period of three rounds you can use the space for „take any one action“. This enables you to use an action space again, but at the cost of two action markers.
End of a round:
When each player has used his two action markers, the round ends and the next one is started with the auctioning of the next stack of 6 Key West cards. After round three and round six all players have used their action markers and take all of them back. When all players have finished round seven of the game there is an eighth and final round of the game.
In each of the previous seven rounds of the game 2 Key West cards have been placed on a discard pile. This pile is now shuffled and then the top 6 cards are displayed for auction in the 8th round.
When round eight has been finished there is a final scoring:
You score 1 victory point for 1 harvest tile of a variety of fruit, two harvest tiles score 3 victory points, 3 tiles give you 6 victory points and 4 of those tiles earn you 10 points, any additional tile of that kind of fruit earns you 1 more victory point.
The treasures are scored exactly in the same way.
Then players add the stars of their hotels and score 8 points if they have the majority, and 4 points, if they have the second-most number of stars.
Finally, for 5 Key West dollars you receive 1 victory points.
And the winner of the game now is the player with the highest total of victory points.
The rules and maybe my description too, lead you to expect a rather complicated game. But this is not the case. The game is a very good one, is a lot of fun and provides a nice ambience for playing. When looking at the box or the board I was always thinking of a holiday in the Carribean.
Unfortunately, the rules very often use different terms for the same action of the same item.
The graphics and design of the game is very nice and gives a nice feel to the game.
The mechanism for the auction is not really new, but is integrated wonderfully into the game and the interaction between the auction phase and the action phase is extremely well-made.
The game provides, despite not being overly complex, a certain depth and offers lots of tactics and strategy also to experienced players, so it can be recommended to them, too.
I would like to end this review with a word of commemoration for the owner of
Spiele-Idee, Horst Rokitte, who passed away a few days before he could present
his game at Essen.
Spieler : 3 – 5
Alter : ages 12+
Dauer : ca. 60 min
Autor : Martin Schlegel
Grafik : Cosimo Tassone
Titel : Ident
Preis : ca. 27 Euro
Verlag : Spiele-Idee
Genre : Game of economics
Zielgruppe : Für Familien
Version : de
Rules : de
In-game use of language : nein
Kommentar:
Components and game play give you a feeling of the Caribbean
Good interplay of Auction and Action Phase
Good rules
Vergleichbar:
Die Schatztaucher, Hotel Samoa
Meine Wertung: 6
Maria Schranz:
Key West is a very good family games with a certain depth which will appeal to experienced players.
Zufall 3
Taktik 3
Strategie__ 3
Kreativität
Wissen_
Gedächtnis
Kommunikation
Interaktion 2
Geschicklichkeit
Action