Windmill Valley: My Favorite Mechanism

[@justineld4905]

I've played this just once, last summer I think, but I agree with Jamey. The gear action selection and upgrade mechanic is pretty sweet. I don't really care at all about the theme. A gardener I am not. And even the raising/lowering of the water level never really did much in the one game I played. It was always at it's lowest or at most one step higher than the lowest. But that gear mechanic is absolutely enough to make me want to play it again. And here's a quick story of how my specific game played out. It was a 3-player game, but really came down to just two of us. My gaming friend (it was his copy of the game) went with a strategy of upgrading his gears to the max as soon as possible and also got some really good endgame point cards that matched that perfectly. Without really knowing what I was doing, I went with a strategy more focused on getting the ongoing benefit cards and was going to try and see if I could fill up my entire tulip field. What was very fun is that for most of the game it really looked like my friend was going to win and win easily. He was clearly going to earn lots of points from his endgame bonus cards and one in particular was going to score huge. And on top of that he found a way to score that card twice! Furthermore, there's a tiny bit of a race element to this game because whoever triggers the next round or phase or whatever it's called gets a small bonus. Well my friend was able to do that each time, while I was the furthest behind each time. But somehow, in the last 4th of the game or so, my ongoing bonus cards really started to make the difference because I was, in fact, able to fill up my entire tulip field and obviously scored huge points from that. And along the way, of course I upgraded my own gears a little bit and also got a couple endgame point cards that scored decently. I ended up winning by just a few points! It was a pretty memorable experience.

[@jameystegmaier]

I'm impressed by your memory of that session! It's neat to see that both of you had very different paths to victory.

[@Wealtharch]

Tzolkin is one of your top games. Do you prefer Tzolkin over Windmill Valley?

[@jameystegmaier]

I think both have great merits. In Tzolk'in, the gears are used for worker placement, while in Windmill Valley they are your personal action selection mechanism.

[@Wealtharch]

Thanks for the reply