Board Game Arena

I like most of mini-expansion 2. I like the harvest tokens creating more asymmetry and less first-player advantage. I like the idea of new islands (I suspect Mull might be too strong compared to other first column islands, but we'll see how that goes). But I don't see the fun in the random (and unknown in advance) harvest order.

In about 2/3 of games, you're getting more (and bigger) food faster than in a normal game. That's different, but I'm struggling to find anything productive to do with it. Maybe fourth-column double upgrades on turn 1 help with faster island tiling (fruit for Man seems genuinely interesting; fruit for Skye or cabbage for Man/Mull/Skye might be okay). I'm not convinced it's worth the time to upgrade cabbage after round 1, though, and most early islands don't use upgraded fruit well (Iceland and Greenland being likely exceptions since you likely don't have a whaling boat like you would for Lofoten; Man needs it turn 1 or not at all because of the mead bonus; maybe rushing a full Islay tiling is okay, but probably not; we don't talk about Outer Hebrides).

Artisan sheds might also be good (Hermit, Mason, Lumberjack, and maybe Hunting Lodge love cabbage), but the other pairings (Armory/Cowshed and Spinnery/Whaling Hut) don't really care. And since in a long game you can't pick your artisan shed and they seem to not be balanced around having lots of extra food at the start, now we're potentially just giving advantages to random people in a previously not-very-random game. (Maybe you should be able to pick your artisan shed even in a long game, ideally after seeing what turn 2's harvest is, and they just don't start built. This would shake up the gameplans a bit while removing the randomness.)

Early long house (round 1, even?) might be okay, with the added bonus of being robust to future consecutive non-harvests. Might need to eat the big food to rush the oil bonus, but that's fine. Problem is limited red food and money, so maybe you wait until round 2 (which is still earlier than normal). Stone houses are probably usually fine, but if the next round is non-harvest and food would be tight then food might get scary, since two rounds ahead is roughly a coinflip.

Not seeing other good ideas for early extra food here.

Occupation cards that trigger on harvest/non-harvest feel weird, but since you know the next round and that only one harvest/non-harvest can be skipped you've got a pretty good idea of short and long-term outcomes here. Miller/sower/etc might be stronger since it's easier to have leftover flax/grain. All of this seems probably fine.

But then there's the cases that feel bad:
1/7 of games start with harvest 1 into no harvest. This is less food than a normal game, fairly early on. You can somewhat mitigate this by not upgrading starting food (opening variety, I guess?) or rushing an island and/or artisan shed that gives lots of food (especially Isle of Man with the grain bonus). You could pick a harvest token that gives more food, but at this point you don't know harvest 2; there's a 3/7 chance you'll be drowning in food instead. Problem is round 3's harvest is a coinflip, so it's hard to know how much you want to invest in food production on round 1, and scrambling for food on round 2 might be hard (not first player on round 2, or Man was taken by opponent on round 1; artisan shed wants to be filled with food, which at this point just makes things worse). Generating the entire harvest order in advance would make this less bad, since at least then both players know exactly how bad things are going to be and can plan for it, but this still feels bad to play.

2/7 of games have no harvest on both rounds 2 and 3. You have no idea this is a problem when picking your harvest token, and the round 3 harvest coinflip continues to be a problem. Maybe there's value in round 2 cows or horses if no harvest on round 3 just so you can efficiently print food?

1/14 of games have both! (Meaning 5/14 of games have at least 1, and 9/14 look normal.)

So overall, this feels like 2/3 of games are basically normal (food is earlier, but mostly just sitting there until the non-harvests start hitting), and 1/3 of games feel painful (maybe this is the point, but then it should be more common?). I'm not seeing why I should like this. Am I missing something here?

I absolutely love this expansion. In the base game and original Norwegians, the food cushion in rounds one and two gives too much of an advantage to early exploration strategies, so all too often the game is only about who gets what islands in what order. It’s cool to see what choices people make when they’re going into no harvest in round 2. Harvest prevents AFFO from being too predictable.

If someone is determined to import their regular AFFO strategy into Harvest, the mead/beans token gives you a bunch of extra food. 7 extra food tiles total in the long game. Take that one, not the lumber token, which is usually the one exploration strat wants, to shave a Viking off of round 1.

In general, I wouldn’t underestimate the food the harvest tokens give you. The ones with food just on the backs amounts to an extra harvest worth of food, and the mead/beans token is more valuable than 2 1-1 harvests. The ones with no food on them are risky to take for that reason, but they do feed into traditional AFFO strategies. Wood for ships, stone for houses, etc. Probably the best one is the ore/peas token overall, as it has food and something incredibly useful in the game.

Fair point, maybe the idea is that low food games are supposed to be interesting rather than painful. But if that's the goal, maybe that case should be more common? (Ex: force no harvest on round 2.) Right now, 2/3 of games you have an even larger food cushion, and those games are still just about who gets what islands in what order.

While half of all long games have four harvests as per usual, plus bonus food on harvest tokens (if any), half of all long games have 3 harvests instead of 4.

Not considering their order, the 3 harvest games have the following possibilities:

1-1, 1-2, 1-3. A significant food shortage, perhaps exacerbated by a long dearth over several rounds. Something like 1-1/-/-/-/-/1-2/1-3 would impact the game the most, although all you have to do to remain competitive is get an island with an easy red food bonus (Isle of Man, Lofoten) or buy animals. In my experience, these long dearth games are really fun.
1-1, 1-2, 1-4. A little better, although not much. If front loaded, this can actually be pretty good. In these 3 harvest games, the order of the harvests is likely more of a factor than the quantity of the harvest.
1-1, 1-3, 1-4. As above.
1-2, 1-3, 1-4. Not too bad.

Even four harvest games can feel the impact of a dearth depending on the harvest order. 1-1/-/-/-/1-2/1-3/1-4 being the obvious example of that.

Again, though, those who take ore/peas, mead/beans and such prudent harvest tokens will be doing ok. Those who get a red food bonus round one (long a prudent recommendation for AFFO, even the base game, so this is BAU), as well as those who buy animals, or pursue the hunting row rather than the pillaging row, will be doing ok.

Aesthetically, it’s very nice to see a game that isn’t simply jockeying over exploration and raiding/pillaging at the beginning of every round. The weight of all the actions changes in Harvest. It’s even more dramatic in the short game. I can’t wait for that option to be available.

The obvious solution to any misgivings over harvest is to play without it. Using the harvest tokens without random harvests simply shifts the first player advantage to a last player advantage, as the last player will take the wood token and jump start the exploration duel by taking a whaling ship or knarr with their first action.

Actually, 4/7ths of long games have 4 harvests, meaning that only 3/7ths of long games have only three harvests.

I think you forgot that there are 8 harvest tokens, which means there is a remainder of one token in the 7 round long game. This will affect the odds.

Beginning with one harvest, there are then 4 no-harvest tokens and 3 harvest tokens. With 6 more rounds to fill, you are guaranteed 2 more harvests and 3 no-harvests. This accounts for 6 of the harvest tokens (starting harvest, 2 guaranteed additional harvests, and three guaranteed no-harvests), leaving only the disposition of the 7th token, which, as one harvest token and one no-harvest token remain, is 50%.