Harvest Dice
Today we’re checking out Harvest Dice, a roll and draw dice drafting game by Grey Fox Games. In Harvest Dice, players cultivate a garden by rolling different colored dice, representing different vegetables. At first glance, you might think Harvest Dice is a Yahtzee re-theme – rest assured, it isn’t. The game contains dice, pencils, and a score sheet that has different dice values in columns, but plays significantly differently than the classic poker dice game.
Harvest dice is designed to be played with two to four players, but we’ve had success running games with more people (We got up to eight at one point) and it still worked pretty well. To set up, each player gets a scorecard and a pencil. The game also comes with six dice (three of each color) and a Pig token. Our copy came with the standard pig token as well as a more premium wooden pig token. It’s worth noting that the pig is a nice thematic touch, but isn’t needed to play the game.
Mechanically, the game works really well. Each turn, the active player rolls all of the dice, and players take turns claiming die one at a time until only one remains unclaimed. The remaining die increases the point value (or “market value”) of its associated veggie at the end of the game. Once the initial veggie of each type is planted, players must plant veggies in orthogonally connected groups – tomatoes with tomatoes, carrots with carrots, and lettuce with lettuce. If the player drafts a dice they can not legally plant, they then feed the dice to the pig, netting victory points. Do this enough times and you will unlock a single use ability that lets you change the value of a dice. There are a few different conditions that can end the game: A player fills their whole garden, a player fills their pig, or the market value of any one veggie hits six (maximum value). Once one of these conditions are met, the game ends, players tally up their points, and the person with the most points wins.
I really enjoy Harvest Dice. One of my favorite things about it is how deceptively simple it is. The game is really easy to play, but there’s room for a ton of strategy via market manipulation. In one game, I was able to purposely make tomatoes worthless, while driving up the price for lettuce (which I had a ton of in my garden) by strategically feeding my pig undesirable veggies near the end of the drafting phase of each round. The theme comes through surprisingly well. This is partially due to Danny Divine’s work on the art, and partially due to the requirement for veggies to be grouped together. It just feels like gardening.
If you’re looking for a dice game with a fun theme that is easy to learn, and gives players a lot of room to grow strategically, look no further than Harvest Dice.
Review copy provided by Grey Fox Games.
Publisher: Grey Fox Games
Number of Players: 2-4
Age: 8+