Fruit Picking - First Play!

29th May 2022

Sunday gaming on ​Board Game Arena continued with mancala styled game Fruit Picking.

I'm not the fruit picker, I'm the fruit picker's son, I'm only picking fruits 'til the fruit picker comes.
Hmm, it doesn't work...

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Caveat: We've only ever played Fruit Picking digitally.

What's in a game?

• ​Game board: This cheerfully colourful board shows the 4 combinations of sets of card to winning the game and there's a central area to put the deck of market cards.
  Finally; along the board's bottom edge are 4 spaces, these are market slots to place 4 market cards. Above each card space is the additional market cost for that slot.
• Player board: As equally as colourful is the player board. It has 8 circular spaces, 7 of which are surrounding a central space.
  The central space is the 'supply space' and only used to store tokens, the space at the top is the 'Harvest House'.
  The remaining 6 spaces are 'farm spaces'​. These 6 spaces are where the main game occurs.
• Farm cards: These are circular cards and are used in conjunction with the player boards. There are 4 identical sets of 6 cards in each player colour.
  Each set contains 5 cards that show 1-3 of 5 different fruits (2 bananas, a pear, a pineapple, 2 plums  and 3 strawberries.), the final card shows 2 waterdrops.
• Market cards: There are 30 market cards. 6 for each type of fruit as mentioned above.
• Seed tokens: There are 18 seed tokens in each player colour.

The boards in Fruit Picking feature a couple rural landscapes depicted with a appealingly stylised illustrations showing idyllic countryside. The fruits are also well illustrated and Fruit Picking has solid art style.

Other than the fruit and waterdrop symbols, there's no iconography in the game and it should not prove any problem to players.

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How's it play?
Setup

• First Player: Determine a first player.
• Players: Give each player a player board as well as seed and farm cards in their colour.
  The first player should shuffle their farm cards and randomly place them in the 6 empty spaces on their player board. All remaining players should follow suit and put the same farm cards into the same spaces.
  All players should place their seeds into their supply space. Then from there put 2 seeds into each ​of the first 3 farm spaces.
• Game board: Shuffle the market cards into a face-down deck. Then draw and place 4 cards face-up, putting 1 into each market slot.

On to play
In Fruit Picking, players take turns moving their resources clockwise around the spaces on their board which allows them to active one space to gain more seeds or buy a card.
Play begins with the first player and once their turn is over, proceeds to the left.

• Move seeds: The active player picks one of their farm spaces with seeds and moves those seeds and redistributes them. The number of spaces they are distributed to is equal to the number of seeds in the chosen space.
  Thus if the chosen farm space has 3 seeds, they are moved 3 spaces further on with 1 seed being dropped off in each space for the next 3 spaces. The last farm space to gain a seed becomes activated.
• Activation: Broadly speaking, the active player may choose to resolve 1 of 2 types of activation
  Acquire seeds: The active player gains a number of seed tokens equal to the number of fruit that are in the activated space, they are then placed into that space.
  Buy card: The active player may buy a card from the row of market cards. They can only buy a card with fruit that matches the fruit activated space and must also have enough tokens in their Harvest House space.
  The cost is the number of fruit on the card PLUS the cost on the market slot above which can be an additional 1-3 seeds.
  When a card is bought, cards on the left are slid to the right to fill the blank space and a new card is added on the left, a pretty standard conveyor belt mechanic.
  Exceptions: There are of course a couple of exceptions.
  Water drops: If the activated farm space contains the water drops farm card, then the active player must perform the acquire seeds action.
  Harvest House: If the Harvest House is activated, the active player does not choose an action, instead they perform the move seeds action again and activates a farm card another time. This can be the Harvest House again so it's possible to gain multiple actions (And fill up the Harvest House too!) by reactivating it.

Endgame
Play continues with players acquiring fruit cards until one player has the cards to meet one of the criteria which triggers the game end.
Fruit Picking provides players with 4 ways to do this. A pair and 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind, 3 pairs and 1 of each fruit.
When this occurs, the current round is completed and if the player who triggered the game is the only one to have met any of the criteria, then they win.
In the likelihood that more than one player has met any of the criteria by the end of the last round, then ties are broken by quantities of fruit and seeds on cards.

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Overall
Fruit Picking is a lightweight games that has a good mix of logic and luck.

Logically, it's not hard to think several moves ahead if you want. Once farm cards have been distributed on to the player boards, moving seeds and activating farm cards is entirely predictable and only driven by player decisions.
Manipulating the Harvest House action to game more actions is a key tactic, especially as it can be used to quickly fill the Harvest House and used to purchase cards.
Fruit Picking is essentially a race to acquire cards before other players. When cards are drafted, everything can change, which neatly brings me to the next facet of the game

The game's unpredictability comes into play on the market track. As play progresses, cards will come into play randomly, not only that, their costs will also vary, especially as they move along the track.
It means that some times, the cards appearing will play into certain players' strategies and other times, potentially scupper those strategies. Players will have to be prepared to change direction for long term plans when this occurs and adapt their approach according to what is available.

It's something I've encountered in other games and found to be irritating, Fruit Picking is no different. I know that this can be an important element of a game because without some randomizer, it can sometimes very quickly become obvious who's going to win. Even so, it irritates me.

Fruit Picking also sits in a strange place of feeling a bit overlong for a filler game but definitely a bit too light for a main game.

Having said that, it's accessible game that's easy to learn. For people who want something which engages some tactical thinking but is not along time brain burner, Fruit Picking may hit that sweet spot.