Farmini (Loki)

Farmini

Farmini by Loki games is a little kids tile placement game. It is useful because it teaches mechanics that will be in more advanced games my child will play like drafting, tile placement, risk/reward and resource decision making. However it is also very simple and can easily be played by the 5+ age range it states. In fact I would argue it could be played from 4 and up as well. Farmini plays in about 20 minutes with two players and can be played with up to four players. Basically its a nice game we enjoy once and a while.

There is even a cute little farm inside the box that you put all the animal tokens into until the animals are needed in the game. However I do wish the theme was just a bit more interesting, or better art work as while its lovely and cute I can't get excited about farming. Where as there are games with similar tile placement (Carcassonne for example) where farming is much more interesting, although that is not a kids game and costs significantly more.


Game Play

Farmini requires a little set up which my 5 year old struggled to wait for, so that was annoying. Set up is finding the starting "farm house" tile for each player and putting the four starting tiles in a row next to the shuffled deck of the rest of the tiles.

After this game play is simple, choose one card from the four available and add it to your farm. If you choose a animal you take the token from the game box and add that to your farm.  Add another card to the card drafting area so that four are available for the next player, simple right?!

Elements of the game include: building your farm, getting animals, enclosing corn and dealing with wolves.  To build you farm you just follow simple rules of grass must touch grass and fences touching fences.  To get animals you must have brown "animal" spots available to put the animals in, then if the animals stay to the end of the game (see wolves) you get 1 point per animal whether or not the animal is enclosed in a pen fully.  Enclosing corn is an interesting part of the game as you do not score for any corn not fully enclosed in a fence and you also don't score for any corn in the same enclosure as an animal (animal eats the corn) so this is a way you can get a lot of points if you are careful in your farm tile placement. Each corn can be worth 1 point at the end of the game if it is enclosed with no animals.

Wolves are where this game is very cute, it adds a risk/reward element to the game. Basically each wolf has a picture of an animal on their card that it scares away. If you have animals on your farm that are not enclosed all of the animals of that type run away when the wolf shows up as one of the four cards (immediately).  This means that later on in the game if there have already been lots of wolves you can take the risk not to enclose animals because the likelihood that a wolf will show up is less and therefore you will score for animals not enclosed without having to waste time enclosing them. 


Review

I do think the starting farm house tiles could have had a different backing too to make them easier to find, however because in a two player game you shuffle these into the deck I also don't know how practical that would be for game play. But the searching for the starting tiles is a little annoying.

Saying that the game play is good and whether or not my son wins is really based on actual decisions he makes as he plays, which is great for teaching him about strategy for future gaming. This game is very light and you will enjoy playing it with your kids. They can grow as they play as well learning to make better and better choices that allow them to win. Out of the first 5 games we played: we tied one, I won three and he won one. So really he still has a lot to learn about choices in the game but I like that he can grow with this game a little. 

I am very mixed about this game as I like the elements of gaming it is teaching my son but for the price the art quality just isn't as good as some HABA games (game piece quality is great though). Loki is new in the children game world and while I love their parent company (Iello) I just don't feel like this is up to the standard they usually have.  There could have been masses more artwork to pull me into the "farm" theme or another theme all together that lent itself to more basic cards. They also could have included another element to the game that allows for more advanced play so that you get a game that grows more with your child. Right now as is I feel like we will grow out of this game by the time my son is 6, so if we had had it when he was 4 we would have only gotten 2 years play out of it. In comparison that is true of some of our HABA games but some we have had and will have for 3-5 years which means they offer a much better replay-ability element.  Price-wise though we paid £13 for it so for two years of play it is a good choice, I think its more that there are £13 HABA games that I just like better. Possibly in our house this has more to do with how many games we actually have!

This game is easy to find at my Friendly Local Game Store as well as online. Enjoy it!