Lanterns: The Harvest Festival – This Little Light of Mine

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There’s something about a game taking you by surprise.  Seemingly coming out of nowhere and pouncing on you like a kitten attacking a paper ball. This gives you a sense of discovery.  The joy and wonderment that something that you were not even aware existed is now not only present but happily there. It’s not just A game.  It is now YOUR game. Lanterns: The Harvest Festival did this to me.

Twice.

Learning the Ropes, I mean Lights

The first instance is much easier to explain and not quite as abnormal as you would think.  Lanterns, first published in 2015 by Foxtrot Games and Renegade Game Studios and designed by Christopher Chung, was a gift from my niece.  I’ll be honest, I had not heard of this game before. There is no denying that it is always a good day when someone gifts you a game.

In a small but decorative box, it consisted of colorful square tiles, simple colored cards, single- sided printed wooden tokens and scoring tiles.

I sat down on my bed with the relatively small rules book and set about the task of learning this game.

It seemed to be really, really simple.  Place a tile to the collection in front of you.  If one or more sides match, you get the corresponding cards.  In addition, every player gets a card that matches the one facing them.

You can turn in the cards as a set to collect point tiles, and along the way you can also collect little wooden tokens to help you mitigate the rules.

Tile placement, set collection, bonus action.  Got it!

Which is also the problem.  It seemed too simple.  Games that give you things on other players’ turns are awesome, but I didn’t see too much else there.  On the surface it seemed to straightforward.  Dominoes with a couple of extra steps.  Carcassonne with no meeples.

Was there a game here?

My Wife Shows Me What’s What

When I sat down to play with my wife, she opened my eyes to the possibilities

Oh my gosh, yes there is a game here.  It’s subtle, but there are two rules do something sharp to make Lanterns diabolical.

First, there are only a certain number of each colored card in the market.  The market is finite.  If you are owed a colored card, but all the colors are out, you don’t get anything.  You have to wait until people turn their cards in for points.

This alone creates an interesting dynamic.  It’s one thing to be give something on someone else’s turn.  It’s quite another to be able to control if other players get anything at all.

What it all is, is empowering.

The other rule is that people don’t have to turn in cards for points immediately.  They only have to if their hand limit has reached 12.  Then they have to turn in cards for points, or just discard down.

Paired with the other rule, and my wife was the first of us to figure this out, is that if you plan it out carefully, you can snag a majority of the cards of a color or two, forcing another player to have to wait.  If the timing is really right, they’ll have to give up their cards for some lower points instead of the high value one that they were looking for.

It is fiendish and it is brilliant.

Who knew that a game about lights would actually be all about timing.

It’s All in How You Play

What was a particular joy was realizing that two simple rules that are often overlooked when learning a game are what drove this chicanery

“Yeah, yeah, hand limit…must turn in…got it.”

Which is exactly what I said to myself when learning the game.

But those oft under appreciated rules are what’s key to the game.  What’s normally used for balance in game design, in Laterns is used for strategic game play.  The underpinnings are now the focal point.

This does come with one caveat though.  While the structure is there for players to do some cunning maneuvers, there is nothing there to force them to.

Take the game Azul for example.  If you are not careful, if you don’t pay attention to what your neighbors are doing, you could be loaded with negative points at the end of a round.  Azul forces you to figure out what the other players want or even can do.  

Lanterns doesn’t have that negative feedback in its gameplay.

It is perfectly possible to play Lanterns and not worry about your neighbor’s collection.  You can simply play your tile, collect your cards and be on your merry way.  And if your card is not there, okay.  You just have to wait until it comes back.   Ho-hum.  It’s fine.

It’s not the way the game is supposed to be played, but it can.  Except for the having-to-wait bit, there is no negative feedback for imperfect choices.  No negative points.  No loss of turn.

Nothing.

So the people that play that “It’s fine” way think exactly that.  That Lanterns is “fine.”

But when everyone is honed in, focused and ready to tear their neighbors apart, this game pops.  Points available, points collected, sets obtained are all open information.  This creates an in game narrative.  The three act structure is strong here.  What starts off as calm and tranquil, leads to an act two full of slyness and guile.  That then rushes into a third act of anguish and defeat.  

Lanterns is a brilliant little game that will always stay in my collection.  I can thank both my niece and my wife for that.

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