Downtown Farmers Market Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Downtown Farmers Market, a tile drafting game published by Blue Orange Games. In Downtown Farmers Market, players are drafting tiles and placing them in a 4x4 grid with the goal of meeting scoring conditions in their tableau.

It’s a late June morning and the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and it’s the perfect morning to head off to the farmers market. Time to stock up on some local cage-free eggs, artisan cheeses, and maybe even a soft pretzel if you are lucky.

Publisher Blue Orange Games has made a name for themselves by putting out a large variety of family games that can also appeal to the hobbyist crowd: See Kingdomino. This time, it’s a tile-laying game called Downtown Farmers Market. You and your fellow players will be heading to the market to try and complete various challenges. Designed by Johan Benvenuto and Alexandre Droit, Downtown Farmers Market takes about 20 minutes to play.

Downtown Farmers Market plays anywhere from 2-4 players with only slight rules changes for under four players. Each player starts the game by being dealt eight challenge tiles. They will then choose whether they’ll use the hard or easy side of each tile and positing them in an “L” shape.

On a player’s turn, they’ll draft a tile from the market and place it anywhere in their 4×4 grid. There are no placement rules requiring tiles to touch previously played tiles, so you are free to drop a tile “floating” in the middle of your grid if you want. If you are playing with less than 4 players, you might also need to discard a market tile to the box. No matter the player count, you’ll always start the drafting round with 5 tiles to choose from.

After every player has placed their 16th tile, the game ends. Players will score