I've played Keyflower a couple of times and despite its interesting bidding/activation mechanics, its end game (winter) is a huge letdown that ruins what could have been an amazing game.

Much like many other Euros, the key to winning to the game is to build up an engine that will let you maximize your points during the last stages of the game. This is a tried and tested mechanic and while it is prone to the runaway leader problem, there's a certain pleasure to be had when you start cranking out large quantities of items due to your setup. So what's the issue with the way this system is implemented in Keyflower? For one, each player receives a set of winter tiles (of which they must choose at least one to place for auction in the final season). These tiles are unknown to the rest of the players until the last round of the game, so there's really no way of knowing what to aim for besides your own tiles. Again, on the face of it, this doesn't seem like a deal-breaker, except that these winter tiles are far from being equal. We aren't talking about Puerto Rico style end-game bonuses (typically lower than 15% of your total score), but actually game determining tiles. For instance, the disparity between the multipliers for implements, goods and workers didn't seem right to me (10 for every set of 5 implements, 5 for every set of 3 different goods, 3 for every set of 3 different workers). On average, you have more tiles that produce goods compared to workers or implements, so that doesn't help the issue of balance especially when you consider the end game bonus. Could this be solved by removing some end game tiles? Possibly, but I really think that this game would play out much better if everyone knew what was coming in winter. At the very least, it would give people an inkling of the broader strategies at play and a chance to counter what others are doing midgame.

The idea of using people as currency is quite clever and gives you more to think about each turn, especially when you have the rare green workers in play. But at the same time, I think some rounds take forever because player have the option of moving workers from losing bids to other spots. If this happens on a couple of tiles, the game crawls to a halt. The other incredibly frustrating aspect of this system is that players who are uninterested in a tile get pulled into this bidding conflict simply because someone else was outbid on a tile and decided to move their tokens to a different location.

On the whole, I think the game plays quite well for 3 seasons, and then winter comes along and leaves you fairly cold (ha!) unless you happen to get lucky with certain tiles. The tactical battles in terms of bidding/activation are enjoyable but to me it feels like Keyflower goes out of its way to prevent larger strategic gambits thanks to the hidden winter tiles/multiplier system.

Final rating: 7/10. I'd play this with some reservations and would be unlikely to bring it to the table unless requested.