I have to admit, I feel kind of silly for liking the board game, Finca. For a little bit of background, I picked up Finca once I heard that it was accessible, fun, relaxing, and a nominee for 2009’s Game of the Year. It lost, yes, but it lost to Dominion. It’s like when "Good Will Hunting" lost best picture to "Titanic: in 1997. Yeah, "Good Will Hunting" is a good movie, but you can’t expect to win when pitted against "Titanic." Nice try, but it’s not going to happen.

Finca is a game of collecting and delivering fruit to meet the demands of the residents of of Mallorca. On paper, Finca seems a lot like last week’s game, Ticket to Ride. On a turn, players either collect colored resources or turn in a set to claim a something with those objects. But what really makes the game different is the clever way you collect those colored bits.

Those colored bits are perhaps the number one reason why I feel silly liking this game. In a way, I almost feel like I like the game because of the little fruits. The game could have been designed to make players keep track of your fruit supply with sliders. The board, while pretty, isn’t necessary. Take out these things and the game could probably be put out for $10 less. But would it be as fun? Probably not. There’s just something fun about making a fruit reserves histogram in front of you and it’s also nice to be able to see “oh man, there aren’t many figs left” by looking at a dwindling set of pieces rather than a peg on a track.

Oh, the game though: right. Let’s review the game, not the pieces.

You get fruit by moving your pieces on a randomly generated windmill of fruits. When you pick a farmer to move, you look at how many farmers are on that space (including him). That’s how many spaces he moves clockwise. Then, wherever he lands, you count how many farmers are on that space (including him). That’s how many fruit of that type you add to your supply. Also, if he moved past one of the two donkey lines, he gets a donkey will be used in a future turn to deliver fruit. In the photo at right, if the yellow player moved one of his pieces, he would move it two spaces and collect three oranges.

It’s a simple system, but it leads to some interesting strategies. For example, if I thought that another player was trying to collect a lot of oranges and I wanted to prevent that, I could put a farmer right before the oranges. That way, if the other player gets a pawn to the space before, that pawn will have to skip over the oranges: Because would be a total of two pawns on that space (mine and his), the piece would be forced move two spaces.

Players also have to figure out which are the best pawns to move. Is it better to try and get a bunch more lemons by piling onto the space where everyone else is? Or instead should I start moving my guys off the lemon space so that people going to the space will get fewer lemons? Is it bad to move a guy one space at a time if I need a donkey or is it better to be collecting fruits? Furthermore, which fruits should I be going for right now?

To deliver fruits, you must use your turn to spend a donkey, which allows you to deliver up to six fruits to claim any number of delivery tiles. So you might spend two figs to capture a tile with two figs on it, and then claim another tile in a different community by spending its required two oranges and two almonds. Donkeys are gotten by moving past one of two lines on the windmill spaces.

The games I’ve played so far have ended up really close and it makes sense why. Unlike Ticket to Ride where you get a higher ratio of points for collecting bigger sets, in Finca, each fruit delivered is worth one point at the end of the game. So since everyone will collect a similar amount of fruit, it is likely that they will end the game with a similar amount of points. In order to win, you’ve got to do to a slightly better job managing the following three resources:

The first resource are the Finca tiles. When a community on the board has had all four of its delivery tiles claimed, its Finca tile gets scored. Whoever has the most of the fruit on that tile pictured on tiles he has scored so far, takes the Finca tile and the five points it offers. All scored tiles and available finca tiles are displayed openly, so players are able to strategize based on what they know other people have.

Also, each player gets four special action tiles that allow him to take special turns like moving twice or delivering 10 fruit rather than just 6. Each of these that hasn’t been used at the end of the game scores its owner two points. But, the game, in a way, is a race to deliver fruits, and so the actions that allow you to get a turn or two ahead can be worth more than the two points that they would give you at the end.

And finally, every set of tiles that a player claims (numbers 1 through 6) allows him to take a special scoring tile. The first person gets 7 extra points, and each of the remaining 3 tiles scores 1 fewer point progressively.

One other game mechanic to consider is the limited supply of fruit on the board. If there’s ever a situation where someone would have to take a certain fruit or a donkey cart and there aren’t enough for that player to take, all players must return all of that fruit to the supply and then that player takes his allotment of fruit.

The more players that you play with, the more unpredictable the game gets. With two players, there are only so many things that can change between their turn and yours. With four players, the game takes longer to play since it's hard to plan ahead and you can't really think about what you want to do until it's your turn. The four-player game feels unpredictable, but at the same time you feel like you should have more control over what happens, which can be frustrating at times. Compared to how much I like the two-player game, a four-player game feels somewhat disappointing. A three-player game might be the best mix between predictability and randomness.

I’m excited to play Finca more, but in the end, I’m curious if the game is too balanced. No one strategy seems better suited to claim victory and the entire half-hour game (or 45-plus minutes if you're playing with more players) could be determined by who claims that game’s final Finca tile.

I don’t know if you ever played tee-ball as a kid, but I did. Young kids can’t field worth a darn and so the Little League put a limit on 5 runs scored per innings to prevent the games from going on until midnight. It wasn’t uncommon for six inning games to end up with a score of 29-30, the game decided by one inning where a team happened to magically get to three outs before the other team scored 5. You couldn’t necessarily say that one team played markedly better, but you can still point out what moments resulted in the win. And after the game everyone walked away with some improvements that they could make for next game.

I don’t mind that Finca has a sort of tee-ball feeling because, just like tee-ball was then, the act of playing the game is what makes Finca fun. While I’m going to play to win, I don’t really mind if I lose or not; I’m going to have fun either way.

Mike Hulsebus wishes that games of Finca would end with treats for all players involved. He can be reached through the comments below or at mikehulsebus@gmail.com.