Base price: $24.
2 – 5 players.
Play time: ~20 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy directly!
Logged plays: 2

Alright, back from PAX and trying to get back in the swing of things! Unfortunately, that means some level of nose to the grindstone through the holidays to try and rebuild my buffer. I haven’t been as good about writing while I’m traveling as I usually am, unfortunately. I’ve been having too much fun on trips? I suppose that’s not the worst thing. Plus, we’re almost to the end of the year, and that’s usually a busy time for everyone. So I’m enjoying some solitude and some writing to try and get ahead of things. It’s sort of my Christmas gift to myself. But anyways, I picked up a number of games at PAX, so expect to see my thoughts on those in the coming weeks. One such game is another Oink title, Quickity Pickity. Let’s check it out!

In Quickity Pickity, you’re trying to make the most of the harvest season! This means grabbing what you can and selling it off. Unfortunately, the market is … volatile, this year, so you need to be extra careful that your sets of fruits are what people want. Plus, all the fruit are weird, this year. Must be something in the water. So get into your orchard, build up your sets of fruit, and try to end up with the most money before the three monkeys show up to tell you that it’s time to stop picking fruit. That’s just how we measure time, I suppose. Can you pickity the quickitiest?

Contents

• Setup
• Gameplay
• Player Count Differences
• Strategy
• Pros, Mehs, Cons
• Overall

Setup

Pretty simple, this one. Give each player a wooden stick, placing them to create a player area close to them (and a shared main area in the center of the table):

Shuffle the tiles, face-down. If you’re playing with two players, keep the Monkey Tiles aside and remove half of the standard tiles, first, then shuffle the Monkey Tiles back in:

Finally, shuffle the Marketplace Cards; reveal one.

You should be ready to start!

Gameplay

So Quickity Pickity is extremely aptly name. You want to pick and you want to make it quick. As you do, make sure you’re assembling valid sets that match the requirements on the Marketplace Card!

A game of Quickity Pickity takes place over multiple rounds, as players try to make sets according to the whims of the Marketplace Cards. On the count of three, a round starts! The game is played in real time. Players may take any token they want. If it’s face-down, flip it face-up. Then, they can decide to keep the token or return it (face-up) to the center. If a player keeps the chosen token, it must be added to a set in their player area. Sets cannot be rearranged once they’re placed, so be careful!

As players reveal tiles, they’ll eventually reveal Monkey Tiles. When one is revealed, say “Monkey 1”, “Monkey 2”, or “Monkey 3”, depending on how many Monkey Tiles have been revealed previously. As soon as the third Monkey Tile is revealed, the round immediately ends! Any players still holding tiles return them to the supply in the center. Then, score the sets according to the Marketplace Cards! Any valid set scores; any invalid set is worth -10 points. Try to avoid that.

A valid set meets the following criteria:

• All the fruits have the same facial expression. They’re either happy (Sweet) or sad (Sour). So they must be all one or all the other.
• All of the fruits are the same color or all of the fruits are the same shape. There are multiple different kinds of fruits, colors, and shapes, so make sure that you stick to one color and different shapes or one shape and different colors.

There’s also always a bonus fruit; that will earn you extra points if that fruit is in a set, regardless of whether or not the set is valid.

Score your sets according to the Marketplace Card; the player with the most points over the round takes the Marketplace Card. Return the tiles to the center and set up a new round, revealing a new Marketplace Card as well. The first player to claim three Marketplace Cards wins!

Player Count Differences

This one’s pretty interesting as player counts change. Quickity Pickity’s real-time elements benefit a bit from having more players, since there are more folks flipping tiles and such, but, more players means more folks taking tiles that you want. Balances out. At two, they do something kind of interesting and remove half of the tiles from play. At that point, it’s significantly more challenging to hit higher-number sets (just because the various tiles might not be in play). With three, you can hit a size 6 or a size 8 set, which is kind of wild. Additional players may again make it more difficult to get large sets if everyone’s going after the tiles you want. One thing to watch out for with more players is making sure that you don’t accidentally create an invalid set in your haste. That’s somewhat true at any player count, but with more players there’s just significantly more happening in the center of the table. That all said, I’ve enjoyed Quickity Pickity and don’t necessarily think that I would strongly recommend any player count over any other. Slightly lower recommendation for two players, just because there are fewer tiles in play.

Strategy

• Play fast! As with any good real-time game, you’re going to need to be pretty speedy if you want to grab all the tiles that you’re looking for. Make sure you’re constantly scanning the main play area to see if any new tiles that match your sets pop up!
• Some rounds reward going deep and other rounds reward going wide. Let that influence your strategy, to some degree. There aren’t any rounds that penalize you for going deep, specifically, but keep in mind that in some rounds, they give you a bunch of points for relatively small sets, so it may be worth making a bunch of relatively tiny sets so that you can spread out the points that you can get. Just watch out for the rounds that punish you for having odd sets or having even sets; those are where quick play can trick you into a corner.
• Keep an eye out for the bonus fruit. The bonus fruit is almost always worth taking. I only wouldn’t take it if taking it would create a new set after the second Monkey Tile is revealed. Having a bunch of the bonus fruit is, essentially, just free points regardless of whether or not your sets end up scoring, which is nice.
• You can try to take tiles that your opponent need, but that may be more of a challenge than it’s worth. That requires tracking what your opponents are going after, what tiles are being flipped, and determining whether or not a tile is valuable for your opponent before they do that. Honestly, just stick to your own sets. It’s much easier, much faster, and probably better for you in the long-term.
• I’d recommend avoiding starting new sets once the second Monkey Tile is revealed. At that point, any new sets you start are pretty liable to lose you points, so just leave the tiles in the center, I suppose, unless you see a sufficiently large group of valid tiles. You should always go after a big valid group if you just see one in the center of the table; it’s a pretty good way to get a big set that’s kind of slipped beneath the notice of the other players.
• Sometimes it’s just worth revealing as many tiles as possible so that you can cause other players to lose points. If you feel pretty confident about your sets, you can just run out the clock and flip tiles until the other Money Tiles are revealed. The one thing worth noting is that this is a bit nonintuitive, so showing other players this strategy may backfire in subsequent rounds. It won’t make you popular, either, but this section always assumes that you didn’t come to board game night to make friends.
• More generally, watch out for starting multiple different sets of the same type! Then you’re just working against yourself. This can be fine if the Marketplace Card rewards small sets, but if you’re going for large sets, try not to start two identical ones! You’re essentially drawing from the same pool that you need for both sets, which isn’t great. If the Marketplace Card does reward small sets, well, that’s the perfect time to go after multiple sets of the same type. Then you can get a ton of points without hitting the size limit of the set (the point at which you no longer score additional points).

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

• What a silly name. It’s just a goofy one, which I enjoy. It, like Just One, is also a pretty useful nonsense answer to any questions about the game itself. How do you play? You quickity pickity. It’s all so simple.
• I love that the fruit have little faces, for some reason. They’re weird little guys, and that makes it all kind of fun. I appreciate that the smiles are sweet and the frowns are sour, as well. It just adds to the mythos of the game itself, I suppose. I think it’s neat.
• The bright yellow box really pops. I really like the bright yellow boxes that Oink has for a few of their games. I assume, at some point, I may have some difficulty distinguishing between them all, but in the meantime it’s fun. They really pop! The brighter ones, at least.
• The art style is also a lot of fun. As a good real-time game should be, it’s bright, colorful, and engaging. I have a bunch of games that fall into this category, so you may have seen that specific wording a few times, but I do like them a lot, so I’m more drawn to play them. More plays, easier to review, that whole thing.
• I appreciate that the fruits are just confusing enough that you’ll inevitably end up grabbing the wrong one. I mean, that’s part of the charm of the game. The fruits are designed to be pretty similar in the hopes that hasty players will grab the wrong one and mess up their sets. They’re still pretty distinct, but they’re not quite distinct enough to avoid that. Haste makes waste and all that.
• I like the tension that emerges in certain rounds where you’re not necessarily sure if you want to grab additional tiles (as you might end up losing points). I really enjoy having an even number of tiles in a set in a round where having an odd-numbered set earns you a penalty. When that happens, I have to decide whether or not I want to take a tile and end up in a penalty spot if I can’t grab another one. Plus, once you grab and place a tile, you can’t go back or return it to the center, so you might get stuck.
• There’s a solid variety of Marketplace Cards, which I appreciate as well. For only sixteen cards, there’s a good mix of them! I think they all work nicely together.
• Nice, quick set collection game. A lot of Oink titles are in my collection because they’re a fun and engaging way to introduce certain mechanics to new gamers against the backdrop of some cute or silly theme. This super meets that threshold for me. It’s quick and simple to learn, the real-time elements make the game engaging, and the game’s name is fun to say in a silly way. Lots going for it.

Mehs

• Maybe I just don’t know fruit shapes but it would have been nice if they had named the fruits in the rulebook; it can be hard to know how to refer to them. I think we had a disagreement around a few of them, and I just ended up calling the spiky one a star fruit even though I know that’s not right. It’s not a huge deal in the slightest, but having some names would help clear that up pretty quickly.
• The rulebook’s description of a valid set can be a bit confusing; I’m glad they added a visual aid. You really should show some examples to players before you start the game. The actual description makes it sound like the sets need to be the same expression, the same color, or the same shape (two of three); it’s actually the same expression has to be present, and then the tiles need to be the same color or the same shape as well.

Cons

• Be careful; the game can get a little physical. You have to quickity pickity, which might mean you end up taking a tile that someone almost had their hands on. There may be some bumping, but also remind players that this is a friendly game, to some degree?

Overall: 8.5 / 10

Overall, I think Quickity Pickity is another great Oink title. I love their real-time fare, just because they usually tend to be silly games with a surprising amount of depth to them, and Quickity Pickity is no exception to that. There’s fundamentally two ways to play. You can either play fast and loose, grabbing tiles and hoping you can place them in sets, or you can try to play a bit more carefully at a mild penalty to your speed. Either way, there’s a lot to do! You have a whole bunch of silly fruit with different faces, shapes, and colors popping up rapid-fire, and you can only play with one hand and grab one tile at a time. The key to what makes the game entertaining despite its size is the Marketplace Cards; each of the sixteen different cards demands an entirely distinct set collection strategy. Well, mostly distinct, at least. Add in a variety of players and different player counts, and you’ve got a great recipe for chaos. The one challenge is that some players may find the rulebook’s description of a valid set confusing, so you may want to show them a few examples before you get started. Just be careful while you play, as well; the game can get a bit intense and a tiny bit physical with all the players trying to grab tiles as they need them. It’s hectic and silly, but as I mentioned, that’s pretty classically Oink. If you’re looking for another fun Oink game to introduce to your group, you enjoy some real-time elements, or you just want another bright and colorful game in your collection, I’d recommend Quickity Pickity! That’s certainly why I picked it up, at least.

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