A strategic roll & write where players try to create the best backyard garden
45 minutes
Designer: Ben Pinchback, Matt Riddle
Artist: Marlies Barends, Beth Sobel
Publisher: Motor City Gameworks
Three Sisters is a new strategic Roll & Write featuring a rondel and combos for days from new publisher Motor City Gameworks.
Three Sisters is a companion planting technique historically practiced by Indigenous peoples in the Americas to grow corn, beans, and squash. The corn provides a lattice for the beans to grow, the beans draw nitrogen into the soil, and the squash provides shade and ground cover to keep the weeds at bay and the soil moist.
In Three Sisters, 1-4 players take on the role of backyard gardeners trying to grow the best garden in town. Players build gardens full of perennials (plants that come back year after year), a fruit orchard (oh how badly we wish we had space for an orchard), an apiary (save the bees y’all) to pollinate everything, heck – there’s even a shed full of all kinds of tools and tricks to help your garden thrive. Pretty soon, you’ll have so much harvest bounty that you’ll be off making bank at the farmer’s market to reinvest back into your garden.
A prototype copy of Three Sisters was generously provided to us by the publisher for the pre-Kickstarter review. As always, we aim to be fair and objective according to our review policy.
Three Sisters is due to launch on Kickstarter March 9th, 2021. To follow the Kickstarter and hear more about Three Sisters, visit the Kickstarter pre-launch page HERE.
Gameplay Overview
This is a general overview to provide context for the review, not an in-depth how to play. Some rules may be glossed over or missing.
Setup
Each player begins the game with 2 score sheets, one containing the planting zones and perennials, and the other containing the apiary, fruit orchards, shed, goods and compost storage.
There is a central board with a rondel (a circle of action spaces). The Farmer Edith meeple begins the game on the Fruit & Apiary rondel space marked with the gold pushpin. A number of dice are set out according to the number of players.
Game Flow
As we mentioned before, Three Sisters is a Roll & Write – Rondel game. As in most rondel games, the actions available to you each round will depend on the location of the dice. In Three Sisters, the dice locations are in turn determined by Farmer Edith’s location on the board.
Let’s break that down.
Each round is played over three phases: Planning, Gardening, and Event.
Planning Phase:
First, determine the available actions. The first player rolls all the dice and groups them by number (2’s, 3’s, etc) as applicable. The first player places the lowest number dice on the central board space with Farmer Edith. The next lowest number goes on the next space in the rondel, and so on until all the dice are placed on the central board.
Farmer Edith is then moved to the first empty space available (i.e. the space following the space with the highest die/dice).
Gardening Phase:
The gardening phase is where players take their turns. In turn order, players select one available die from the central rondel and carry out their turn. Each turn consists of two actions that can be done in any order:
- Gardening Action:
- Players plant or water the garden section matching the value of the die selected
- Plant: cross off the lowest box from 2 plants in that section
- Water: cross off the next-highest box in all “planted” plants in that section
Pro Tip: die value can be adjusted +/- 1 by using a compost. Players can gain compost to use through different actions.
- Rondel Action: players perform the action that corresponds to their chosen die’s location on the rondel
- Plant or Water: same as above, players essentially do this twice for the location corresponding to the die’s value
- Shed Time – unlock upgrades, perks, and endgame scoring
- Cross off any box in the shed, starting with the leftmost box if a selection has more than one box
- Apiary or Fruit – unlock bonus actions and end game scoring
- Cross off a box in either the Apiary or any one fruit Orchard
- Farmer’s Market – gain compost and bonus actions based on how many goods you have
- Once all players have taken their turns, all players simultaneously take the Rondel and Garden action of the die closest to Farmer Edith in clockwise orientation (i.e. – in front of her clockwise)
Pro Tip: Every 5 goods a player earns gets them one star. One star lets them cross off any box in any section! Crazy powerful and super fun because you can end up with a huge and satisfying action chain. The player sheets have a “Notes” section – use this to keep track of remaining actions if your chaining gets a bit out of hand.
Event Phase
This is the end of round event resolved by all players simultaneously.
- Shed – take a shed action
- Rain – water all plants in all zones of your garden
- Farmer’s Market – take Farmer’s Market action
There's More!
A couple neat concepts we glossed over:
- Compost: can be gained several ways and then spent to adjust the value of a die +/- 1
- Veggies: There are 3 types of veggies in the garden – corn, beans, and pumpkins. All “grow” bottom to top.
- Corn is worth 3 pts
- Beans can only be planted if the adjacent corn has 2 boxes checked
- Pumpkins give goods instead of points – when 2 adjacent pumpkins are completed, gain the perennial in between them
- Perennials: flowers that give bonuses and points at the end
- Goods: can be gained in MANY ways. Every 5 goods gets you a bonus action, and the amount of goods you have determines how much you can do at a Farmer’s Market.
End of Game
The game ends after 8 rounds. In final scoring players score points from their gardens, perennials, apiary, fruits, and shed. The player with the highest score is declared to have the best garden and is thus the winner of the game.
What do we think?
Motor City Gameworks may be a new publisher, but designer duo Ben Pinchback and Matt Riddle are no strangers to game design having 15 titles under their belts and that experience shows in this extremely thoughtful game. (Also that Beth Sobel art 
)
Like most of the world, we found ourselves with a lot of “at home” time in 2020 and ended up with backyard gardening as a new hobby. Okay, Emily found herself a hobby and Sarah quickly got sucked in. So a board game about gardening? Count us in!
It’s no secret we are huge fans of Roll & Writes and Three Sisters is no exception. It embodies everything we love about the roll & write genre – satisfying strategy wrapped up in a 30-40 min package. There are combos for days that allow you to unlock upgrades and perks and additional actions that start the combo cycle all over again. We get feelings of pure euphoria heading into a turn knowing we are about to make bank on bonus actions.
For real though, the bonus actions are so intense they give you a specific space, the Journal, to keep track of all the bonus you earn and use.
What did we like?
We love the simplicity, yet deep strategy involved in Three Sisters. There are elements of engine building from the perennial and shed actions that can really drive your strategy.
There is a lot of opportunity to control your own fate in Three Sisters that’s reminiscent of heavier dice selection games like Troyes, but wrapped up in an accessible package. You have a lot of options for each turn – and options mean you have a lot of possible strategy. Sure, the dice add an element of luck, but there’s a TON you can do to get around it when you don’t get exactly what you want.
That can also shoot you in the foot, so make sure with all those choices you’re still focused. It’s easy to get distracted and want to try everything, but high scores come from having and executing a plan.
There’s also something inherently calming – dare we say, meditative – about crossing off a million tiny boxes.
What didn't we like?
Every game has something to complain about – perfection is impossible. But we’re struggling to come up with something meaningful to complain about with Three Sisters. It’s exactly what we wanted it to be – challenging enough to scratch the board game itch while still being relatively light and approachable for a quicker weeknight game.
Maaayyyybbbeeee if we had to pick something it would be related to being able to mix up the central board a bit. In the prototype we played, the end of round events and the rondel are fixed and it might be cool to change up the order of things. This doesn’t have a huge impact on re-playability because (as we said above) there are a MILLION possible strategies in this game. We’ve played maybe ten times (we take reviews very seriously…or maybe we just really like this one) and haven’t gotten bored yet.
Who will like this game?
Anyone that enjoys Roll & Writes with combo-ing such as That’s Pretty Clever or Qwixx will enjoy the bonus actions available in Three Sisters.
Anyone that likes combos in games like Dominion (or even Castles of Burgundy) will feel at home with Three Sisters.
We like this game because it’s a quicker and more approachable version of some of our favorite heavier games. When we don’t have the energy or table space for a game like Troyes, but still want a satisfying strategy game, we can pick up Three Sisters.
Sarah's Take
Three Sisters might just be my favorite Roll & Write. There are so many interesting decisions to be made and different strategies I can try every time we play (emphasis on try – I’m a sucker for going hard on fruit and no one can stop me).
I’ve mentioned before that too many options can overwhelm me but I find the available options in Three Sisters to be very manageable. The rondel action and dice value provide enough structure for my brain to work, plan, and execute a strategy without getting overloaded.
Probably my favorite part of the game is the combos. They make me feel amazing and smart, like I am cheating the game by getting all these extra actions. But then I look up from my score sheet and Emily is still going on her bonus actions. Sigh.
Emily's Take
Apiary or die. Sarah can take her fruit and leave me the bees.
Seriously though, what I love about this are that there are many ways to win. I often mention this in our reviews, but I love games that I can try different strategies every time I play and still pull off a win (or at least keep the score close).
My favorite games are often those that take an hour to set up and two hours to play (lookin’ at you, On Mars). Three Sisters is light and quick, but packed with enough strategy in that small package that I keep going back. Perfect way to scratch that strategy itch after a long day or when you don’t have much time.
Breakdown
First Play
For our first play, we were through the rules and finished playing the game in about an hour. We were maybe two or three rounds into the game before Sarah looked up and declared her love of the game. Emily excitedly responded with “I know, right?!?”
Subsequent Plays
In the short time we have spent with Three Sisters it has become one of our most played Roll & Writes. We have played over and over, trying new strategies, discussing what worked and what didn’t. Not a ton changes from game to game except your approach, and there are so many approaches that it’s super re-playable.
Parent Perspective
Interruptions
Confession time. We’ve never experienced an interruption while playing Three Sisters. The majority of our plays have come while taking time off from work while our boys were at daycare. We may, or may not, also be sneaking in some lunchtime games here and there, too, since it’s so quick and we’re both WFH.
We don’t anticipate any major trouble from interruptions. Yes there is definitely strategy and planning involved, but you can be limited by what the dice values are. (Or you can just blow all your compost to make the dice whatever value you want, that definitely worked for Emily once).
Time Investment
Set up time for Three sisters is as quick as pulling off a couple player sheets, setting out the main board, and rolling some dice. Now that we are familiar with the game we can get a two player game played in about 30 minutes. A good chunk of the game has simultaneous play so additional players shouldn’t add too much to the playtime when everyone is familiar with the game. There a ton of options, so first-time plays will be slower as you take it all in.
Life Fit
The quick play time and almost zero set up lets us get Three Sisters played pretty frequently. It’s one of the few games we feel comfortable starting after 8pm with confidence we can get to bed on time (don’t judge, we are tired parents!) but still know that we will get an engaging and satisfying experience playing.
Three Sisters is also the only game we have played over a work lunch break.
Rating
9/10
When we think about how games rank in our collections, we typically pit them in our heads against games with similar mechanisms, weights, and time commitments. Roll & Writes have a special place in our hearts, but Three Sisters has quickly become our favorite. Since it’s so easy to get to the table and so satisfying to play (nothin’ like checking off boxes to feel like you’re accomplishing things), we keep bringing it back to the table again and again.
*See our rating scale HERE
Three Sisters is due to launch March 9th, 2021. For more information on Three Sisters or to track the Kickstarter, visit the pre-launch page HERE.
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