OUR REVIEW

Not only for people with a "Green" thumb"

GARDEN   DICE

Gardining on a game board

Spiel '13 was rather productive and shone with games from "Amerigo" to "Yunnan" and then there were some high carat jewels like „Glasstraße“, „Madeira“, „Russian Railroads“ etc.. The consequences for me were notable in the weight of my luggage on the way home as well as by the gaps in my wallet. Aside from the lists of top games I have found another game that prompted me to write a review:

Meridae Games is a young American publisher, founded in 2012, whose first and only game so far is "Garden Dice". I also do not know about any other game by the designer of "Garden Dice", "Doug Bass".

Why "Garden Dice", then? Well, I simply like games that manage to get a topic across and to let players experience the flair and ambience connected with the topic. Very often a topic is rather artificially superimposed on the mechanisms. Take the highly praised "Russian Railroads", for instance, which I personally like exceedingly well and which is an excellent game in my opinion, but which has about as much to do with Russia as a fish has to do with riding a bicycle. The three terminal stations could as well be Bregenz, Klagenfurt and Gmünd. But ÖBB for a title probably is not very attractive. In Garden Dice you really rather plausibly plant, water and - after successful growth - harvest.

But now for the game itself: The box format resembles that of "Trans America", but the exact measurements are 2 cm longer on each side, just long enough to NOT fit into my shelves. I really can't figure out why publishers insist on using ever-new box sizes. Those 2 cm cannot really be an enticement to buy! In the box there is a board representing a fenced garden, partitioned into 36 squares. Indicators for rows and columns, in the guise of dice pips, enable one to exactly define each of the individual squares. Outside the fence the board shows a Kramer track, in the shape of a stone tile garden path. Six squares within the fence are marked with a star, I will come back to the meaning of it later, because now more on the box content: The essential components of the game are 50 tiles, printed on both sides, showing a seed on one side and the ripe plant on the other side, representing five different kinds of vegetables.

There are pumpkins, carrots, tomatoes (Paradeiser in Austria), artichokes and eggplants. It is the task of all players to first sow or plant the seeds, to water them to turn them into vegetables by turning the tile over to the other side, and finally, to harvest, that is, take the tiles off the board again. In the top left-hand corner of the tiles numbers indicate the different values of the vegetable varieties. Pumpkin (1) is not valued much, whereas eggplants (5) are held in very high esteem. The rest of the content is made up by four wooden six-sided dice and a few special tiles like sun markers, stone tiles, and double-sided tiles depicting Hare/Bird and Sun Dial/Scarecrow. The colors of players are indicated by wooden discs. For them the garden ambiance has also been used, blue is represented by butterflies, red by Lady Birds, yellow by bees and green by grasshoppers. One player aid board for each player completes the equipment. The quality of the components, by the way, is excellent.

The Game

Each player rolls all four dice and can choose from six action options.

You can use a die to place a seed tile, corresponding to the die result, from general stock into your own stock and mark it with a wooden disc of your color. For each round the acquisition of the same kind of vegetables is limited to two pieces.

Another option is to use two dice results for coordinates and place a seed tile from your own stock onto the intersection square of column and row indicated by the dice results.

Another choice would be to water a seed tile that has already been planted into the garden and so let it grow into a vegetable. This action demands a die result that is at least equal to the value of the seed tile. Then a special effect comes into play: You will know this, if you have your own garden - if you are watering plants, water will find its own way. In the game this is expressed by a chain reaction: Starting with the currently "watered" tile all orthogonally adjacent seeds of a lower value than the starting seed tile begin to grow, regardless whether they are your own seeds or those of opposing players. This system continues to the next tiles as well and should be well-considered. 

You can also use your dice result to harvest. You take a vegetable tile of the corresponding number off the board. This results in the same chain reaction as happens when watering, albeit with the trigger player receiving one bonus point for each vegetable that an opponent can harvest due to the harvest action. The vegetable is placed into your own stock and its value is marked on the victory point track. Each vegetable that was placed on a square marked with a star is marked on the track with its double value.

Instead of planting or sowing a seed tile you can use one of your special tiles, you own two of each kind. So, either Sun Dial/Scarecrow or Hare/Bird. What is the advantage from those tiles?

With your own sundial on the board you can adjust coordinates of dice results, either one die by two pips, or two dice by 1 pip each, ascending or descending. When you roll a six you may turn over special tiles. A sundial thus turns into a Scarecrow which protects all your own seed tiles in its neighborhood, which are nine squares, because the diagonally adjacent squares are included. In case of a harvest in the influence sphere of a sundial you earn a bonus of 3 victory points.

In a garden you can also find some rather unloved animals. Those vermin are represented by the Hare/Bird tiles. At first, the tile is placed as a Hare. The metamorphosis to Bird can only happen when you roll a six, in analogy to the sundial.

Animals move - that is the final option to use your dice results. Depending on the result on a die they move across empty squares until they encounter an opponent's tile. With devastating results. Birds eat seeds, Hares eat vegetables. You can only use this option when you have a used color disc in your own stock.

Tiles that have been eaten can be used in one of two ways. You either take it out of play permanently, give the disc back to its owner and put your own disc on the animal. Or you use the option to use a die that is still unused and is of higher value as or of equal value to the eaten plant to take the tile into your own stock as a seed tile. For this, too, you need your unused disc in stock.

It is even allowed to eat more than one tile in one turn, but not from the same player.

How can you remove those unwanted eaters? You need a minimum of three dice for it. First, of course, the six, and then two dice with numbers corresponding to the coordinates where the animal is located. That's the time when your own sundial is valuable to improve the chances for the necessary results.

The last special tile is the sun marker. A sun marker is not placed into the garden. It enables you once to re-roll all four dice or or change one of the dice to any result you want. If the sun marker is not use, it scores 5 victory points at the end of the game.

The game ends when the last seed tile is taken out of general stock. The player who triggered the end finishes his turn.

If you have now more than one seed tile in your personal stock you lose five victory points for each surplus seed tile. The vegetable hoarders are rewarded: if you have three identical vegetable tiles you get 10 points, for 4 tiles 15 points and for 5 tiles 20 pints. A set of all five kinds of vegetables is worth 15 points.

Doug Bass has managed to create a very family-friendly game with many real allusions; of course the luck of the dice roll is a deciding factor, but mechanisms have been introduced to reduce this element of chance to a bearable amount. It is left to players to act tactically clever or to turn the game into a harassing game by using the unwanted animals. In my rounds the peaceful gardeners had the majority, but, as I said, both ways are possible.

PS.: There is also a card expansion to the game, which is - currently - sold out as is the core game. A small expansion "The Gnome" is included.

Rudolf Ammer

Players: 2-4

Age: 10+

Time: 60+

Designer: Doug Bass

Artist: Joshua Cappel

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Meridae Games 2013

Web: www.meridaegames.com

Genre: Tile placement

Users: For families

Version: en

Rules: de en fr

In-game text:

Comments:

Easy rules

Pretty, functional components

2014 Game of the Year in Games Magazine

Currently sold out

Compares to:

Zen Garden, Gardens

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 5

Rudolf Ammer:

A game that provides real garden ambiance both as regards to components and to game play, a definite family game.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0