HIGHLIGHTS AMONG GAMES

DIE GÄRTEN DER ALHAMBRA

Among lemon and orange trees

Dear reader! Already in 1993 Dirk Henn and Barbara Weber with their own small publishing company „db“ (Dirk und Barbara, annotation of the author), surprised the gaming community with a game which was compared rather poetically by a reviewer to „pure gold“: Carat. At that time not only experts were convinced that this game would never be published by a big company, simply because it would be too abstract a game despite its sophisticated approach. Well, Queen Games disabused them all and decided on a nearly unaltered new edition of this early Dirk Henn design, which featured tactical placement of diamonds. In 2004 a graphically new designed edition was called “Die Gärten der Alhambra” providing fleeting associations with Spiel des Jahres 2003, “Der Palast von Alhambra”. But don’t worry, Henn’s placement game only borrows the graphical design from the successful palace and offers its own high-quality dynamic as regards to game mechanisms.

We, visitors in the Austrian Games Museum at Leopoldsdorf, find an interesting game for fans of tactical games, set in the endless reaches of Andalusia. www.spielen.at

The usual light our lamp illuminates up a square board with a surrounding Kramer track and 49 building tiles of values 1 to 5. These tiles are laid out face-down randomly in the given squares on the board. Pretty wooden towers in four colors are used for markers on the track. Finally, 36 octagonal garden pieces are set out next to the board. Those pieces show four kinds of trees whose colors correspond to the colors of players‘ track markers.

Whatever else happens in the game, you have one goal: Place the garden pieces in a way that your own trees surround the most valuable palace buildings.

You take turns to place a garden piece on any square on the board, but it must be connected to trees already there. Which practical considerations should influence your decisions? For one thing, Dirk Henn has distributed the four kinds of trees - lemon in yellow, orange in orange, palm tree in green and lavender in purple - with a sense of absolute fairness on the board that is partitioned by paths, one to six trees around each path, and always the same number of each kind on each garden piece.

This means that you can beautify a building with your own trees, but at the same time decorate three adjacent buildings with trees of your opponents. As soon as a palace building is surrounded by trees on all four sides, it is turned over and scored, but the points only go to the player who planted most trees around the building, regardless if on one or several tree pieces. When there are two players with the same number of trees, the player with the next-highest score gets the points. It can happen that three players end up with the same number of trees and the fourth one scores. The special feature: The more different varieties of trees there are around a building the higher is the score: The value of the building (between 1 and 5) is multiplied with the number of tree varieties surrounding it. As soon as all gardens have been placed and beautify all palace buildings, the game ends. If your tower is the one furthest ahead on the track you may call yourself Master of Horticulture.  

Comments to: hugo.kastner@chello.at

Homepage: www.hugo-kastner.at

Recommendation # 84

Players: 2-4

Alter: 10+

Time: 45+

Designer: Dirk Henn

Price: ca. 20 Euro

Year: 2004

Publisher: Queen Games

Tactic: 6 von 9

Info±: 0 von 0

Chance: 3 x von 9

Even after several games the allure of the unexpected surprise is not diminished. You just placed a garden piece, maybe with five or six trees with an eye on the high-value 5-Palace, and wait serenely for the scoring - and then it happens: One of the others has the luck of the draw and your scoring goes down the drain. And that keeps happening. But you must remember that - in case of an optimum distribution of four different tree varieties around a valuable building 20 points can be scored.  

Hugos EXPERT TIP

Do try the small version to play with three garden pieces - the chance element is somewhat diminished, the „head“ element enhanced. The tip in the rules to let both players in a 2-player game play with two tree varieties can be accepted as a welcome amendment to the four pages of rules.

Hugos FLASHLIGHT

How many players are best for most fun with this game? Well, to be honest, I prefer the togetherness to the usually week dynamic of a group. Down times get shorter and the garden systems you set up with some troubles and lots of tactical skill yield more fruits that way, and furthermore you will be able to use the sophisticated version to play two kinds of trees. You get a lot of play out of this game as strategic considerations are applied to the game.

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