The Hanging Gardens is a set collection/tile placement game where players take on the role as gardeners for King Nebuchadnezzar II. He wants you to build a beautiful hanging garden for his Queen. Do you think you have what it takes?
Setup:
The game setup is clearly outlined in the rules and is easy to do. There are different boards dependent on how many players you are playing with which I thought was a nice touch. Each player has three gardener meeples and 4 counters of their chosen colour. As well as this, they gain 4 tools (garden tile currency) 2 coins (enhancements currency) and an irrigation card (personal objective scoring). Garden cards are placed in the indicated places on the game board as are the enhancement tokens and royal objectives (more on these later). The first player is the person who last worked on their garden!
How to play:
The game is played in 4 rounds. On a turn, players place one of their gardener’s under a column of garden cards and choose one that they want to place into their garden. The first card at the bottom of the column is free but as you work your way up, the garden tiles will cost more tools to take into your play area. In your play area, you will be placing your garden cards in a pyramid shape. 5 cards at the bottom, 4 in the middle and 3 on top.
You need to be strategic about what cards you get as there are scoring conditions for different types of cards/, the irrigation personal bonus you need to keep in mind and royal objectives. Animal cards score base on where they are placed in your pyramids. Flowers score based on the biggest group along a vine. Visitors have their own independent scoring e.g 1 point per animal in your garden. Trees score based on how many there are adjacent to one another. All cards have water running along the top but some of these have a dip in the centre and these are irrigation cards. If you place these in your pyramid in the places indicated on your irrigation card, you score points. Some of the cards will be blank and will just contain flowers or a bonus such as gain coins/tools based on where you place on your pyramid. This is where you can buy enhancements to place over the empty spaces. Enhancements can be trees, animals, more flowers or visitors but these will cost you coins and you get the chance to buy enhancements after you have placed the garden card you have drafted into your play area. As well as this, you get to score against royal objectives. These are indicted at the top of the board. If you are the first person to claim a royal objective, the more points you will get. Royal objectives can be things such as 4 blue flowers together, 4 animals in your garden etc.
You do this across 4 rounds and you draft 3 garden cards per turn. At the end of the game, the player who scores the most points wins!
Thoughts:
I really enjoyed The Hanging Gardens. I am a big fan of tile placement/set collection games so there is no surprise there. I liked how easy it was to learn and set up. The royal objectives swap out so you will have different objectives per game. When I played it, I found I ran out of tools quite quickly but then realised there were certain cards that had a tool bonus at the bottom which I kept missing. I liked the different elements there is for scoring as it means you’re not just focusing on one element. This game does have a solo mode but I haven’t played it in solo mode yet so I am unable to comment on the differences. This is available to play online also so you can try before you buy! If you are a fan of tile placement and set collection, this is one you are going to enjoy!
