If you like Victorian floral patterns and tile placement games, you will probably love this game. German for horticulture, Gartenbau is a beautiful game where you are the gardener and will grow the flora in your garden from seedlings to plants and finally to flowers. You will compete with the other players to have the best garden and be crowned the Master Gardener.
If you like Victorian floral patterns and tile placement games, you will probably love this game. German for horticulture, Gartenbau is a beautiful game where you are the gardener and will grow the flora in your garden from seedlings to plants and finally to flowers. You will compete with the other players to have the best garden and be crowned the Master Gardener.
Intro to game
Gartenbau is a simple 2-4 player game about cultivating and managing flowers in a layering, tile placement fashion. It takes about an hour to play.
During Gartenbau, you will plant seedlings and grow plants to fill your garden. If you are able to meet the growing conditions of your Flowers, you will earn prestige points. The player with the most prestige points at the end of the game is the winner, or Master Gardener.
Setup
The box contains a 2-piece market board, 4 player markers (little wheelbarrows), 2 resource wheelbarrows, 6 starter seedling tiles, 72 seedling tiles, 48 plant tiles, 54 flower tiles (30 beginner, 24 advanced), 25 sun tokens, 25 water tokens, 4 watering can tokens and 4 flower pot tokens.
The set-up for the game is fairly simple and explained well in the rule book. Start by placing the large sunflower mat in the centre of the table. The mat is in two pieces which are both double sided to accommodate different numbers of players. Shuffle the seedling tiles, removing the corresponding number depending on the number of players. For example in a three player game you will remove 9 at random.
Players then gather their player marker (little wheelbarrow), a starter seedling tile, their starting resources (two suns & two water tokens) and two special tokens (a flower pot and a watering can). Plant tiles are placed in the market (indicated on the board) in ascending point order. Player pieces are then placed on the orange starting dot.
Players will then select their starting flowers. The most recent gardener is the first player and will get to choose first. There are two ways of choosing your starting flowers. There are preset novice gardener tiles for beginners, where everyone has to meet the same objectives using different plants. Or advanced flower tiles. For the more advanced game, shuffle the advanced flower tiles, place 12 face down and 12 face up on top of the facedown tiles, to create your catalogue of flowers. You then take it in turns to select a pair to add to your hand. This continues until each player has 3 sets from the catalogue (check the rule book for two-player games). Players then inspect all 6 of their chosen flowers and discard one.
Now that everyone has their flowers and starting pieces, the game can begin.
Gameplay
Players will move in a clockwise direction around the board and will either land on a petal and choose a seedling/take resources or land on a circle space and place a plant or flower tile.
The Seedling Market:
Move your player marker to the next unoccupied petal/seedling. You may skip unoccupied petals by leaving one resource on each Seedling Tile you skip (which will be taken by whoever takes the next seedling tile beneath). You cannot stay on the same tile or land on the same tile as another player. You may then take the Seedling Tile from the top of the pile and place it wherever you want in your garden (all seedlings must be touching on at least one side, and all tile placements are final). Or, you can take the resources indicated on the petal. At the end of your turn, you may only hold up to ten resources total.
The Plant Market:
Move your player marker to the next unoccupied Circle Space. Using your resources, you then buy a Plant Tile from the top of one of the six Plant Tile stacks. This plant tile is then placed in your garden and must be placed over two seedlings (you cannot place over just one tile). The seedling colour requirement for the plant tile must be met to place the tile.
Place Flower Tiles:
Move your player marker to the next unoccupied Circle Space. Place one of your Flower tiles into your garden; all requirements must be met to do so. Flower Tiles are placed over two plant tiles. Once played, you may take three resources of your choice.
Once all the seedling tiles are taken from a petal, a printed ability is revealed on the board. When players land on this petal, they may choose to use the ability or take resources as normal. You also have two special tokens, which can be used throughout the game: the flower pot and the watering can. The flower pot allows you to move your player marker to any petal on the board, even one with another player, and take that seedling tile without paying any resources. The watering can allows you to move one uncovered seedling tile in your garden from one location to another or swap the positions of two seedling tiles in your garden. Both tokens can only be used once per game, and if unused, are worth 2 points at the end of the game.
The game continues until four petals in the Seedling Market are empty of seedlings. At which point, play continues until the end of the round.
Scoring:
Each flower tile will either have a prestige score printed on it, a requirement which gives prestige or both. Plant tiles also have prestige scores printed on them, and any visible in your garden will be scored. Unused flower pot and watering can tokens score 2 points each.
Each player adds up their prestige. The player with the highest prestige score is the winner!
Our opinions on gameplay
We enjoyed the simplicity of Gartenbau, and that it’s an easy game to teach new players. It reminded us of the two-player game Patchwork, which is another tile placement game that we enjoy. The gameplay is fairly quick, which is nice as you aren’t constantly waiting for other players, although sometimes it can be tricky to plan your moves ahead of time as things change quickly. The aesthetics are lovely, particularly if you like Victorian-style artwork. The wheelbarrow resource holders are a nice touch. We really like that you can play it at two different difficulties, which, for us, elevates the game and increases its replayability. However, it may not offer the strategic depth or competitiveness some players look for. Gartenbau is quite relaxed, and there aren’t many opportunities to interfere with other players’ game plans.
