Arboretum: Review
Information:
Mechanics: Hand Management, Set Collection, Pattern Building
Player Age: 8+ Player Count: 2 - 4 PlayersTime to Play: 30 Minutes
Game Designer: Dan Cassar
Player Age: 8+
Game Designer: Dan Cassar
Objective:
Spring is here and brings a revitalisation and calm to the world that hasn’t been seen in months! The aim of ‘Arboretum’ is to build a tranquil path filled with peaceful blossoming trees.Set up:
- Prepare the deck by including a certain amount of tree species and shuffle them together. A player count of two will use six tree species, where three players uses eight species and four players uses all ten.
- The player that most recently watered a plant will be the first player.
- Deal seven cards to each player to create their hand and use the remaining cards to create the deck.
How to Play:
Each turn the active player will draw two cards, play one card to their arboretum and discard another. Players will take turns, one at a time, until there are no cards left in the draw pile.Draw Two Cards:
This step is easy as you will draw two cards one at a time. The unique part is that you can either draw from the draw pile or from any players discard pile (including your own) so be aware of what you discard.Play One Card To Your Arboretum:
The first card played in your arboretum can go anywhere in front of you. On the following turns you will have to play cards horizontally or vertically adjacent to an existing card in your arboretum.Discard One Card:
This step is simple, after your turn discard a card from your hand into your discard pile.End of Game:
The end of the game will commence once the draw pile is empty. The active player will now finish their turn and the game will end.Scoring:
Scoring, as in all games, is obviously important but in this game the scoring has a few more details than others.A tree species will not be scored by all players. Instead, whoever reveals the largest combined numerical value for that species in their hand at the end of the game will claim that species. This will occur for all tree species, however, there is an exception to this rule. If a player has the value ‘1’ tree in their hand while a rival player has the value ‘8’ of the same species then the '8' card will be worth 0 towards that tree species total.
Now that this has occurred for all tree species and the player’s know which trees they can score on, the paths are totalled. These paths score with a few rules of their own:
- The path must be created by cards orthogonaly adjacent to the last card in the path.
- The first and last space of the path must be the same tree species.
- Each card in the path must be a larger value than the last card in the path (the cards don't have to be consecutive in value though).
- The cards between the first and last card can be any tree species.
Each player will normally score multiple paths based on what they win in the right to score phase. Each path will gain points based on the parts below:
- Score one point for each card in the path.
- Score one additional point for each card in the path if the path is longer than three cards and all cards in the path are the same species.
- Score one additional point if the path begins with a number one card.
- Score two points if the path ends with a number eight card.
Final Thoughts:
Pros:- Interesting decisions on where to draw cards and what cards to save at the end.
- Tense game play in trying to hide what species you are aiming for.
- Interesting path building as multiple species can intersect in different ways with your paths.
Cons:
- This is a very quiet and thinky game that is prone to analysis paralysis.
Arboretum is a challenging game in a small box. From the rule description, there doesn't appear to be much of a challenge with this game but a different opinion is created during game play. Each player is trying to create large paths that will score for numerous species but if they want to score any of those species they must keep large value cards for the end of the game. This makes it hard to create successful paths as a path needs to be kept in ascending order. Arboretum is a great game and is the kind that can be brought to the table with any crowd.
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