Garden Guests

• Designer: Stephen Glenn 
• Publisher: Van Ryder Games
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 8+
• Time: 20-30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Garden Guests, players compete to form a continuous path across a garden board that features beautiful paper cut art. On a turn, each player on a team — a team can be one or multiple players — can draw cards, give cards to a teammate, or use their cards to build a tower or extend their path. Towers are necessary in order to create a path between your base and a tower, or from one tower to another — but if you haven’t yet connected a tower to your path, your opponents can take it if they have cards to make a larger tower. To make a path, a player must play cards that match the colors of each space in the path. Once a path is made, it is permanent, and your opponent may have to wind their own path around yours.  The first team to make a path all the way across the board wins!

To set up, split up the players so that they are in two or three different teams.  Numbers should end up equal except in a 5p game when the teams will be 2/2/1.  Players should sit so that they alternate around the board.  The hexagonal board is placed on the table, and ideally, each player will be sitting in front of a side of the board of their team’s color in the nearest row.  

Each team takes all the supplies in their color (stones, guests, flower cards, collection cards).  Each player gets a hand of 5 cards from their team’s flower deck.  Refer to the rules and place the corresponding sides of your Collection cards face up on the table per the chart in the set up section.  

The goal of the game is simple – connect your two home rows together with pieces.  On a turn, a player can take a single action from these four choices:

1]  Collect Flowers – Choose one of your two collection cards and draw as many Flower cards from your deck as the card says.  Then flip the card over.  The cards show 1 / 4 and 2 / 3.   You may not have more that 15 cards in your hand at a time.

2] Build a Colony with your Guests – A colony is a stack of Guests placed on a Pedestal space. You must always play more Guests than the colony previously on that space; you can place one Guest per card of type that matches the Pedestal space.   Once built, you cannot further build it higher – so you may not want to exceed the previous Colony by just one piece.  You can build a colony on your home row; you only need one Guest to do this, and your opponents may never overbuild it.  

3] Lay a Path – paths must be played between two of your colonies; you play one matching card for each step in the path; place one of your stones down on each space.  Once two colonies are connected by a path, neither can be toppled!   You must be able to build a complete path.

4] Pass Flowers to another teammate – if you have a teammate, you can flip over one of your collection cards and then pass that many cards to your teammate from your hand.

Play goes around the board with each player taking a single action each turn.  The game ends immediately when a team has created an unbroken connection between their two home rows.

My thoughts on the game

This game appears to be an evolved form of Lumis, and abstract game I first played with the designer back in 2015.  I don’t remember the game ever getting an English language release, and as such, it didn’t make much of a splash here.  The game has moved from a four player parallelogram to a six player hexagon; and it is still a challenging abstract connection game – reminding me very much of Twixt; one of the best 3M bookcase games IMHO.

As with many of these abstract games, the challenge here is how to stitch together your moves knowing that you only do one thing a turn, and your opponent gets an move to either block you or further their own nefarious plans.  The game tends to therefore ebb and flow with periods of drawing cards and waiting, followed by bursts of activity where you try to get three or four actions done in a row; hopefully moving so fast as to prevent your opponent from countering those moves.

Timing is key; if you show your hand too early – such as take control of a particular pedestal spot – you may get toppled off of it, or your opponent might be able to drop a path down to obstruct you from the next pedestal you’re trying to get to.  As you can hold up to 15 cards, you can often mass enough cards to take three consecutive turns of: pedestal A, pedestal B, connect A and B with a path.  Sometimes, waiting until your opponent has just finished a big move of their own is helpful because their own hand will be depleted and they simply won’t have the cards in their hand to mount a counterattack.  Once a path is complete, both the path and the colonies become permanent, so it’s important to lock these things down.  Many of our games have come down to drawing cards at the end, each trying to complete a long route that will essentially lock down the victory.

In the 2 player game, there is tension because you are trying to do you thing, but your opponent gets a turn in between and can stop you (take your pedestal, block you, etc) or perhaps make a forward move in their own strategy that makes you stop and think whether or not you need to block them.  In the 3 player game, which is new to me and new to this version, it does have a very interesting interplay between the players; not only do you have to wait longer between plays, you also have to assess threats from two people, and I find this makes the game really much more interesting.  3 or 6 players will likely become my preferred way to play this one (as I can still just play twixt with 2).

The art is quirky, and I have found people either love it or find it crowded and confusing.  Talking to the publisher, the art here is actually all papercuttings.  The artist actually painted paper and then cut them out with scissors to make all the artwork.  I personally love the style, but it has proved to be fairly polarizing in the groups I’ve played it with.  The rest of the components are pleasing to hold in the hand, and the custom box insert is nice as well.

I like abstract games such as this, and it has worked well with player counts of 2, 3 and 4.  I have yet to play with 5, though i’ll admit that the uneven teams would likely keep me away from this; I’d just grab a different game from the game closet with that number…  Most turns are quick, but it’s never so serious that you can’t engage in conversation during the game either.  

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Mitchell: I have the original Lumis version. Just viewing photos of Garden Guests, the new version appears too busy and possibly distracting. I played Lumis about a half dozen times and I very much enjoyed it. Like Dale suggests, it has similarities to Twixt, or for that matter any hex-type connection game. What distinguishes Lumis is the interesting dynamic of the cards and the possibility of playing at various numbers. This is a very good game that deserves more attention. I enjoy the simplicity/depth ratio and this review inspires me to get it back in the rotation.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale, Mitchell
• Neutral.
• Not for me…