Botanicus

• Designers: Samuele Tabellini Ferrari, Vieri Masseini 
• Publisher: Hans im Gluck
• Players: 2-4
• Age:  12+
• Time: 45-60 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/48klTBL
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

How about creating your own botanical garden? As an aristocrat in the late 19th century, you have bought land, hired a gardener and set out to find the best plants there are.  As you know, the visitors are very picky about the plants they want to see, so your job is not only to acquire the plants, but also to sort them according to the visitors’ preferences.  In Botanicus, you compete for the best action-spots in a unique selection mechanism, and then make the most of the options available to you. You have to collect new plants, take care of them, water them and keep an eye on the gardener. Last but not least, you have to collect some money along the way to pay for all this.  In the end, what counts is how many visitors you satisfy and how beautiful your garden is. Will you be able to outdo the gardens of your competitors?

The game board is placed on the table and the Flower tiles (light side up) and Prize tokens are placed on the appropriate spaces.  Each player gets their own Garden board, taking all the bits in their color – the five animals in their color are placed near the game board and the money bag, wheelbarrow, shovel are all placed on the starting space of their respective tracks.  The meeple goes on the 0 space of the score track, and the action flowers are arranged in the order specified by the player boards.  Each player is also dealt 5 random Special tasks (each of these should be assigned to a different row of your garden)  and a starting income of 6 bucks..  

Your other Gardener starts on the Fountain space of your player board.  During the game, you will place Plant tokens, but you can only ever place them in the spaces diagonally adjacent to your Gardener.   Each row also has a basic task associated with it (printed on the board) which is completed when that row has the plants shown on the task. Once the basic task is complete, the Special task assigned to that row becomes active and can be scored if/when the corresponding row meets the criteria on the new task.

Turn order in this game changes – in general, play order is from top to bottom of the last played column. If multiple flowers are in the same space, the topmost flower in the stack goes first. At the start of the game, the Flowers start off the track, so the order is simply top to bottom in that original stack.  The game is played over two (plus) rounds; each round being a complete pass through the 8 action columns at the bottom of the board.

On a turn, the active player first either moves their Gardener (1 coin per step moved) and/or plays a Garden card – either paying 2 coins to take the action on the card or discarding the card for 3 coins.  Either way, the played Garden card is discarded.

Next, the player then places their Flower on a Flower space in the next column and immediately takes the depicted action next to that space.  Some Flower Spaces will also have Flower tiles on them, if you place your Flower on such a tile, you get both the action on the Tile as well as the one printed on the board.  If you choose to play your Flower on an already occupied space, place your flower on the top of the stack and then pay every previously placed Flower owner 3 coins. Note that as you can no longer see the Flower tile, you do not get the action printed on that tile, you only get the action for the space.

The actions are fairly easy to understand:

• Move along a track (money bag, wheelbarrow, shovel) – move forward on the indicated track and then get the actions shown at that space  (note that some paths cost coins to take, if you cannot pay the cost, you cannot move on that path).  If you choose to not move the max number of spaces, you gain 1VP for each space not taken.  You can also pay 3 coins to take an extra step.
• Plant Plants – take the depicted level plant (I, II, III or IV) and place it on a Flower Bed adjacent to your Gardener

• Move your Gardener – move your gardener for free up to the number of spaces indicated
• Draw a Garden card – take the top card from the deck and add it to your hand
• Animal – place an Animal of your color onto your Garden, scoring points on the lowest empty Points space for animals
• VPs – some spaces simply grant VPs
• Prize tokens – if you reach the end of a track, take the prize token from the top of the stack and immediately score it.
• Pole Position – this is a special space in the rightmost column; there is no cost to play your Flower here, even if other pieces are here, but you get no other action other than the turn order benefit for the next turn.

At the end of the first round, flip over all the Flower Tiles to show the dark side up – thus, each of these spaces will have a different action for the second round.  At the end of the second round, the game is nearly over. Each player in current turn order takes one final turn, first moving their gardener and/or playing a card, and then taking one action on one of the three tracks.

Final scoring then occurs on the player boards – for each column that is completely filled with plants, score a bonus based on the most advanced plant found in that column.  Also, score 1 point for every 3 coins left over.  The player with the most points wins, ties broken in favor of the player who is earlier in final turn order.

My thoughts on the game

Botanicus is one of those games that feels at home on your game table this year as it would have in say 2015.  It has a very old-school feel to it, both in mechanics and appearance, and it provides a very nice game experience.

The action selection mechanism is quite interesting – moving your piece onto a spot on the next column of the chart; then taking the depicted action. The catch here is that you are moving along the three different tracks, you’ll have to calculate your plays carefully.  In addition, the location of your action selection also will help to determine your turn order in the next round; and there are times that you might choose a particular action now in order to ensure going first in the next round, etc.  You might also be motivated to choose a particular spot in order to take advantage of the flower token that goes to the first player to choose that place.

While you’re fighting on the main board for position, you’re also cultivating your personal garden on your own board.  You have to move your farmer around, planting and growing plants in order to meet the task tiles set up from the start of the game. The end result is a really intriguing puzzle on multiple levels.

Once you’re tired of the basic game, you can flip the board over to play the “expert” side – offering you an entirely new set of challenges.  My group has honestly enjoyed the basic version just fine, but it’s nice to know we have options if we want to switch it up in the future.

As I mentioned earlier, the game also looks old school.  Nothing but cardboard, chits and some wood pieces here.  No sculpted minis. No vac–tray box inserts.  Though, props to Hans im Glueck for including nice tuck-boxes that keep things organized nicely (without resorting to extra plastic).   The artwork also has a very nostalgic look to it (well, nostalgic for me).

Botanicus is a mid weight game that packs a lot of punch, certainly in the 40-50 minute time range.  The tension builds over the two rounds of the game as you fight for desired actions as well as turn order. The game arcs nicely with your attention first set on the basic tasks on your garden board and then morphing to the more complicated tasks on the reverse side once the basic tasks are complete.   A big (green) thumbs up for this one.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Joe Huber (5 plays): Most of my plays have been of the expert game; the basic game is solid, as Dale indicates, but I think the expert game adds some additional tension and makes the game even more interesting.  I haven’t quite broken and picked up a copy of this, but I’ve enjoyed each play, and given serious consideration to buying a copy – a rare event for me.

Doug Garrett (2 plays): Shelley and I had the chance to play this back at Meeplefest 2024 and enjoyed our two plays with one of the attendee’s copies. I agree with Dale that it’s a middle-weight game that packs a solid punch. We reviewed it on Episode 947 of the Garrett’s Games podcast, so check out our extended thoughts.

Dan B. (several plays): I have mostly played the basic game and, while I like it well enough, it doesn’t vary as much as I’d like from game to game, so I suspect it will not hold up for many more plays. The expert game is clearly intended to offer some more variety in strategic paths, but after one play of it I am not sure how much I like it – having to get animals out of your garden to use the spaces requires some focus on animals, which seems to reduce the strategy space. However, I should play it again.

Alison Brennan: Nice mid-weight Euro, taking actions to move along reward tracks and fill your tableau with plants that meet your VP conditions. Each round provides a new set of actions, with each action having a different power level. Like Kingdomino, actions this round will be taken in order of who took the least to most powerful actions last round. In an improvement, you can still do the same action as someone else but without bonuses (and you’ll now beat them in turn order). You can see all the actions for future rounds, and as everyone’s usually doing different track strategies (that’s a green thumb’s up), you can plan for when you want to be going first and when it doesn’t matter. This is the game. It’s very playable but without being gripping, and it mostly overcomes its Euro abstractedness (I’ll admit it’s a sigh finding out plants are generic “plants” that grow from “level 1” up to “level 4” though).

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale Y, John P
• I like it. Joe H., Doug G., Dan B. (for now), Alison
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/48klTBL