played for you

Arboretum

Colorful tree, beautiful paths

An arboretum is a garden with a great variety of colorful trees; as a player, you create such an arboretum with paths for visitors. You use, depending on the number of players, between 6 and 10 sets of cards of different colors and tree varieties, each set has eight cards of values 1 to 8.

You begin with seven cards; the rest is draw pile. In your turn, you draw two cards from any stacks, put one card into your display and discard one card to your own discard pile. From the second card on you must place a card horizontally or vertically adjacent to another card. In a path, cards must have ascending values and the first and last card of a part must be of the same color; a path can change direction, but must always run orthogonally.

So far so simple, the problem is in the decision what I keep and what I place or discard, because: At the end of the game you score paths in your display only if you have the highest total value of cards in this color in hand; for values 1 and 8 there are special rules for the total. In case of a tie all players in the tie score their paths. Each card of a path scores 1 point, and 1 extra point when all cards have the same color. A „1“ at the start scores 1 point, a „8“ at the end 2 points: A card can be part of several paths and can be scored several times.

Very beautiful, but not easy and – despite a personal display for each player very interactive and rather nasty, because as soon as have started a promising path, others will of course begin to hold on to cards of that color. But you can do the same, can’t you? Don’t get angry, play again!

Players: 2-4

Age: 8+

Time: 30+

Designer: Dan Cassar

Artist: Chris Quilliams, Philippe Guèrin

Price: ca. 13 Euro

Publisher: Abacusspiele 2016

Web: www.abacusspiele.de

Genre: Card placement, majorities, scoring 

Users: For families

Version: de

Rules: de en es fr

In-game text: no

Comments:

Classy, beautiful components

Very interactive

High vexation element

Compares to:

Mit List und Tücke for the scoring, otherwise placement games with pattern formation

Other editions:

Z-Man (en), Filosofia (fr), Fractal Games (es)

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0