Renegade Game Studio | Arboretum | Card Game | Ages 8+ | 2-4 Players | 30 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

Three, only the person with the highest value of a single tree in their hand at the end of the game scores that particular type of tree. Once you’ve decided what to take, the decisions about what to play and what to discard seem to come much quicker. Ideally, you want a good mix between cards for end scoring that match your tableau trees and cards that will prevent your opponent from scoring. When the deck is exhausted, players compare the cards that remain in their hands to determine who can score each colour.

Arboretum is a strategy card game for 2-4 players, aged 10 and up, that combines set collection, tile-laying and hand management while playing in about 25 minutes. For each color, the player(s) with the highest value of cards in hand of that color scores for a path of trees in her arboretum that begins and ends with that color; a path is orthogonally adjacent chain of cards with increasing values. As a reviewer, I pride myself on being somewhat professional and making sure I play each board game enough to form an opinion. Player turns are simple, but each decision holds a wealth of strategy: 1) Draw two cards, either from the face-down pile or the accumulating face-up discard piles from each player. First, you have to be crafty to draw/draft the correct cards so that you can build meaningful paths through your arboretum.You must choose which cards to plant in your arboretum and which to keep in hand, as only the most expert curator will win the renown of nature enthusiasts everywhere. Of course, everyone must be concerned with scoring their own trees, but with seven cards in hand, there is seemingly always a slot available for holding a card that can prevent another player from scoring their mighty grove.

Now we’ve got the preamble out of the way, let’s talk about why Arboretum is the one of the sharpest games in my collection – a game so sharp it can draw blood. If you’re going to do them, you really want to play at least four cards in the sequence and keep track of all the other cards in the game. It's filled to the brim with tough choices, and I was engaged from start to finish with puzzling out what I needed to keep, what I could safely get rid of, and what position would provide maximum comfort on the couch tonight. In Arboretum, you create carefully planned paths for your visitors to walk as they take in the colorful explosion of buds and leaves. At the end of the game, nothing hurts worse than having this high-value chain of cards and then discovering that somebody screwed you over and kept higher value cards of that tree.So you not only have to win the game of building the best paths, you also have to win the game-within-a-game of keeping back enough points to be able to score your creation. Arboretum is a card counting, set collection game with a bit of take-that thrown in for good measure. It’s filled with tough choices, and I was engaged from start to finish in puzzling out what I needed to keep, and what I could safely get rid of. Also if you look at that gamefound, it's easy to be deceived---the actual gameplay portions are not cheap but aren't over the top expensive.

That’s frustrating, I imagine, since well, I can’t figure that this is a thing that a city wants 4+ of (similar to the problem Unfair has with one city seeing sometimes 4+ theme parks being constructed simultaneously). Because, if you remember, you need to discard cards on your turn, and players can pick up your discards.This is not a problem, however, as you can also use the distinctive shapes of the trees to distinguish between the suits.

You just have to hope that you’re still friends with your fellow players in five years and still living close enough to each other (and the trees) to make this possible. As the game nears its conclusion, the knowledge of the cards in play increases while players wrestle through the agony of deciding which consequential cards to hold and which to send out into the wild. David Norris on Air Land and Sea expands its battle lines with Spies, Lies and Supplies – Review Great to hear, I'm a big fan as well. A face down dummy hand as the blocking mechanism, or a random card draw for everyone at the end where people got to pull a couple of cards to add to their hand just for this phase could be effective at mitigating the incentive to play to block.And I think that at 2 players, having that duelling sense in the gameplay and fewer species to fight over, intensifies the feelings in Arboretum even more.