Garden Rush Game Review
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GARDEN RUSH GAME REVIEW
Garden Rush (designed by Kee Mansell) is a lightning-fast two-player game that requires you to stack tiles and build a board in which you plant and harvest vegetables to score points. The game comes in an open box with a magnetically held flip-top lid. This flip-top lid opens to reveal a play area. The box also doubles as a storage mechanism and, when flipped, as a game board that holds the players’ gnome figures.
Players sit at opposite ends of a playing field, which is divided into two identical gardens with a hedge between them. During setup, vegetable tiles are drawn from a bag and placed on each hedge square with the vegetable side facing up. Each garden is arranged in a 5×5 grid with the corners cut off, forming an inner square. In the corners of this square are four icons representing special actions that players can perform when these icons are covered by tiles. These actions allow you to take an additional tile from the ruler, harvest (i.e. score points) from a bed in your garden, move a tile from one spot to another, or flip any vegetable in either player's garden to the opposite side.
Each hedge cell lines up in a column of cells in your garden. On your turn, you have two options: take the tile or harvest (i.e., score points). If you take a tile, you can place it with the double side with the vegetables facing up in the column corresponding to the location of the hedge cell you took, or you can place it with the single side with the vegetables facing up in any other column. Once a hedge cell is empty, the remaining vegetables are moved to fill the empty space, a new vegetable is placed at the end of the row, and the new vegetable takes its place on the trampoline.
Yes, you read that right. Trampoline. In Garden Rush, anthropomorphic vegetables not only smile at you, but they also seem so eager to be cut and eaten that they literally jump at the chance.
WHAT IS ALL THIS FOR?
In Garden Rush, each type of vegetable has several patterns in which it can be planted. Once you plant it in one of the patterns, it can be harvested for points equal to the number of plants that made up the pattern. Once harvested, double vegetable tiles are flipped to their single vegetable sides, and single vegetable tiles are removed from the board.
If that sounds a little strange, think about carrots. Carrots can be harvested when you plant two or four carrots diagonally across from each other. If you harvest two carrots, you get two points. If you harvest four, you get four points. Nothing else special.
These points are important for two reasons. First, there are certain breakpoints on the score track that, if you manage to end your turn with your gnome on top of them, allow you to perform a bonus action (potentially a chain of bonuses if you're clever enough). Second, and most importantly, Garden Rush isn't just about scoring points. It's about getting to 40 points, and that means getting those points before your opponent can do the same. Once a player reaches 40 points, the round ends and whoever is further up the score track wins. Otherwise, the game ends when the bag runs out of tiles, and whoever has the most points up to that point wins.
WONDERFUL RAGU
There's a lot to like about Garden Rush. The rules are easy to teach and learn. You'll be playing without any problems in a matter of minutes. The game is short, and experienced players only need 20-30 minutes to throw it in a backpack and play with a colleague during their lunch break. The design, while absurd, is bold and fun. The quality of the components is top-notch.
The gameplay is also pretty simple. Garden Rush is a game about balancing long-term goals with short-term gains. Do you intentionally score less points to avoid hitting a checkpoint on the scoring scale, or do you forgo extra actions to score more points? And when it comes to picking vegetables from the hedgerow, figuring out how to arrange the vegetables so they fit with other types of vegetables can be quite a challenge. This aspect of the game always reminds me of Tiny Towns in that you have to arrange different objects in a limited space to take advantage of scoring opportunities when they appear.
The pace of the game is almost perfect. It starts off slow. With a mostly empty garden, it's easy to relax and just enjoy yourself. But as your garden starts to fill up, things get more lively. The tension builds as your little gnome-point figures battle for position on the scoreboard. The energy is palpable. Garden Rush is, in a word, exhilarating.
However, this minor annoyance doesn't spoil my enjoyment of the game at all. Garden Rush ticks many of my boxes, and it's become a game that's practically always in my backpack, ready to be pulled out and set up at a moment's notice. If you're looking for a two-player game that's easy to set up and take down, quick and easy to play, but still offers some challenge, Garden Rush might be just what you're looking for.
850 грн.
Garden Rush (Garden Rush) (ukr)
DESCRIPTION OF THE BOARD GAME GARDEN RUSH It's time to take care of your garden so that it finally bears fruit! Choose the right strategy to become the best gardener. But don't forget about the neighbor who wants to stop you... GROW, HARVEST, PROSPER In the game Garden Rush, you will compete in growing vegetables in your garden. Will you be able to fill your basket before your neighbor? During the game, you will lay out tiles on the garden. You need to carefully plan the planting of ea..
