The gardens of Versailles

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The gardens of Versailles
Game data
author Lena and Günter Burkhardt
graphic Anne Pätzke
publishing company Schmidt Games
Publishing year 2017
Art Placement game
Teammates 2 to 5
Duration 20 minutes
Age from 8 years

The Gardens of Versailles is a placement game by the German game designer Günter Burkhardt and his daughter Lena , which was published by Schmidt Spiele in 2017 . Similar to Kingdomino , which was awarded the Game of the Year award in the same year, the game is a further development of the classic domino game .

Style of play

In The Gardens of Versailles , the aim of the players is to build up a garden with the help of the available placement tiles and to lay out the largest possible connected flowerbed areas. They receive the tokens from a shared display, whereby they receive them by playing number cards. The aim of the game is to get the maximum value for your garden and thus the maximum number of victory points in two rounds.

In addition to the instructions, the game material consists of:

  • 72 square garden tiles, each with four beds, water features and building areas in five different colors, as well as isolated construction areas;
  • 55 number cards with the values ​​1 to 55 as bidder cards,
  • five large and six small majority chips and
  • a king figure

The king figure was taken over by Hans im Glück in the game without fear and nobility .

Game preparation

At the beginning of the game, each player receives 10 number cards from the shuffled deck, which they take into their hand. In the middle of the table, garden tiles are laid out face up in a chain according to the number of players, so that each player has one card for seven rounds; For three players, 21 tiles are laid out, for four players 28 and for five players 35 tiles. The king figure is placed at the beginning of the chain and always remains at the beginning of the tiles during the entire cycle. The five large majority chips are placed ready with the designation 3.

Game flow

Actions per turn
  • Select number cards and place them face down
  • Turn over number cards
  • Pick up a garden tile according to the numerical values
  • Place garden tiles in your own garden
  • possibly redistribute majority chips

A game runs over two rounds of seven rounds each. The rounds run in the same pattern over and over again in the first round: the players each choose a number card from their hand and place it face down in front of them, after which the cards are simultaneously revealed. The player with the lowest card played takes the first tile next to the king figure, the other players follow in the order of the card values. The tiles are then placed in the same order in the gardens of the players, whereby they must be placed with at least one of the fields on an adjacent tile; Holes are allowed to arise. For the scoring it makes sense to create the largest possible contiguous fields of the same garden types (colors), joker fields apply to all tile colors. As soon as a player has at least four contiguous fields of one color, he receives the majority chip of the respective color; if he is outbid, he must surrender the chip. The building areas are not included in the first scoring, in the second scoring the largest contiguous building area counts three victory points.

The first round ends when all tiles have been awarded and the seventh cards in hand have been played. For the intermediate scoring, the players count the number of individual fields of the two largest connected color fields and add three points for each majority chip they own.

For the second round, the players keep their gardens and their majority chips and a second chain of garden tiles is laid out, the players receive another 10 cards in hand. The game corresponds to the first round. The majority chips are turned over and are now worth 5 points each. After the round it comes to the final scoring, this time the number of individual fields of the three largest connected color fields is counted. Five points are added to the result for each majority chip, and the player with the second largest field of a color receives the smaller chip and adds 3 points per chip to his result. The owner with the largest building area also receives a bonus chip with three additional points.

The winner of the game is the player who has achieved the most points after adding both round scores. In the event of a tie, the player with the largest contiguous area of ​​a garden type wins.

Variation for two players

The game for two players corresponds to the game for three players, accordingly a chain with 21 garden tiles is laid out. The players each receive 10 cards in hand, another 10 cards are given to an imaginary player. The third player's cards are placed on a draw pile and withdrawn when the bid is made, the cards and the corresponding tiles are discarded. In addition, only the large majority chips are used for scoring in this game.

Expenses and reception

The game The Gardens of Versailles was developed by Günter Burkhardt and his daughter Lena and was published by Schmidt Spiele in 2017 , where it was presented at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in the spring of that year.

The development of the game goes back to an idea by Burkhardt, who presented it for the first time at the 2015 Göttingen game designer meeting. The original game was created during a voluntary service that Lena Burkhardt did in Costa Rica , where she worked, among other things, in a breeding station for toucans . The game dealt accordingly with toucans and sloths and was transformed into a game around the gardens of Versailles by Günter Burkhardt and Thorsten Gimmler, the editor in charge of the publishing house.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Rules of the game for The Gardens of Versailles from Schmidt Spiele
  2. ^ Versailles versions of The Gardens of Versailles in the BoardGameGeek database; accessed on May 14, 2017.
  3. ^ Wieland Herold : Toucan in the castle park. The gardens of Versailles. spielbox 4, 2017; Pp. 44-45.

Web links