Nowhere is nature's beauty quite so evident as in the resplendent colours of an arboretum.
Never a truer word said…right from the moment that you take the lid from the box of this delightful game.
Arboretum is a 2-4 player strategy card game that combines placement, hand management & set collection in order to lay elegant paths of trees and score the most points at the end of the game.
The game is made up of a deck of 80 cards, depicting 10 resplendent species of Trees, each with cards numbered 1-8 within their own colour. Whether it’s the magnificent Maple tree in orange, the wonderful Willow in dark green, or the joyful Jaracanda in purple you will be drawn in by nature’s beauty and the attractive artwork on the cards.
To start the game, the deck is shuffled and 7 cards are dealt to each player with the remaining cards forming a face-down draw pile in the middle of the table. All cards (10 species of trees) are used for a 4-player game; 8 species for a 3-player game and 6 species for a 2-player game.
Decide on a starting player and they will begin with the three mandatory actions per turn, in order:
- Draw 2 cards from either the face down pile (the only option for the first turn) or from any player’s discard pile, or a combination of the 2.
- Play a card face-up into your arboretum. On each subsequent turn, you must play a card adjacent (horizontally or vertically) to 1 or more cards already in your arboretum.
- Discard a card from your hand to you own face-up discard pile.
Play continues clockwise with the end game being triggered when the last card from the face-down draw pile is taken. The game will proceed to scoring at the end of that player’s turn.
Sound easy? Do not be fooled by the tranquil nature of this game as it certainly packs a punch like a whomping willow and gives you plenty to think about! Not only do you have to decide which of the trees you want to plant in your arboretum, but manage your game so you have cards of those trees left in your hand to be able to score as well as keeping an eye on what your opponents are up to so you can stop them from scoring more than you.
In order to score your paths of trees, you first must have the highest total number of that species in your hand. You then need to have a first and last card of that species in a path and score points for how many cards of ascending numerical order are in that path, gaining bonus points for paths with the same trees, paths starting with the number 1 and ending with the number 8.
Make use of the included score pad for reading out each tree species and then noting down the scores of the player who has the right to score their longest path of that tree. Once all the species have been read out and the scores recorded, the player with the most points wins the game! The rulebook also gives a good overview of how to play and score with examples of gameplay.
Life is beautiful beneath the branches and this game will have you wanting to stay there for that little bit longer!
