Botanicus
How about creating your own botanical garden? As an aristocrat in the late 19th century, you have bought land, hired a gardener and set out to find the best plants there are.
As you know, the visitors are very picky about the plants they want to see, so your job is not only to acquire the plants, but also to sort them according to the visitors' preferences.
In Botanicus, you compete for the best action-spots in a unique selection mechanism, and then make the most of the options available to you. You have to collect new plants, take care of them, water them and keep an eye on the gardener. Last but not least, you have to collect some money along the way to pay for all this.
In the end, what counts is how many visitors you satisfy and how beautiful your garden is. Will you be able to outdo the gardens of your competitors?
Number of players: 2 - 4
Game duration: 43 mn
Complexity: 1 / 5
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Play Botanicus and 934 other games online.
No download necessary - play directly from your web browser.
With your friends and thousands of players from the whole world.
Free.
Rules summary
Overview
Plant flowers and grow your garden to meet objectives and fill columns
Turn
You can move your Gardener as far as you like following the footprints, but each movement costs 1 coin, and you are not required to move the gardener at all
You can play a card, but don't have to. If you do, you can only play one, and can choose to either pay to use its action or sell it, the value for paying and selling are shown on the card
Once you have done both, one, or neither of these actions, you can then move on to placing a Flower
Move your Flower to the next column you are not in
If you place your Flower on an empty space, you take the space's action and the action connected to it, in either order
If you place your Flower on an occupied space, you only take the action connected to it and NOT the space's action, additionally pay 3 coin to the bank for each other Flower already present on the space
Turn order is also determined by the Flower columns, whoever has the highest flower on the most historic column takes the next turn, highest is both the space's height and the flower's height in the same column i.e. a player who paid to take the same action as another will therefore go earlier in turn order next round
Tasks
Each garden row has two tasks, a basic and special
At the start of the game, you can decide which row has which special task, but each row can only contain one (also some tasks require 4 Flowers, which means they can only be placed in certain rows)
The tasks give requirements for that row of flowers, but the order the flowers appear in doesn't matter
You must complete a row's basic task before you can complete its special task
However, you do NOT have to complete one row's tasks before completing another
Round End
When all players reach the final column, the round ends
Maintain the turn order, but move all the Flowers back to the start space
Flip all the tiles to the dark side, this gives different actions for round two
If this was the end of the second round, take a special single turn 3rd round
In the same turn order as how round 2 ended, each player gets to do the two normal actions (Gardener and card) then has to choose one of the three tracks to take their final action with
Tracks
There are three tracks, each providing a variety of rewards
Some Flower space actions let you move along a certain track, if you move more than one space, you do NOT get the benefits of the intermediate spaces i.e. if you move two spaces, the first space's rewards are ignored
Furthermore, on the Shovel track, some branches cost coins to allow you to move faster along it, but you can only take these fast route options if you have the coin for it at that moment
Regardless of the track, you can always spend 3 coins to move one more space than the option gives, whilst still respecting the intermidate space non=reward rule, or you can move less than allowed and gain 1 point for each space not moved
The tracks are infinite, as such when you reach the final space of any track, take its rewards as usual (along with any wasted movement point rewards) then move your piece back to the starting space of that track
Bonuses
A black number in a coin is gained, whilst a red number in a coin is paid
There are 4 plants (Yellow, Pink, Green, Blue) when you gain one place it diagonally adjacent to your Gardener even covering up previous Plants
Watering Can lets you upgrade a plant to the next level if it is diagonaly adjacent to your Gardener
Free Gardener Movement lets you move your Gardener up to the depiected number of spaces for no cost
Draw a card lets you draw a card to your hand
Animals go on your animal circle and gradually score you more points the more you collect
VP scores you straight points, which you can also get from completing a track, you only get the best VP reward from a track at the time you finish that loop, if you reach the end of the same track again you do NOT reclaim a second reward
Pole Position means you do not pay to share an occupied space
Game End
The game ends at the end of the 3rd round
Each column completely filled with flowers scores points based on the best flower found there
Score 1 point for every 3 coins remaining
Add this to points scored during the game
The player with the most points, wins!
If tied, the player who would have the earliest go in a 4th round wins!
