Customer Reviews

Hanging Gardens

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In mid-2008 I started noticing some of my buddies playing this little game quite a lot. It was one that I'd never really heard about, so it made me curious why it was getting played so much. Thankfully, a good friend brought a copy to our house and taught us how to play. It didn't take long before it ascended to the top of my wishlist. And, after receiving a copy on my birthday, I've played it a lot.

What do you get with Hanging Gardens? In the box is a game board, a deck of building cards, 4 starting cards, a pile of scoring tiles, a start player marker, and 5 wooden temples in 4 different colors.

How does Hanging Gardens work? The tiles are shuffled and 6 of them are placed face-up on the board. Each player gets a starting card that has 6 squares of prepared land, and a set of temples. Each round 4 cards are flipped up (or 3 in a 3-player game). The cards depict a grid of 6 squares but some of the squares have buildings on them while others have more prepared land. Then player's take turns selecting a card to place in their garden. The primary rule is that any buildings depicted on that card must be placed on top of land that has already been prepared. In other words a building can never hang off of other cards so that it would be touching the table underneath. Turns continue in this manner.

When a player places a card and it makes a group of 3 or more of the same type of building, the player may choose to score that grouping by placing a temple on one square of the group. Then the player gets to take a tile. If the group was 3 squares big the player can only choose from 2 of the face-up tiles, and if it was 4 they can choose from 4, and if it was 5 they can choose from all 6. If the group was 6 or more, they get any face-up tile and one face-down tile. The tiles score based on the number of like tiles you get according to a scale shown on the tile (for instance 1 tiger tile scores four points, but 2 of them score nine points, etc.) You continue playing rounds until all the cards have been used up, then players score their tiles and the high score wins.

What does Blott think of Hanging Gardens? I find Hanging Gardens to be one of the most enjoyable tile-laying games I have played. There's a strategic depth in choosing whether to take tiles that you want or to grab ones that your opponent might need. There's also a push-your-luck element because you can sit and wait on a scoring hoping for a bigger payout, but someone might grab the tile you were hoping for if you wait too long. Plus you are never sure if the tiles you really need are going to come up because you rarely go through all the tiles, so you're often hedging your bets to optimize your odds of a big score. There's also a healthy amount of strategy in the way you will lay your cards so that you can re-use tiles that were already scored.

Who will enjoy Hanging Gardens? I think this game is perfect for anyone that wants a light and easy tile-laying game that fits in a nice short amount of time. There's more strategy than you might notice at first, and it also looks really nice. However, there is opportunity for some analysis-paralysis as players can sometimes puzzle for a few moments over what tile will best fit for them and what is the best arrangement. Also there is a luck element in when certain cards come up, and if you are lucky enough to see the tiles you really need. However there are ways to mitigate that luck, so I still think this could be a fun game for most groups.

Any parting comments about Hanging Gardens? I probably should mention that there is very little theme visible in this game. Supposedly you're building the hanging gardens, but it doesn't really feel like that. The only thing realistic is that you have to prepare ground before building upon it. Aside from that, there's not much more I can say about this game. I love that the rules are easy to grasp, but the strategies are a little deeper. I've yet to play the game with only 2 players, but from what many have said it may be best with 2. It's one that I will be pulling out regularly from now on because it has been a smash hit with most of the people we play games with.

The game is easy to setup and learn. It works best with two or four players. The goal is to collect tiles to earn the most victory points. To collect tiles you must create gardens using cards illustrated with a variety of architectural components. When arranged into contiguous groups, a temple may be placed on the group, enabling you to collect a tile. The fun and challenge is fitting the cards together to create the groups. The temple placement adds a strategic element to the game, as the placement affects grouping later in the game.

While fun for adults to play, it is also educational for younger players as it helps develop spatial reasoning skills.