Gamehelpgardensofuranus

Overview

Gardens of Uranus is a quick abstract game for 2–5 players. Friendly Martian gardeners plant flowers on a grid of spots while secretly working toward gardening missions. Each turn you either slide your gardener across the garden and plant a flower, or score one of your mission cards.

Goal

Finish with the most points. You earn points by scoring mission cards, and lose points for flowers you never planted.

Setup

• Choose a garden board: Hexagonal (1 tree), Trapezoid (2 trees) or Rhombus (3 trees). Trees are placed on random spots, never on the outer edge.
• Each player receives flowers in 5 colors, shared between colors by chance. The amount depends on the number of players (2 players: 30, 3: 20, 4: 15, 5: 12). Every player's reserve is public and shown in their player panel.
• Draft your missions: everyone starts with 5 secret mission cards. Keep 1 and pass the rest to your neighbor, then keep 1 of the 4 you receive, and so on until you hold 5 cards.
• In turn order, each player chooses a Martian (each Martian can be chosen by one player only) and places their gardener on any empty spot of the garden.

Your turn

On your turn you must do one of the following:

1. Move your gardener in a straight line along any of the 6 directions, as many steps as you want, without turning. Trees block your movement. Other gardeners do not block you, but you cannot end your move on the same spot as another gardener, and you cannot end on a tree.

• If you stop on an empty spot, choose a flower color from your reserve and plant it there.
• If you stop on a spot that already has a flower, nothing is planted.

2. Score a mission card. Instead of moving, show one of your mission cards, score its points (see below), then discard it and draw a replacement from one of the decks on the board. You may score a card for 0 points to get rid of it.

Mission cards

Each mission card has its own scoring condition based on the flowers on the board:

• Biggest group: 1 point for every flower in the largest connected group of a color.
• Groups: 1 point for every separate group of a color (isolated flowers count).
• Longest line: 2 points for every flower of a color in the longest straight line along connections, except the first.
• Triangle: if three corners of a triangle contain flowers of a color, 1 point for every spot on its sides. Only the biggest triangle scores, and the sides must be straight connections.
• Edge and trees: 1 point for every flower of a color on the edge of the garden or next to a tree.
• Pairs: 1 point for every connection between two adjacent flowers of the two colors on the card.
• Hexagon: if 6 flowers of the same color form the corners of a regular hexagon (straight sides) at any moment, the owner of this card wins instantly.

End of the game

The game ends as soon as one of these happens:

• At the start of a player's turn, that player has no flowers left.
• All players move their gardeners in succession without anyone planting a flower.
• A player draws the last card from the board.
• A player completes the Hexagon mission.

Then every player scores the mission cards still in their hand. Finally each player loses points for unused flowers: 1 flower −1, 2 flowers −3, 3 flowers −6, 4 flowers −10, 5 flowers −15, 6 flowers −21, 7 flowers −28, 8 flowers −36, 9 flowers −45, 10 flowers −55, 11 flowers −66, 12 flowers −78. The player with the most points wins.