Multi-level mulching scheme
MIYABI
Designer: Michael Keisling | Publisher: Haba
There’s a certain draw to gardening for board game designers. It might be something to do with how tidy they are. There’s a sense of making minor edits now to reap rewards later down the line, which at its most basic level is what strategy is. There’s also the fact that gardens are flat arrangements that things need to fit into.
Keisling’s most recent gardening game, Miyabi we’re making extremely tidy gardens on our own boards. When I say extremely tidy, it’s not just a bit of excessive Ground Force style renovation with planters, it’s a little more like a spreadsheet.
Players take tiles from a central reserve, randomly selected each round, and place these on their garden. These are a selection of Tetris shapes of grass with only one area containing flowers, bushes, pagodas, and so on. The bigger tiles contain more than the smaller ones (three koi carp in the pond for example). On the first layer the number is multiplied by one. The first layer you ask? Well, this is the fun bit. If you tile can be supported from below, you can go up a level.
This includes the well-worn gardening game trait of laying tiles that completely demolish what was there before. None of this ‘I’ll move that tree over the other side and dig in a pond’ – we just bring the bulldozers in and plonk down our rock tile that uses its grass part to obscure a flowering bush.
You can only place a scoring features in a column once per round, moving a lantern in to show that this column has been used. This is where the puzzle bit comes in, and making the most of what’s available to you becomes increasingly tricky.
In the gardening game genre, as much as there is one, the pleasure comes from the slow build up to massive points collection. Each round you are scored here, and then the final round includes most features of certain types getting a little extra. It’s still tight scoring despite this, with only a few points in it.
Keisling seems to have wanted to make a very complex game, and instead made a very good simple one. With this though, comes the optional expansions for the game in the box. These are more or less new scoring modes for things like the biggest meadow, or, the one we would vote for inclusion in the main game, the frog expansion.
Because you’re making tiers through the game, this expansion seems so obvious. Move a cute frost token around the board, and up into the next floor available, assuming it is grass only. When frogs hit level four, they can move through features too, allowing them to ascend to being top frog. This is a delightful mini game within the main box, and we’d suggest everyone play with this rule immediately. There’s no point making a lovely garden if there’s no frogs to enjoy it, after all.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT
WHATS IN THE BOX
◗ 4 Garden boards
◗ 24 Wooden lanterns
◗ 6 Bonus tiles
◗ 1 Bonsai tree
◗ 1 Round marker
◗ 1 Score board
◗ 4 Frog markers
◗ 96 Garden tiles
◗ 5 Expansion tiles
◗ 16 Zen tiles
WE SAY
An extremely strong, strategic tile layer which leaves players puzzling over their board in a pleasant way. And as we said, always play the frogs.
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED ISHTAR…
The Cathala modern classic from last year that showed us how tight a game could be with so many ways to score points.