Delving into village green

BENGALURU: Peer Sylvester has joined the ranks of one-to-watch game designers in the last couple of years. The Lost Expedition, which I’ve written about before, is a lovely little card game and, just last year, The King is Dead got a swanky 2nd Edition that’s also climbing the rankings fairly rapidly.

Lost in the hubbub around the latter’s release, however, was news that Mr Sylvester would also be releasing a small-box card game called Village Green, and that’s the game we’re going to talk about today.

First of all, Village Green has one of the best one-liners I’ve seen on any board game box — ‘a Game of Pretty Gardens and Petty Grudges’. Now that’s how you introduce a game! The one-page thematic description in the rulebook is wonderful as well, with a healthy dose of snobbery and rivalry spicing up what is a ‘village green of the year’ competition. Card games like this don’t often have to put much effort into their themes - and indeed, most don’t - but this is really the template for how it should be done.

On to the gameplay! In Village Green, you’ll be creating a 3x3 tableau of cards that will constitute your village green. These cards will include lawns, trees, ponds, gazebos, fountains and the like. However, none of them (except ponds) are worth any points in themselves — instead, you’ll be placing award cards above each column and to the left of each row that will potentially score you points for the features you place in that line. For example, one award might reward you for having a variety of trees in that area while another might give you bonus points for avoiding man-made structures in a different zone.

Many awards also penalize you for failing to comply with their strictures, so double-edged swords are everywhere. This wrinkle of being able to essentially choose and customize your personal scoring is a very nice touch, but that’s not the cleverest thing about this game. No, that honour goes to the placement system. You can’t just slap down cards in your village green anywhere you like — each card has a flower icon in the top-left corner that can be one of three types (rose, petunia or lily) and one of three colours (red, purple, yellow), and that determines how you’re allowed to play it.

Every card you play must match all orthogonally adjacent cards by either flower or colour; if you can’t satisfy that requirement, you can’t play that card there. And it won’t take long before you back yourself into some gloriously tricky situations — if you want to play a card to a space adjacent to a red petunia and a yellow rose, then you need either a yellow petunia or a red rose. Maybe you find what you need, but it doesn’t work at all for the award you were going for in that row so you might have to start over.

Is it worth it? You can’t tell, but all you can do is what you can and hope it works out. Village Green is, quite simply, superb. It’s fiendishly clever and immensely satisfying every time you’re able to juggle the dual requirements of placement and scoring. It’s got much more game in that little box than others many times the size (and price!). It’s a wonderful game, and one of my favourites from the year past.

What’s New?

Faiyum
Given the sort of year 2020 was, it’s taken longer than the usual delay to play some of the new releases that came out. If I’d managed to play Faiyum earlier, there is absolutely no doubt that it would’ve been my favourite game from last year. A marvelous design from the famous Friedemann Friese, this one’s a treasure.

Hallertau
Another big 2020 release was Hallertau, from design superstar Uwe Rosenberg. Much like Faiyum, it took me some time to try this one but it is excellent as well. I don’t know if it can quite displace A Feast for Odin as my favourite Rosenberg, but it’s definitely part of that conversation.

Maracaibo
And finally, I got a chance to play a slightly older release as well. Maracaibo came out in 2019 and topped many best-of-year lists, and now I can say it lives up to the hype. From the mind of Alexander Pfister, this game of privateering around the Caribbean in the 17th Century is marvellous.

Arjun Sukumaran
(Arjun is a gamer, book lover and an all-round renaissance man)