Weeds Garden Takeover
- Board's Eye View
- Jul 28
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 29
This is a game that confounded our expectations. The 3-5 players each represent a species of garden weed and, from the initial description from AW Games we were expecting it to be some sort of botanic wargame or an area control game. It's neither. Rather, this is a bidding and bluffing game with a strong mix of deduction and push-your-luck...
Weeds Garden Takeover is essentially a card game, tho' there are boards, tokens and dice. Players' boards mainly track their health: the number of lives they have before they are eliminated from the game (5 in a three-player game; 4 if you're playing with four or five players). Players have their individual deck of seven cards, values 1-6 plus a card with their special ability. They'll usually just draw one of these cards to their hand each 'day' (round) because they'll mainly be playing using 'common weed' cards dealt from a shared deck. These similarly have values 1-6, and with an even distribution of numbers, but the deck also includes a small number of cards with special effects. The size of hand is determined by the players' health and by the roll of a custom six-sided weather die. On a Rainy day, for example, everyone has two more cards in their hand. On a Windy day, players all pass two cards to their left, so when you roll that on the weather die everyone is playing with more information about the cards in play than in other rounds.
If the weather condition is Humidity, you are supposed to play with one card facing away from you so that others can see it but you can't. We're fond of bidding and deduction games where others can see what's in your hand but you can't – for example, Durian (Oink Games) – but without card racks it's a faff organising the deal so that everyone sees all but one of their cards. In addition to the weather die, a six-sided die is rolled to determine which card number is counted as matching the winning bid.
The meat of the game is the bidding. Players take turns placing their 'bid', which is essentially a prediction of the total number of cards 'in the garden' (ie: in the combined hands of all the players). So, for example, a player might bid 'four 2s'. The next bidder must bid a higher quantity, tho' not necessarily of the same or higher number, so, for example, 'five 1s' would be a valid bid. Players each have three 'tangled tokens' and they can play one to join the currently leading bid. If that bid is exceeded (another player bids a higher quantity), the previous bid is 'untangled' and the token is lost. Eventually someone will 'tug roots' and challenge the winning bid...
When a player 'tugs the roots', everyone reveals their hand to see whether or not the bid was successful (ie: the total of cards in the number bid matches or exceeds the quantity bid). If they are successful (for example, they bid five 6s and there are five or more cards of that number, including of course cards whose number matched that rolled on the die as they count towards the total), the player who challenged loses a life. If the bidder was unsuccessful (ie: they overbid), they lose a life, as does any player sharing the bid because they are 'tangled' with them.
The special power cards and players' asymmetric abilities add to the mix, as do some additional catch-up mechanic rules that are introduced when any player has two or fewer lives left on their health tracker. All together, it makes for a fun bidding and bluffing game. Some of the team at Board's Eye View complained that the gardening theme felt 'pasted on' but everyone has enjoyed pushing their luck with their expansive bids and through the interplay of their asymmetric abilities.
AW Games are planting Weeds in Kickstarter on 1 September. Click here for more details.
