Arboretum Card Game First Impressions

Build an Arboretum and make it as pretty as you can.

Get all your Tress in a row.

Arboretum is a strategy card game for 2-4 players, aged 10 and up, that combines set collection, tile-laying and hand management while playing in about 25 minutes. Players try to have the most points at the end of the game by creating beautiful garden paths for their visitors.

Arboretum Summary

So I don’t think I’ve played a game like this. It’s a tile-laying game, but with cards. Placement matters not just with numerical adjacency, but with a path connecting a ‘suit’. It’s weird how it all comes together but it works.

Topiary is about lining up vegetation, close enough right? You also score the tiles left in your hand but both of these are pushing it as comparisons.

In Isle of Skye, you’re placing tiles to build routes of roads back to your Castle, among other things. Miles apart but I just wanted a second example 🙂

That’s all I can think of that I’ve played, neither is a decent link. Oh well!

There’s a lot to think about here for such a simple game.

Not just which cards to draw but which to discard. Will you need it later? Will someone else want it? Can it be used against you? All these things and with a hand limit of 7 which seems like a lot, but really isn’t.

This ‘creating a path’ part of the game is really tricky. You’re trying to build a route of each ‘Suit’. All of them simultaneously. You try to build this long route for multiple different trees while keeping the cards in numerical order. You can split off other paths but why play 2 Fives when you can use the same one a few times?

Then after you do all that you need to hope you have a majority of cards in your hand so you can actually score the things!

Jesta ThaRogue