New Rule

Introduction: The infamous “yard-a-night” creeper: kudzu flowers might be good luck in Japanese culture, but in the Western world they’re a devastatingly invasive species. In this game, players attempt to cultivate a rich and diverse garden and keep it safe from being overrun. Self-sacrifice will keep the kudzu down, and players must weigh their own loss against the community’s gain very carefully, for every kudzu vine that emerges threatens everyone.

Players: 2-4

Materials:

• Regular-sized bags of identically-shaped, multicolored candies (such as M&Ms or Skittles), at least two bags per player. Ensure that the colors include red.
• A bag or hat to hold the candies for random drawing.

Setting Up: Place all the candies into the bag. Each player draws ten from the bag and places them in front of them, setting aside all red candies into a central pile. The player who drew the most red candies goes first; play proceeds to the left.

How to Play: Players tend their garden – the candies in play in front of them — by removing unwanted colors and acquiring desired colors. Their gardens may become littered with kudzu – red candies — as the game progresses. Also, the red candies in the center represent the common garden, and the candies there affect all players. Each turn, the active player calls out a color they wish to gain and draws a random candy from the bag. Based on their draw they taking the corresponding action:

• The player draws the color he or she named: Success! The player adds the candy to their garden and eats one of the red candies in their garden or the common garden.
• The player draws a different color that the one he or she named, but not red: Partial success. They add the candy to their garden and may choose whether or not to do the following: they may eat one of their own non-red candies to eat a red candy from their garden or the common garden.
• The player draws a red candy: Failure! The must add the kudzu to their garden and end their turn.

The Kudzu Grows: Play proceeds in rounds with each player taking one turn per round. At the end of the round, the kudzu in the common garden grows. Each player draws one candy at random from the bag. If they draw a red candy, they add it to the common garden. If they draw any other color, they return it to the bag.

Winning the Game: Play continues until all the candies have been drawn from the bag. Final gardens are scored like so: each color represents a different kind of plant, and the player with the most of a particular color in their garden is the top grower for that type. They score points equal to the difference between their garden’s abundance and the next highest player’s abundance. For example: At game end, Player 1 has ten yellow candies, Player 2 has six, and Player 3 has two. Player 1 is therefore the Top Yellow Grower and scores four points, or the difference between his ten yellow candies and Player 2’s six yellow candies. Ties are worth zero points.

After the gardens have been tallied, all the kudzu candies in the common garden are divided equally among the players (set aside remainders out of play). For every two red candies a player holds after this dispersal, the player loses one point.

Best combined point score wins!

Tags: Game Design //