{"id":3697,"date":"2005-01-30T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-01-30T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2005\/01\/30\/diegaerten-der-alhambra\/"},"modified":"2005-01-30T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-01-30T11:00:00","slug":"diegaerten-der-alhambra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2005\/01\/30\/diegaerten-der-alhambra\/","title":{"rendered":"Die\nG\u00e4rten der Alhambra"},"content":{"rendered":"

Die
\nG\u00e4rten der Alhambra<\/a><\/h2>\n

reviewed by Moritz Eggert<\/i><\/p>\n

This game has been published under the title “Karat” a couple of years ago,
\nand Queen Games has used the recent success of “Alhambra” to
\npublish this game again with beautiful artwork reminiscent of its “sister”
\ngame. But game wise this has little to do with “Alhambra”, in fact “Die
\nG\u00e4rten…” is a truly abstract tile laying game.<\/p>\n

The large game board is filled with empty, semi-octagonal spaces that surround square
\nbuilding spaces of different numerical (VP) value. These buildings are placed at random,
\nbut the values are open from the start. Each player now in turn plays one of the
\noctagonal tiles that are designed in a way that 4 of them surround a building space.<\/p>\n

Each octagon has flowers on each side, in equal quantity, but in different orders. The
\nflowers represent the player’s “influence” on the various buildings. If a
\nbuilding is surrounded by 4 octagons it is immediately scored, and the player with the
\nhighest number of flowers adjacent to the building wins the points. In the (often
\noccurring) situation that two players have the same amount of flowers present, the player
\nwith the next highest number of flowers gets full points, and the others nothing. This
\ncan even mean that a player with NO flowers present can get points (if the three other
\nplayers cancel each other out that is).<\/p>\n

These are, not even in a nutshell, the complete rules of “Die G\u00e4rten der
\nAlhambra”. \"G\u00e4rtenGame play is not as easy, as the board becomes cluttered very quickly,
\nand it is easily overlooked what repercussions each play has. The buildings at the rim of
\nthe board are attractive as they can be quickly scored, but these plans are also easily
\nfoiled by making playing a matching numbered tile easier. You can have two kinds of tiles
\nin your hand – if you draw a high one you will try to bolster your expected scoring
\nbuildings, if you have a low one you might use it to score a building by making a play
\nsafe for you but bad for the other players. Rarely you’ll have the exact tile that
\nyou need or want!<\/p>\n

The game ends after all tiles have been placed, a running score is tallied and one
\nplayer wins.<\/p>\n

The game, although physically attractive, holds one big caveat for the ambitious
\nplayer, and that lies in the fact that you are “played” by the placement of the
\nother players. In fact up to three quaters of your VP will be achieved through actions no
\nat all your doing!. As each player first of all cares for him\/herself, the placement of
\nyour own coloured flowers will very often be what you want. However, in which order the
\nOTHER 3 flower colours are placed on the tile and which players will profit from their
\nplacement is very often a result of pure chance, even if you might achieve one or two
\nnaughty and damaging plays. This is especially true in the endgame, when open spaces
\nbecome rare and tiles are simply played as they come. In the several games we played the
\nwinner was always the player who profited most from this undirected placement, in fact
\nyou could have thrown the dice instead of playing the game in a way. But it is probably
\neasy to devise variants. The game offers two: In the first variant each player has three
\navailable tiles (which gives your play a bit more of direction), in the second two
\nplayers play with each having TWO colours. The latter variant can actually be very
\nchallenging and can be full heartedly recommended to the pro-gamer, whereas the
\n“normal” game is probably more fit as a “relaxed” family game, for
\nwhich it’s easy rules make it work well.<\/p>\n

The game can be explained in less than 5 minutes, actual playing time is 45 minutes to
\nan hour.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Die G\u00e4rten der Alhambra reviewed by Moritz Eggert This game has been published under the title “Karat” a couple of years ago, and Queen Games has used the recent success of “Alhambra” to publish this game again with beautiful artwork reminiscent of its “sister” game. But game wise this has little to do with “Alhambra”, … Die
\nG\u00e4rten der Alhambra<\/span> weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spieleabende"],"views":7,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}