Babylon Gardens
Babylon Gardens Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Contents
The game comes with:
- 57 square tile cards of three different types
- 1 central well tile
- 24 single flower tiles: 6 tiles of each color
- 32 multi flower tiles: 8 tiles of each color
- 4 double-sided scoreboards
- 100 nectar winks: 25 winks of each color (red, green, yellow, purple)
- 30 transparent water gems
Object of the Game
Each player must fill flower tiles with water gems in order to harvest colored nectar, that will give them points at the end of the game. The player with the most points will be the winner.
Set Up
Before playing the game, you should follow these steps:
1. Separate the Tiles
Put the tiles face down in separate piles according to their backs:
- well tile
- single flower tiles
- multi flower tiles
2. Shuffle Each Pile
Shuffle each separate pile and set them aside. Also set aside the nectar winks and water gems for use during the game.
3. Choose and Set the Floor
Choose in which floor of the Babylon Gardens you want to play; if it is your first time playing you should start with the Lower Garden. Then distribute the tiles from the piles face down according to the chosen floor diagram:
Floor diagrams: the source prints one layout diagram for each floor, showing the position of every tile. The floors are: Lower Garden, Middle Garden, Higher Garden, Roof Garden, Ishtar's Garden and Tammuz's Garden. The diagrams are pictorial and are not reproduced as text here; consult the printed diagram of the chosen floor.
4. Distribute Scoreboards
Give each player a scoreboard, randomly or letting each player choose theirs. Only one side of the scoreboard will be used.
The Game
Before start, flip all the cards face up from the set floor. The game is played in turns, in clockwise order. To choose who will start the game, each player must draw a card from the multiflower pile. Whoever has the card with the most flowers starts first. for the alternative four player team mode, see "TEAM MODE". Each player's turn is divided into two phases:
I. Irrigation Phase
The player will choose a path from the central well tile and will follow that path putting a water gem in each tile in the path.
The path can be of any number of tiles, with the following limitations:
- The player CANNOT move to a diagonal tile or skip tiles. (The printed text reads "ship tiles"; "skip" is the evident intended word.)
- The player CANNOT use the same tile twice in a turn.
- The minimum length of a path is of one tile.
Diagram: a path marked FORBIDDEN (it moves diagonally, skips a tile, or reuses a tile) and a path marked ALLOWED (it moves only to orthogonally adjacent tiles, without skipping or repeating).
II. Harvesting Phase
This phase will only occur after the irrigation phase, when at least one tile is filled with as many water gems as flowers in the tile, otherwise, the phase will be skipped. The player takes the following steps with each filled tile (printed as "filled tiled"), following the order in which they were filled:
a) Removes the tile card and the water gems from the playing field, putting the card face up in a discard pile and the gems back in the supply.
b) Draws a new card from the corresponding pile and puts it face up in place of the removed card. In case there are no more cards in the pile, the discard pile is shuffled and put in place as the new pile.
c) Grabs a wink of the appropriate color and puts it in the scoreboard in the first available position, following the order indicated in the example below.
d) Repeats the steps with the next filled tile.
Example: the printed example shows a scoreboard and a spiral arrow indicating the order in which nectar winks are placed into the slots.
It is important to remember that each tile is equal to a single wink, independently of the number of flowers in the tile.
End of the Game and Winning
The game ends when a player fills his or her scoreboard. The other players' scoreboards will remain incomplete. The player with the most points when the game ends is the winner. In case of a draw, the player with the most complete scoreboard wins.
Scoring
When the game ends, each player must determine the score in their scoreboards adding the following points:
a) Fill points. Fill points are determined adding a point for every wink in the scoreboard to a maximum of 25 with a full scoreboard.
Example: the printed example shows a scoreboard with each filled slot marked with its fill-point value of 1.
b) Color points. Some slots in the board have a colored border. The color points are determined by the number of winks coinciding with the color in their slot. Each coinciding wink adds 5 points.
Example: the printed example shows a scoreboard with color-bordered slots, each coinciding wink marked 5.
c) Line points. The line points are determined by the number of same-colored winks following one of the straight lines that converge in the center of the board. Each colored wink in a line adds 5 points to the total. The center wink can be shared by many lines, adding to the score for each line. In case a five slot line is completed, the points are doubled for that line, adding 10 points for each wink instead of 5.
Example: the printed example shows a completed scoreboard with the line totals written beside each line.
The sum of all points will determine the final score of the player.
Team Mode
In this alternative game mode the players form two teams, with each team player in between the two rival players. The order of turn will be clockwise as in a normal game.
At the end of the game, the score of both players will be added together to form the team's final score.
The source shows a diagram of four players seated around a table, numbered 1 to 4, with teammates seated alternately with rivals.