Samurai Gardener Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
  • Components breakdown
• Standard rules
  • Setup
  • Flow of the game
  • A round
    • House building restrictions
  • Scoring rules
    • Basic points
    • Bonus points
    • Example
• Game end - victory conditions
• Optional rule: Specialist rule
  • Setup
  • During the round
    • Example

Components

• Cards
  • 64 building cards
  • 2 score cards
  • 5 specialist cards
  • 1 summary card
• Markers
  • 5 score markers (one in each colour)
  • 20 specialist markers

Components breakdown

Building cards. Each building card is divided into a 2x3 grid, and each grid square represents either a floor, tatami, pond or garden.

Score cards. One card has the numbers 0-14, and the other has the numbers 15-29. These are used to keep track of the players' points.

Specialist cards. These are only used if you decide to apply the optional specialist rules (they're not used in the standard rules). Printed on each specialist card is "floor", "tatami", "pond" and "garden". You place the specialist markers on these spaces to keep track of what each player can score this round.

Standard rules

Setup

1. Place the two score cards beside each other (0-14, 15-29).
2. Each player selects a colour and places their score marker of that colour on the '0' space on the score card. Any remaining score markers are not used in the game.
3. Shuffle the building cards and place them face down in the middle of the play area.
4. The Specialist cards aren't used in the standard game, so put them back in the box.
5. The player who most recently sat on Tatami (or carpet) is the start player.
6. The start player deals one building card to each player.
7. Each player places their building card face up in front of them. It must be placed vertically. This, and other cards placed beside it, form each player's "house".

Flow of the game

This game is played over several rounds that continue until the end game condition is met.

A round

One round consists of these five steps.

1. The start player draws as many building cards from the deck as there are players, and lines them up beside the deck. For example, in a 4 player game, 4 cards would be lined up.
2. All players place their hands on their own laps. When everyone is ready, the start player says "hajime!" (begin!)
3. Players all grab a building card from the line they want and place it onto their house, following the house building restriction rules.

House building restrictions

When you add a building card to your house, you must observe these restrictions:

• The card you add must be put either beside or overlapping an earlier card in your house. Also, it must be placed vertically.
• If it's placed beside an earlier card, it must be placed so that at least one square on the card is adjacent to a square on the earlier card. Diagonally does not count as adjacent.
• If placed to partly overlap an earlier card, at least one square on the card must overlap another square on an earlier card.
• Additional rule when overlapping: When you place a card so that it overlaps earlier card(s) in your house, you are not allowed to place it so that it covers all or part of a row or column of 3 or more squares of the same type. It doesn't matter what kind of card you are covering it with, it's simply not allowed. In the example below, the player already has a 3-row of garden squares, so he is not allowed to cover any of those garden squares up with the new card.

Example: The player's house contains a row of three garden squares. The diagram shows a new card that can be placed in one position (not covering the 3-row of gardens) but not in another position (where it would cover garden squares of that row).

4. When all players have placed their building card, they earn points depending on what they managed to build. Look at the chart below to determine what points are gained. The points should be shown by advancing your marker on the score cards.

Scoring rules

Basic points

If the player managed to create, with the card he laid...

• ...a row or column of 3 squares of the same type: 1 point
• ...a row or column of 4 squares of the same type: 2 points
• ...a row or column of 5 squares of the same type: 4 points

• A row or column of 6 squares or more of the same type yields no points.
• If the player created several rows and/or columns at the same time, he scores for all of them. For example, if the player made a 3-column and a 3-row of gardens with the same card, he'd score 1 point for the row and 1 for the column, totalling 2.

Bonus points

• If the player managed to create scoreable rows/columns of 2 types with his card: 2 points
• If the player managed to create scoreable rows/columns of 3 types with his card: 4 points
• If the player managed to create scoreable rows/columns of all 4 types with his card: 6 points

• For example, if the player managed to make one column of one type and two rows of two other types, that would count as 3 types and would yield him 4 points.
• Several rows/columns of the same type count as just one type for this bonus.

Example

A player's house looks like a cluster of cards from the previous round (including a row of garden/tatami squares, pond squares and tatami squares). The card he grabbed for this round is floor/gard, floor/pond, tatami/tatami. He decides to cover up two of his tatami squares and place the card to form the new layout.

Now he scores. With the card he placed, he gets:

1. one row of 4 garden squares: +2 points
2. one row of 3 pond squares: +1 point
3. one row of 3 tatami squares: +1 point
4. bonus +4 points for doing rows/columns of three different types.

Total +8 points

5. The player to the left of the start player becomes the new start player, who begins a new round.

Game end - victory conditions

When one of the below happens, the game ends:

a) When you cannot draw building tiles from the deck. b) When any player reaches 25 points or above. Finish the current scoring, and then the game ends.

The player with most points wins. In case of a tie, all tied players win.

Optional rule: Specialist rule

The specialist rule adds the following to the basic rules:

Setup

During setup, give players a specialist card, and place a specialist marker on each of the four sections on each card.

During the round

The scoring rules change according to the following (everything else remains the same as the standard rules):

• In order to score a row/column of a certain type, the player must have a specialist marker on that section of his specialist card. If he doesn't have a specialist marker on the corresponding section on his specialist card, he doesn't score for that row/column.
• Whenever a player scores a row/column, he removes the specialist marker from the corresponding section on his specialist card.
• When a player's specialist card has no more markers on it, the player immediately takes 4 markers from the stock and places them on his specialist card, one marker per section. This may happen in the middle of a scoring round. It also means that the player is free to choose in which order he scores his rows/columns if scoring several.
• If the player creates two rows/columns of the same type, he will normally only score for one of them, as the specialist marker is removed from his specialist card as soon as he has scored the first. The only way to score for two rows/columns of the same type is if scoring the first results in the specialist card having no markers left; in which case the player immediately regains 4 markers and can proceed to scoring the second row/column.
• In order to get the bonus points, a player must have succeeded in scoring for the row/columns. Even if he created 3 rows/columns, if he only managed to score for one of them, he will get no bonus points.

Example

A player's house looked like a stack of cards from the previous round. The card he is to place is pond/floor, pond/pond, gard/tatami. He decides to cover up two squares of a previous card to get a new layout.

Now it's time to score. For the card he placed he gets:

1. One column of 3 ponds. He removes his marker from 'pond' and gets +1 point.
2. One row of 3 gardens, but he had no marker on 'garden' on his specialist card: +0 points.
3. He created 2 rows/columns, but scored only 1 of them, so he gets no bonus points.

Totalling +1 points.