Flourish is the latest game from the people who created Everdell, and when this one appeared on Kickstarter last year, we were immediately drawn by its beautiful artwork!
1-7 players
20-60 minutes
Designers: James A. Wilson & Clarissa A. Wilson
Artists: April Borchelt, Dann May, Christina Qi & Naomi Robinson
Publisher: Starling Games
https://www.starling.games/
Over the course of 4 rounds, players create their own garden, filled with flowers, trees, paths and more! The rules are easy to learn, and gave me the impression of this being a very basic set collection game, with some cards scoring at the end of the round, and others at the end of the game.
But Flourish also offers a cool twist on the card drafting mechanism: each turn, you will pick one card to play, and one to give to each of your neighbours. The other three cards remain in your hand, and you start your next turn by drawing the two cards passed to you and one extra card from the top of the deck. We found the question to be more often which cards not to pass through then which card to play!
The game also comes with variants for those who prefer to play solo or co-op, and even a couple of mini-expansions with additional ways to score points (the structures you see in the pictures are part of the ‘Follies’-expansion) – After a couple of plays I couldn’t imagine playing without them anymore as the extra layer of complexity is certainly welcome for us.
Overall we really enjoyed our plays of Flourish so far, and the fact that our oldest kids (11 & 7 years old) can join in, make this one a keeper for our collection!
Tabletopping 