Flowers and bees

There is one genre of games where it seems I am always guaranteed to have a great time - and that is polyomino tile-laying. 😁 The latest one we played is 🏵️Flower Fields by @horribleguild . Looking at it you might think it looks just like all other such games, but there are actually several things that make Flower Fields unique. Let’s go over them! 🙃

First of all, as expected, you are trying to fill up your board as best as possible, as completed rows and columns will give you extra points. Otherwise you want to create big groups of the 4 main colors, as only the biggest one of each will be scored. ☝️ This is made quite hard by the fact that you have to begin building up your polyominoes from the bottom of your board, and can only ever place new tiles adjacent to previous tiles. The shapes cannot be mirrored, so getting well-fitting ones is crucial!

🧐Just having big contiguous areas is not enough, you also need to place Bees 🐝 into slots on the flower fields, as they act as multipliers. But that’s not all, there is a whole economy around the bees. 😉

Whenever you draft a new tile you can only choose the first one clockwise from the sun ☀️ ️ token, unless you spend bees to skip some. Also, the more bees you have on a single flower field, the more bees you have to spend to place a new one. You can also buy useful 1x2-size tiles for 2 bees. So managing your pool of bees is quite important!

One of the actions you can choose is to take 2 bees from the central board (if there are still bees there). Otherwise you get bees as income - here it is important to have many Hive 🍯 symbols showing on your board, while covering up Cobweb 🕸️ symbols. Another piece of puzzle for your polyomino laying endeavours. 😄

Those are the most important things covered. The game itself is divided into 3 rounds, where players take turns until all of the dealt tiles are taken. This is followed by cleanup and income. After the 3rd round you score all the flower fields to see who has won! 🏆

💭If you own many tile-layers, it won’t really surprise you. But it has some nice twists and is fun to play - perfect for a cozy game night with newcomers, or even as a gift! 🙂