Take a sip of this Euro-game

Designer Tomas Holek came into the board gaming scene really strong last year with not one, not two, but three big titles! 💪 Now we have finally played 🍵 Tea Garden from Huch! Games and Albi, the final one we haven’t tried before. 

On first sight the game looks pretty straightforward: There is a single main resource to manage (tea leaves 🍂) and there are just a handful of simple actions you can do. However the action selection links all these up in a very clever way, and creates an engaging and crafty game. I guess you could call Tea Garden a mid-weight euro.

To do an action on your turn, you have to play one or more cards from your hand into one of your slots. 🧐 The strength of the action is determined by the sum of the numbers on the played cards, but that’s not all! You have to choose which card goes on top and its symbol also has an additional effect; either triggering a secondary action, or giving you icons needed for future actions. 👍

Like I said the actions themselves aren’t complex: Build new tea gardens 🏯 for tea leaf income; Buy new cards 🃏 to improve your deck or sell tea to caravans 🐪, both requiring tea leaves. Then the secondary actions: Moving up the river ⛵, advancing in the tea-university 🏫, or collecting special tea cups 🍵 - all of them give you some kind of immediate bonus and end-game points. And while these might be simple, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The actions neatly overlap in costs or effects, which makes you think about what to do and in what order.

Managing your hand of cards is a constant fun factor. You get 4 cards every round, and there are a maximum of 4 turns in a round. You also most often have to play multiple cards to reach the required strength, so you can easily run out of cards. Buying cards and triggering card draw effects is thus quintessential.

In summary, Tea Garden should keep you busy with a constant flow of decisions, but it’s never overly heavy or complicated. The elegant gameplay is accompanied by a wonderful color palette that is a joy to look at, which amplifies the fun. 😉