Sanssouci

Categories: Age of Reason, Puzzle

Mechanics: Hand Management, Pattern Building, Tile Placement

Players: 2–4

Ages: 8+

Playtime: 30–45 Min

In Sanssouci, your mission is to create a stunning flower garden for the renowned Sanssouci Palace. Competing with up to three other landscape architects, you'll work on your personal garden board, where you'll design rose gardens, vineyard terraces, labyrinths, and fountains.

Each board is divided into rows and columns, with each row representing a color and each column featuring one of nine garden elements like wells or pavilions. You start with a noble at the top of each column.

Tiles are drawn from a shared supply board with five rows and two unlabeled columns. At the start of the game, ten tiles are placed, each depicting one of the nine garden elements.

On your turn, you play one of two cards from your hand, which allows you to take a tile from the supply based on the card's instructions. If you play a card that shows a garden element not present in the supply, you can take any tile. Tiles must be placed on your board in the column matching the tile’s image and the row matching the color of the tile's space. If the space is occupied, you flip the tile to show a gardener and place it in any free space in the same row or column.

After placing a tile, you can move one of your nobles along a path of placed tiles to a lower row in the same column, scoring points equal to the row reached. You then refill the supply and draw a new card.

The game concludes after 18 rounds, with bonus points awarded for completed rows and columns, as well as for the row reached by nobles in columns specified by two order cards given to each player at the start. The player with the highest score wins!