A German-style Trick-taker about building a glorious garden with gnomes!

For centuries, in the thick cover of the woods, gnomes have settled their quarrels over a game of Wunder Garten. These conflicts may be as serious as a disagreement on a property line or as trivial as to who makes the best mushroom stew. In any case, Wunder Garten has been the go-to game of gloating for gnomes for as long as one can remember.

Wunder Garten is a trick-taking game that uses set-collection for scoring. Essentially players take on the role of a gnome attempting to make the most glorious garden of all. You can score points in a number of ways.

1) Bidding. Before a round begins each player must bid, using elderberry tokens, to determine how many tricks they think they will win. If a player guesses exactly the number of tricks, they will gain 3 points. If they under-bid, they lose 1 point for each bid they are off. If they fail to reach their bid, they gain ZERO points!

2) When you win a trick you may choose to keep either the winning card or a card from the meadow (community pool) to add to your personal garden (tableau). The player with the most total points in their garden at the end of the round gains 2 points.

3) There are up to 5 suits being used during play. The lower the value of the card, the more fruit it produces. This rewards players for winning tricks with lower-valued cards because another way to score points is to collect the majority of each suit type. For each majority you have the highest sum in, you gain a bonus point.

4) Finally, a player may gain an additional bonus point for collecting a card from each different suit into their personal garden.

There are other strategic choices to be made as well. When to use a Raven Card is important as it allows you to take two cards into your garden instead of one.

Before bidding takes place, each player must draft a suit to become their trump suit. Once a player has their cards in hand, and have examined them, they must choose a suit that will be most advantageous for them in that round. The suit become their personal trump suit, meaning that if they cannot follow suit during play, they can trump using any card from their chosen suit. No two players can have the same trump suit, making the game both entertaining and balanced.

Wunder Garten

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