Spring

The grass is growing, the flowers are blooming… SPRING is here – at least on the tabletop!

Spring is a game in the “4 Seasons” line designed by siblings Maria Blasco and Enrique Blasco. All of them are for just two players, ages 8 and up, and take 10-15 minutes to play. Devir publishes the whole 4 Seasons lineup; we’ve previously reviewed Winter.

How to Play

Spring is played over two phases. In the first, “My little gardens!”, each player tries to make many groups in their chosen color in a shared garden. In the second phase, “My big garden!”, you’ll make a private garden and try for the largest group in your color.

Start the game with a single card face up on the table. The first player draws from the pile, and lays it on top of the first card, overlapping 1-2 matching sections. Then, the second player chooses their color for the game: red or white.

Little Gardens

Both players take a short fence, a long fence, and the two flowerpot tokens in their assigned color. They take turns drawing a card, then laying it.

Place the card in the same orientation as the other cards on the table. It must cover at least one existing card space. All the flowers that are covered must match with the flowers that are placed to cover them.

The goal in this half of the game is to create small gardens of 2+ flower spaces. A player can also place a fence at the end of their turn, to break up a larger garden into two smaller parts; or a flowerpot to convert a rival space into their own color. Placing a fence or a flowerpot also “locks in” the section it’s on – it can no longer be overlapped by future cards.

Once all 18 cards have been played, each player counts the number of gardens (2+ spaces) in their color. Write this score down for later!

Private Garden

Now players take turn removing cards from the common garden to add to their own individual garden. They can only take cards that aren’t overlapped in any way. If there are one ore more items on the card, players must take any fences (negative points) and give away any flowerpots to their opponent.

In this phase, each player is trying to make a big, connected garden in their color. They’re also trying to minimize number of unconnected spaces in their color, and the number of gardens (2+ connected spaces) in their opponent’s color.

At the end of this phase, players can place any flowerpots they have been given, anywhere on their private garden.

Scoring

Once all the cards have been taken from the middle of the table, it’s time to score!

Each player adds their first phase points to their phase 2 garden size. Then they subtract 1 point for each unattached flower of their own color, 1 point for each “garden” in their opponent’s color, and 1 point for each fence they were forced to take.

Impressions

I’ve played all the games available so far in the 4 Seasons series: Winter, Autumn, and now Spring. I love the simple but attractive illustrations on each. And the small box makes it easy to throw in a pocket or purse.

Both Winter and Spring have a two-phase style of gameplay: slowly add cards to a central area, then take them away.

In Winter, this symbolizes the ice growing, then melting (and occasionally re-freezing).

In Spring, I guess it’s supposed to symbolize all the plants growing, but then being transplanted to a private garden? I’m not sure, but it creates an interesting puzzle as you flip from the “lots of little gardens” goal of the first phase to the “rebuild and connect everything” goal of the second phase.

However, I can’t escape the feeling that scoring is too complicated in Spring. You have to keep track of your points from the first half, as well as the several ways to lose points in the second half. It’s a lot of math for a relatively quick and simple strategy game.

All of the ways you can lose points add just a little bit more friction than I’m looking for, especially in a quick two player game. Although I love the sunshine and the new growth, I think I will stick with Winter for now.

If you want to add some Spring to your life, get it directly from Devir Games, find it on Amazon, or at your friendly local game store.

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The Family Gamers received a promotional copy of Spring from Devir for this review.

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