Autumn Games - Flowerpower

Flowerpower by Angelika Fassauer and Peter Haluszka is a tile placement game where two players try to build the largest garden. I've had this game on my search list on eBay for a long time but couldn't find a copy for less than $50. Then, in December, I saw an unused, unpunched, buy-it-now copy for $30! Pounce.

Flowerpower is pretty similar to the last game we played, Rosenkonig, except there are no cards as a placement mechanism. Each of the one-hundred tiles has two symbols of the ten types of flowers. On your turn, you draw a tile and play it to the board. You may play a tile on your side of the board, on the green strip in the middle of the board or overlapping your side and the green strip. You may not play on your opponent's side of the board with one exception. Three times during the game you may play a tile face down (representing weeds) on your opponent's side of the board to screw up his flower beds.

The goal is to create large beds of the same type of flower. The more flowers you get into a particular bed, the more points you score. Both players' flower beds can extend into the green area. which means you want to play as many tiles as you can in the green area early so that you'll get to play more tiles than your opponent. But be careful, for if your opponent connects into one of your beds and has more of that flower bed on his side of the board, he'll score the entire thing and you'll get nothing. 

Scoring is based on the number of flowers per bed. You need at least 3 flowers to score 1 point, up to 4 points for having 10 or more flowers. You play until neither player can play a tile, then add up the scores.

Blocking your opponent from flower beds in the green area is important.

Flowerpower was fun and oddly relaxing. There's not a huge amount of strategy, but making sure your opponent doesn't take over any of your flower beds does lead to some clever plays. You also need to optimize play on your side of the board and watch for opportunities to place blocking weeds on your opponent's beds.

The final result.

Carol and I each managed to create exactly eleven flower beds. She had two four point beds, while mine maxed out at two points. This gave her the advantage.

Final scores:

Carol    20
Ipecac  18