Available for demo games at SPIEL 2016 ahead of its scheduled release in 2017.
Each year Vernon Cabbagehead, Mr. Cabbagehead to his friends (who will be played by you), wants to be left in peace to grow his award winning vegetable garden for the annual Garden Club contest, but his tedious neighbors bother him so much that he needs to go on holiday to the beach several times during the summer months just to get away from them. When he is gone his neighbors drop by to “help themselves” to the garden produce. Can Mr. Cabbagehead succeed with his garden dreams and finally win the blue ribbon - all the while keeping his tiresome neighbors away?
In Mr. Cabbagehead's Garden, you will be placing vegetable cards in a grid of six cards by three cards, this being your garden plot. Of the 18 possible positions you will, by the end of the game, have at most 15 cards placed. The game is played in three phases:
1. The “Mr. Cabbagehead plants vegetables in the garden while his neighbors peer over the fence at him and make tedious and tiresome comments.” Phase
Deal the top three cards of the vegetable deck face up in front of you in a row. The leftmost card costs 1 Bee to plant (place one of the Bee tokens from your supply on the Beehive. If you do not have any Bees, you may not choose this card). The center card does not cost any Bees and is free to plant. The rightmost card can be planted for free as well, and as a bonus, you may take one of the Bees from the Beehive and add it to your supply (If Bees are not available on the Beehive you may not choose this card).
When planting the card you may place it anywhere in your garden plot. You may remove a card already in the plot and plant the new card in that position.
Cards may not otherwise be moved once planted. The grid of garden plot cards does not have fixed borders until the 6th card in a row is placed and/or the 3rd card in a column.
Of the two remaining drawn cards, locate the card with the highest Neighbor number. Draw a number of Tedious Neighbor tokens from the token area equal to the Tedious number on this card and place the drawn token(s) on the matching Tedious Neighbor card. Then place these two remaining cards off to one side. They will not be used again.
Repeat this phase until 15 cards have been drawn, 5 have been planted, and the On Vacation card is showing on top of the vegetable deck. Remove the On Vacation card and go to Phase 2.
2. The “Oh those vegetables look ripe! Be a shame to let the birds get them while Mr. Cabbagehead is on holiday. Maybe I should just pop over and grab a few for myself.” Phase
Whichever Tedious Neighbor card has the most tokens on it will determine which neighbor takes a vegetable card from the garden plot. The removed vegetable is placed off to once side and not used again, and all Tedious Neighbor tokens are shuffled back into the supply with their On Vacation side facing up.
The 1st and 2nd Phase will alternate until all 45 vegetable cards have been dealt and 15 cards have been planted (If you or your neighbors have removed cards during Phases 1 and 2 there may be fewer than 15 cards in your garden plot at this point).
3. The “Ms. Eudora Brassica and the Garden Club arrive to judge Mr. Cabbagehead’s garden for the annual Blue Ribbon Garden Contest.” Phase
Scoring of the garden plot now takes place. Vegetables only score if they are orthogonally adjacent to other matching vegetable cards. No single vegetables score any points.
For each vegetable type, the score equals: the point value x number of adjacent matching cards
For each vegetable you have removed from the garden plot subtract 2 points. Score each set of adjacent vegetables and then apply any Awards of Merit as shown on the back of Eudora’s card, adding them to your total.
You may score one or more awards if your garden plot matches the specific award requirements.
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