Game: Garten des Sonnenkönigs, der

Thread: Re: a good game with slight material challenges

zefquaavius — 2008-05-03T15:08:44+00:00

Er, I should note that this is the 2000 Noris Spiele edition.

Thread: a good game with slight material challenges

zefquaavius — 2008-05-03T12:42:20+00:00

Der Garten des Sonnenkönigs (The Garden of the Sun King) is an auction game with a financial goal, but with the reward for your investment being based on unusual, and overlapping areas on the board. The placement of these same areas encourages you to tweak what your bid might otherwise be, since each bid affects which site is auctioned next. This game has some very interesting interactions between its various mechanisms, and provides strange but fascinating tensions between the players. Each auction you win provides you with a little equity now, which you can use for credit on subsequent turns, if the need arises. Each auction you win probably provides you additional equity later, if the feature or features that comprise it are completed; however, the one guarantee in the game is that not every feature will be completed. Additionally, each time one or more features are completed, everyone's equity pays them its cold hard cash value, but if several features completed at once, you only get one payout, which prevents total calculation of the game. Only in the last auction or two can you have a strong confidence for the quality of an investment, and even at that there's usually still no guarantee that you're right, due to the endgame triggers.

I think a number of things could be improved with the components to increase the players' enjoyment of the game:
Some of the garden features are insufficiently clearly delineated. You can figure them out, but really, I think that is information that should be discernible at a glance.
I really would have preferred the player's possession cubes to be flat, luminescent, translucent markers, so you can more easily see that a space is taken when moving the big auctioneer dude (its thematic name escapes me) and sliding it past the completed spaces. You could also slightly more easily see to whom a space belongs, and you would also not be obscuring the already difficult-to-discern garden features with opaque markers - albeit tiny ones.
It would be nicer for the equity markers (again, thematic name escapes me) to have sizes congruent with their values, or be marked with numerals or pips to show their values.
The twitchy, I-move-with-every-bid character is a constant difficulty. Because as the board fills, the two pawns less often start on the same space, it gets increasingly challenging to figure out the current bid and/or be sure everybody moved that guy when they increased the bid. I think the simplest solution would be to have a "zero" chip you put under him when a new auction is about to start. This marks his starting space for that auction, the zero bid. Then you can fairly easily count spaces from the zero to him.
I'd have liked the dishes to be better marked as a dept receptacles, because when even halfway through the game, some new players still want to put their stuff by default into their handy dish, something is wrong.

All that said, I am rather fond of the louis d'or coins and the debt dishes, and the game engine charms me a bit. My prolix list of material complaints are actually fairly minor gripes, although each detracted a little more from the game.

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Haffner — 2007-07-05T21:55:56+00:00

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diemacher — 2006-07-21T01:49:37+00:00

Le Jardin - Original Bambus Version

Thread: Session Report

PBrennan — 2004-02-18T22:28:17+00:00

It’s a perpetual auction game of plots of land that are really hard to value, as their worth is determined by how soon surrounding plots of land are auctioned off and that’s largely out of your hands. But given it’s a rich get richer game, winning stuff early seems good. We all rated it a 6 or so, ok to play, but nothing really sparkly to make it stand out. Like all auction games, you probably need to play with gamers who know the game inside out to make it shine, but it just didn’t seem varied or interesting enough to want to get to that point.

Thread: Re:General Comment

heli — 2004-02-16T02:40:00+00:00

Note: above comment applies to Le Jardin edition.

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Aldie — 2003-02-26T01:58:30+00:00

Thread: Session Report

Deleted User 1 — 2003-01-09T19:18:10+00:00

After Elfenland came Der Garten des Sonnenkonigs. This game has made a few appearances in the last few sessions of the Terminal City Gamers. It's a bit of a brain burner, but the fact that the game has no luck is appealing to our group. This game included Jy, Sean, Ryan and Mikey.

The game ended with all four players in close contention - Mikey came out with the win.

Score:

*Mikey* - 71
Jy – 68
Ryan – 66
Sean - 57

Ratings:

Mikey - 6
Jy - 7
Ryan - 9
Sean - 7

Comments:

Mikey - "Fun bidding/placement mechanic, but good as a game?"
Jy – "Can't get my head around it. Same as Mikey - good fun, but how do you win?"
Ryan – "No luck makes the game good - tons of control"
Sean – "Not enough early cash (no jewels in the first payout"

Thread: Session Report

Deleted User 1 — 2003-01-09T19:16:34+00:00

After playing this game at the Tuesday Night Splinter Group, I brought it again to the regular session to see if I could round up a few players for a game. And I did – the players were Jy, Jeff, Bonnie, Ryan and me. I was the only veteran.

The learning of the game went much smoother this time as I could teach from experience. With the last game it took a while before everyone got the hang of it but this game everybody figured it out pretty quickly. Well, except for Jeremy – he seemed to get confused as to which square we were bidding on even though that square has a huge orange token on it. It seems that he was basically bidding on whatever square he wanted. Not!

Jeff was the master of the first part of the game, accumulating gems pretty quickly. But towards the end of the game, Jy almost caught up. Jeff came out with the win.

Score:

*Jeff* – 50
Jy – 48
Rick – 39
Bonnie – 35
Ryan – 29

Ratings:

Jeff – 8
Jy – 8
Rick – 7
Bonnie – 7
Ryan – 8

Ratings for the Cute Little Plastic Dishes that come with the Game:

Jeff – 3 (Couldn’t handle a cigarette)
Jy – 4 (Compared to the Andromeda Cosmic Puck)
Rick – 2 (Not enough player interaction)
Bonnie – 6
Ryan – No Rating

We all liked the game. It’s a fairly simple game, but still a bit of a thinker.

Thread: Session Report

Deleted User 1 — 2002-11-08T16:42:08+00:00

I’ve had this game sitting on my shelf for a while. I’ve been bringing it to the last couple of regular sessions of the group, but have been having a hard time convincing the group to play the game (Andrew Nick’s comment: ‘I’m not playing a game with a Fop on the cover!”).

I brought the game to the Tuesday night group and they were amenable to giving it a try. It really is a fairly simple bidding game, but there is some depth to it that makes it interesting.

The players were Joe, Shari, Westley and me. None of us had played the game before. Joe figured out what was going on fairly quickly and won the first few auctions while the rest of us were still trying to figure how much to bid. In those auctions, Joe won a number of blue stones which put him in good stead for the rest of the game. By the time the rest of us got the hang of what was going on, Joe had a substantial lead. He ended up winning the game with me a distant second.

Score:

*Joe* - 138
Rick – 84
Shari – 54
Westley – 36

Ratings:

Joe – 8
Rick – 7
Shari – 6
Westley – 5

Comments:

Joe – “A lot of depth.”
Rick – “Good game.”
Shari – “I was extremely confused most of the game.”
Westley – “A lot of potential but just didn’t like it.”

Comments on the Cute Little Plastic Dishes that come with the Game:

Joe – “Didn’t get to use it.”
Rick – “They’re okay.”
Shari – “The plastic is thin.”
Westley – “No comment.”

The game is defiantly a thinking game, and now that we have a learning game under our belts, I think the next game will be much closer. Maybe we’ll try it again next Tuesday and see how it goes.

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David Vander Ark — 2002-10-07T05:27:26+00:00

Thread: General Comment

BoardGameGeek — 2002-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

No longer available, published 2000 as 'Der Garten des Sonnenkönigs' by Noris-Spiele

Thread: General Comment

BoardGameGeek — 2002-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

This is yet another auction game, with some similarity to Hans im Gluck's old Canaletto. But I much prefer this game. Basically, you auction a series of plots of land. The neat twist is that players who own plots receive income whenever a garden feature covering several plots is completed.

The REAL trick is that the amount of a bid determines which plot is auctioned next. And cash flow is SO critical to this game that order of completion of the various features is very important. One of the few auction games I've seen that emphasizes cash flow so strongly.

And the ceramic flowerpot saucers in the Bambus homemade version helps.

Thread: Session Report

BoardGameGeek — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Der Garten des Sonnenkönigs is Günter Cornett's latest
incarnation of Le Jardin. Once you've got your head round it, it's neat. The board shows a garden overlaid with a square grid. Features in the garden occupy multiple squares. Each turn a square is auctioned, the winner gaining control of the square and the first gem (value 1, 2 or 3) from the square. Other gems are collected when the last square of a feature is sold. This also triggers income, with players gaining the value of the gems they currently hold. Most money wins the game. What makes the game sneaky is that the next square to be auctioned is determined by the amount paid for the current one. This gives you several things to think about in each auction. Clever stuff.