Wade
United States
Pueblo
Colorado
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So the title may contradict itself as your wife may not want to trade your children for this game, but after you make the trade she’ll really be glad she did.
I was fortunate enough to come across a copy of this rare gem this weekend. I was introduced to Flowerpower by a friend in Denver during our lunch gaming sessions. The horror on my face as two grown men sat down to play this at a busy Downtown Denver Café must have been pretty visible. After my first game I was hooked as I recognized the potential for a great “wife game”.
Back in my Denver days I borrowed it from a friend for a long spell and my wife and I loved it. He took it back, said I could ”have the game”….Hooray!!!!
Then he lost it in a move….. arghhhh.
I purchased a copy this weekend of this gem and we played it again last night (twice, wifes request). How did I find a copy? Can’t tell you or I’ll have to kill you.
The two games reminded me why I really like this game, and it's not just because it’s a great “wife game”.
Flowerpower is an abstract tile tying game that plays in about 30-40 minutes. Each player has a grid or garden in front of them and then there is one communal area that both players can play on with certain rules.
Gameplay: draw a tile (each tile has two different flower types on it) and place it on your grid/garden: that’s it. The backside of each tile is a “weed” that can be placed in your opponent’s garden to wreak havoc. It’s is an optional rule with my wife.
Scoring? Connect like flower types orthogonally, score VP for sets of 3,6, and 10 (1, 2, 4 VPs respectively). So 4-5 long plots do nothing extra for you and can be quite frustrating.
That’s sounds pretty simple and dumb!
You’d think so, right? Wrong. The game is deceptively simple, elegant and down right fun. It’s not just the pretty game you sucker your wife into playing, it’s a fun game too.
How could you design a better game for most wives?
Theme: What women (or person for that matter) doesn’t like flowers? To me its also an economic maximization/civ building game too. I start to really care about my flower types and arrange them in a pleasing and economically valuable manner.
Board: The board is beautiful and colorful, the scoring track is a bunch of flowers around the edge and they’re not even numbered (so noone really loses you just have fewer flowersJ. The game plays out differently each time, and it just looks good. I don’t know about your significant other but my wife likes to organize, and she gets a delight form a nicely organized plots of buttercups, roses, and poppies. The game also rewards organization, as wasted squares in your grid mean less tile placements and less points.
Competition: Wives generally don’t like the extreme competition games, and
Flowerpower is perfect in that respect. You are both playing solitaire, but must be aware of the distribution of the tiles. When you add weeds then you are acutely aware of your opponents garden and how to wronk them out of the big 10 plot of Asters. FP is a nice ‘experience” and can be pleasant or mean, or some combination of the two. My wife loves Dr. Mario and Tetris so this is a natural fit. Its also light enough that you can have a conversation around moves as well, another plus in my book.
Gameplay: Here’s where this game shines. It has a hypnotic simplicity and elegance I really enjoy. At first it was just a game I could play with my wife. A year later when I found it at a friends house and begin teaching it, I realized it’s a pretty darn good game. The distribution of the tiles is important, making use of the communal area so you can save valuable spaces in your own garden is important, the timing of the weed tiles is crucial, waiting for the right tile creates agonizing choices whether to go for that big 10 plot or score numerous small plots of the same type. Creating your garden to leave gap between two different flower types and finding just the right tile that scores BOTH patches is rewarding. You also have to make some important decisions throughout the game. It’s usually much easier to score many small plots but the 10+ plot really scores big and it’s something fun to shoot for and pull off. There’s also something comical and amusing talking smack during a flower themed game.
All people are different as are all wives but after a few years on BGG it seems many wives have similar characteristics to my own wonderful woman. She loves this game, and usually it’s her that requests a rematch. During lunch when I told her I was writing this review she told me she was really happy I had finally obtained the game, so that says a lot. Now my last mission is to convenience her that placing political influence in Twilight Struggle is exactly like placing flowers, except that the whole world is your garden.
 ADD Recap:
The game is attractive, fast, fun, strategic, interesting, and replayable. I can’t imagine any women not liking it, nor any gamer not liking it if they can get past the Flower Theme. It offers something for the serious gamer and light gamer as well. Beg, plead, buy, steal, abscond, or trade to get this wonderful gem.
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I will not rest until Biblios is in the Top 100.
United States
Budd Lake
New Jersey
Well I been watchin' while you been coughin, I've been drinking life while you've been nauseous, and so I drink to health while you kill yourself and I got just one thing that I can offer... Go on and save yourself and take it out on me
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Not fair man. I really want a copy of this. Who wants to trade me one?
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Shhh!!! You're supposed to say that it sucks so that it's more likely I'll be able to trade for it without trading away, like, my car or something.
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Sterling Babcock
United States
Colorado
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Agreed. Fun game. My wife and I tend to like playing a "nice" version, where we do not use the weeds. It makes for a relaxing lunchtime game.
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Wade
United States
Pueblo
Colorado
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Exactly! No weeds unless she starts it
I want to show it to my wargame buddies to make for an interesting session report. I'd imagine we'd up the numer of allowable weeds in those games 
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Betty Egan
Canada
Kingston
Ontario
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I own Flower Power and I don't enjoy playing it at all! For me, it's boring and I don't like the "flowery" theme and artwork. Although I'm a wife, I'm the gamer in my family and I prefer heavier games like Funkenschlag, Caylus, Twilight Struggle, or Tichu for something lighter. Flower Power doesn't do it for me. My 11 year old daughter likes it.
So I'd be willing to trade my copy, but I'd want something big for it...what kind of car do you drive?
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Stven Carlberg
United States
Atlanta
Georgia
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Quote: It has a hypnotic simplicity and elegance I really enjoy.
This is a great statement of the game's essential appeal.
I didn't realize it was THAT difficult to find. I think it's simply difficult to find at a bargain price. I needed a copy recently as a gift for my girlfriend's sister and was able to scare one up without much trouble for about $30.
An excellent candidate for reprinting, I'd suggest.
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Brad Weage
United States
Atlanta
Georgia
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If you are likely to play this with a grown man in a public place who might respond with horror on his face, you could always make your own board and then play this game with 2 sets of double 9 dominoes (setting aside one of each of the doubles).
I recommend faux-ivory color-dot sets, in a smaller than normal size. The colors are really critical to seeing the boundaries of the flowerbeds. A while back, I found some standard-size double 9 sets with very bright colors and made a board to match that size. (More often they are pastel, though I have seen a set with very dark and shiny colors, which were hard to distinguish.) My domino-based set is reasonable for home use - but not practical for carrying to a cafe, where shines the smaller size of the game as published. I've found some really tiny color-dot double 9 sets, but they seem just too small for me, though no doubt usable if you are a fan and want a very portable set. I've found a very nice set, but unfortunately a double 6 set, in a size that is barely smaller than the published version. If I ever see double nines in that size I will probably pick up a couple just for making a travel version of this game.
I've often toyed with the idea of leaving in both of each doubles pair but putting a track on one side of the board that would somehow affect scoring. Maybe 3 places that indicate that all beds of the matching flowers are considered to have one more flower, 4 unadjusted, and 3 where they count at one less. The first of each double must be placed on that track. Only the second can be placed in the main play area. NOTE: the game does not need anything else added, but it seemed like worth an experiment as a way to use up the extra doubles.
You could just use the extra doubles to replace the butterfly - set them to the side and flip face down during final scoring. (This tracking is less necessary with dominoes where you can simply go in numerical order.) If you can find good matched domino sets in two different tile colors, you could swap one set of doubles and make two games, one for yourself and one for a friend.
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Julie Taylor
Canada
Waterloo
ON
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I didn't realize this was hard to find. There's a couple of copies at my FLGS for $20. Is it out of print or something?
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1Wif wrote: I didn't realize this was hard to find. There's a couple of copies at my FLGS for $20. Is it out of print or something?
Buy me one, I'll reimburse you!
Seriously!!!
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William Crispin
United States
Wilmington
Massachusetts
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1Wif wrote: I didn't realize this was hard to find. There's a couple of copies at my FLGS for $20. Is it out of print or something?
It is fairly hard to find now and has been out of print for a few years. My guess is that it is running $40-$50 on EBay but copies do not show up often.
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tim Tim TIm TIM TIMMY!!
Costa Rica
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Great review. Any game the wife will play rocks, is what I like to say. I gotta add this to my wish list, the more games one can have the wife wants to play , the better ones life is by my way of thinking.
Thanks for sharing , no kids but we have volunteers in our botanical garden, wonder if I could trade one of them for a copy of this  !
I just like the name. I thought it was a game about hippies I tell you
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Adam Alleman
United States
Denver
Colorado
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1Wif wrote: I didn't realize this was hard to find. There's a couple of copies at my FLGS for $20. Is it out of print or something?
I'll buy the second one. Please. Seriously.
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Peter Hein
Netherlands
Delft
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Great review. It's indeed a game with a high 'wife-potential'. It's an overlooked game in that genre. I've played it more than 150 times with mine, and we're still not tired of it. We do play with the weeds; that does give it an edge.
I thought I read a while ago that Kosmos was about to re-release it with a Christmas theme (where the flowers are supposedly replaced by presents), but I can't find any info on that anymore.
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Eddy Richards
Scotland
Allanton
Berwickshire
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I'm amazed there haven't been floods of offers of first (or second) born children in exchange for copies of this. I'd go for it, but I think the shipping charges might be prohibitive!
Eddy
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Wade
United States
Pueblo
Colorado
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spellengek wrote: Great review. It's indeed a game with a high 'wife-potential'. It's an overlooked game in that genre. I've played it more than 150 times with mine, and we're still not tired of it. We do play with the weeds; that does give it an edge.
I thought I read a while ago that Kosmos was about to re-release it with a Christmas theme (where the flowers are supposedly replaced by presents), but I can't find any info on that anymore.
Xmass theme, yuck thats horrible. A lot of the appeal is the theme, plus its nice and colorful.
Thanks for the kind words on the review. My wife suggested we play again last night, two more games!! She regained her old edge and I was clobbered both games.
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Gary Heidenreich
United States
Milwaukee
Wisconsin
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It is my favorite of the Kosmos 2-player series. I think I picked it up off of Sterling's recommendation a few years ago. Picked it up from overseas and it was quire pricey for a small box ($45), but it was worth it.
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Julie Taylor
Canada
Waterloo
ON
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Sorry to all of you whose hopes I raised, I went to the store this morning and they didn't have it. In my mind's eye I can see it sitting on the shelf right with the other Kosmos two player games, but I was wrong. I must be on drugs.
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1Wif wrote: Sorry to all of you whose hopes I raised, I went to the store this morning and they didn't have it. In my mind's eye I can see it sitting on the shelf right with the other Kosmos two player games, but I was wrong. I must be on drugs.
Once again, foiled by drug addiction! :: shakes fist at drugs ::
Well, thank you for looking!
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Jeff M
United States
Winter Park
Florida
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Argh, look at I started! I think this one was off the radar until I put it on the request geeklist for a relatively recent math trade. Someone (sos1) actually had a copy and put it into the math trade.
It traded... the person receiving it traded away 350 geek gold (exactly $50 at current exchange rate) for it, and the sos1 who traded away his Flowerpower received Fire whose BGG price history is between $50-100.
I too hope it's reprinted, possibly even with a different theme
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William Crispin
United States
Wilmington
Massachusetts
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I do enjoy the game and I am actually looking for a 2nd copy for a friend. Having said that and amidst all of the joy about this game, I have to say that it is not really under rated. It is fun but I find it slow and almost dull until the latter half of the game. It can feel very tactical with planning from the start not really rewarding you. It feels between a 6.5 and 7 in my view and the theme, supposed WAF, and OOP status tend to elevate it beyond the core mechanics.
My wife likes it but I think we agree it is outside of the top 1/3 of the games in the two player Kosmos series we have both played.
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