Dandelions

Our first flower theme game is Dandelions which for 2-3 players.

The mechanics are fairly simple. You start the game by rolling all your dice. From this point on you can’t change your dice unless you finish your movement on the starting space in which case you re-roll all your remaining dice.

On your turn you select one of your unused dice and move that many spaces around the garden. You then ‘plant’ the dice on the garden when you end up. If you end your movement on another player’s dandelion piece then you get to move the same number of spaces again, effectively doubling your movement. You keep taking turns until all dice have been used.

The strategy is all in controlling which of your dice are planted in which garden. The gardens are numbered 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8. At the end of the game there are two elements to the scoring.

1. Sprouts – This is a simple multiplication of the number of dice in a garden and the garden’s number. E.g. Two dice in garden 1 gets you 2 points (2×1) but two dice in garden 8 gets you 16 points (2×8).

2. Seeds – This is based on who ‘controls’ each garden. The player who has the most dice in each garden controls it. If there is a tie, then you add the values on their dice and the LOWER total has control. The person controlling the garden gets points equal to the sum of their dice values in that garden.

We played it once before I explained the scoring so I could then talk through how it worked. We liked the simplicity of options on a turn but the different scoring methods definitely mean you can get quite tactical with how you use your dice. It was a quick, easy to grasp game that led to some good mathematical practice too.