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Continuing our 12 part #rainbowboardgames series (created by super Instagrammer @unicorns_and_boardgames) showcasing games featuring certain colours every month, September is all about green!
As the leaves prepare to turn red and orange, we are holding on to the lush, verdant tones! Lime, olive, pea, teal, and chartreuse. Green shades symbolising the natural world, tranquillity, and good health are everywhere in board gaming. And I’m so happy about that because nature is my favourite theme!
And so here are 5 top game suggestions from David and me that put green in gold medal position for winning games to play in September!
Verdant: Favouritefoe
Flatout Games are one of my favourite publishers. And they publish one of my favourite series; Calico, Cascadia, and Verdant. Each one is a brilliant tile laying, puzzly, open drafting game that looks beautiful, and is excellent to play solo as well as multiplayer. Verdant is the latest to come out and doesn’t disappoint.
Light on rules but tricky to master, Verdant is about growing houseplants. During the game, you will create a grid of cards made up of rooms and plants. In checkerboard style, never the twain shall touch each other. But there is an essential interdependency. Plants require specific conditions to thrive, and different rooms offer a variety of sun and shade options. As such, you’ll want to surround your plants with places that suit them best. In addition to that, there are household items to place which will earn you bonus points at end game. With tools that help you to manipulate what you draft, and chonky wee green leaves to earn, you’ll be potting plants like a tabletop Titchmarsh in no time!
Ecosystem: David Ireland
This word just screams out green to me. It conjures up images of green trees, grassy fields and assorted wildlife which is exactly what this game is. Players are responsible for creating their unique ecosystem. They lay cards in front of them to try to build the highest possible scoring ecosystem. Cards are laid to create a 5 x 4 card grid so a little forward planning is required to ensure balance to the cards you are playing. Like any good ecosystem, diversity of species within it is critical to a flourishing system, and that is exactly the same in the game. Higher scores come with diversity.
I love the game play as well. Players are dealt a hand of 10 cards initially. After you play a card, you pass the cards on and receive cards from another player. This, for me, is a lot of fun. You have an element of control in what you pass on to prevent others creating their balance, however, don’t be surprised if that is also happening to you. The planning I mentioned only goes so far, however, as someone is bound to have other ideas.
A simple and relatively quick game for 2 to 6 players with a definite ending point. I’d say Ecosystem is probably best with at least 3 or more, however, each player count creates a slightly different experience which I appreciate The count up right at the end is fun as each creature/species in the game has a different method of scoring, seeing how this falls is highly amusing, and watching the scores of everyone unfold. I love it and can highly recommend giving it a play.
Living Forest: Favouritefoe
Living Forest is an explosion of vibrant greens! Taking on the role of spirits trying to save a forest home to a very sacred tree, our nemesis is Onibi who is intent on trying to burn the whole lot down. With three different ways to win, your own path to victory can be unique. Planting trees, extinguishing fires, or collecting flowers – whichever you choose, you will be victorious if you a first to gain 12.
Centred in deck building, Phase 1 sees you revealing Guardian Animals from your hand until you either decide to stop, or you push your luck too far and reveal three solitary symbols in a row. The Guardians in your Helpline are the way you gain abilities. On this basis, the temptation to keep flipping cards over is real! But if you have been canny and not bust, you’ll get to do two actions in Phase 2. If you went too far, you’ll only have one action. Will you spend tree points to plant protective trees? Will you use water points to put out fires spreading dangerously close? Will you buy another Guardian Animal to add to your deck? Or will you go for a spot around the Spirit Board which could give you a special action, as well as steal a victory tile (a wild) from another player?
Easy to learn with a light and easy to understand rule set, Living Forest is full of trade-offs and gorgeously green artwork. A game perfect for a sunny September!
Smash Up. Obligatory Cthulhu set: David Ireland
Smash up is one of those games where just about anything goes. The game has gone wild since its origin in 2012. A game for 2-4 people, players take 2 factions and smash them together to create a unique combination for each game. Players then battle it out for bases, which once broken, score the precious victory points where 15 takes victory. The faction deck is made up of minions and actions and on their turn a player plays one of each. Minions have the power to break the bases whereas actions provide other unique abilities to aid in play. However, every deck is uniquely different and offers a different play to the game. This
Obligatory Cthulhu set is without doubt one of the strangest in the game. It also has just about every shade of green spread through the 4 factions contained within it. Which isn’t all that surprising with these unique monsters, green very much springs to mind when thinking about a monster.
I may be doing Cthulhu a disservice here as I do not know much about it. I do love smash up though and this set provides a wonderful addition, not least because it introduces its own unique rule with the madness cards, which are an added havoc creating dynamic. One of the joys of smash up are all the expansions to date also work as a standalone 2 player game which is awesome. Or merge seamlessly with everything else created in the game series. I’m a massive smash up fan and so obviously suggest you give it a go
Lucky Numbers: Fsvouritefoe
Bruno Cathala designed one of my favourite games of all time (Five Tribes), and so when I saw that he had designed this super-fast tile laying game, I had to play it! And having only 1 main rule, I was very curious indeed!
With a bright green board covered in 4 leaf clovers, your goal is to be first to fill all 16 spots with tiles (variously numbered 1 – 20). Drafting from either the face down pile or any face up on the table (discarded by players on previous turns), you can add a tile to your board in any empty space, or you can swap it for a tile already placed. But, to place a tile, it must be valued higher than any tile in the column space above it and higher than any tile in the row space to the left of it. So the values of the tiles must increase in each column from top to bottom, and in each row from left to right. Diagonals don’t count, although there is a rule variant which allows you to take another turn if you place identical numbers in diagonally adjacent spots! Incredibly fast with a solo mode comprising 40 puzzles, Lucky Numbers is a fun filler game for September or any time of year!
So there we have a whole gaggle of green games to get your September starting right! We hope you enjoy welcoming the golds and reds of autumn with a final flourish of all things green!
