Your small town in England is competing for the best village green. Will you be able to beat out your friends and have the most tranquil green possible? That’s the challenge in Village Green by Osprey Games. This is a one to four player game about drafting green cards and scoring cards, and building out a tableau of your perfect village green.

How To Play Village Green

In Village Green, you are trying to score in both rows and columns, getting your perfect layout. To set-up the game, you get your village as well as scoring cards for the columns. On your turn you can draft a green card and play one down, if you want. Or you draft a scoring card and play one down. Ideally, you end with a full green, 3×3 grid, and six scoring cards.

When you put down a green card, it needs to be adjacent to another green card. And the flower type or the color of the flower must match. This locks you into what you can play sometimes. There are some plain cards with no flowers, and you can put those down adjacent to anything. That allows you to connect anything to that card.

The scoring cards are basically as easy as well. You either put it on the edge of a row or a column. You can have a max of six, and you cover a previous scoring card. Maybe it is that you need yellow tulips in the column, but you draft a scoring card for red flowers in a row. Now you could cover up either of them later to make them work together better.

The game ends when one person fills their green. Then the round finishes and scores are totaled. The player with the most points wins.

What Doesn’t Work?

The solo mode is just okay. Mainly because the cards don’t swap around as much. I feel like I would want to be able to wipe those cards every round or remove the left most and put a new one down, something like that. Basically, since you see so few cards, that can determine your score. On the upside, the game plays fast.

What Works?

Multiplayer is much better. Even at two there is enough change that can happen throughout the game. If I take a card for my green, you’ll see a new card. If I take a scoring, you see a new card. I can imagine that it’d be even more of that with three or four, actually, it has to be. Though, I wonder with all the turnover in a four player game if it might be more random.

That said, the fact you can’t cover up green cards, but can cover up scoring cards, that is really good. I like that you can adjust your strategy mid game if you wanted by swapping out scoring. So scoring is a little bit more free to pick, but when you play down a card to your green, that one is going to be there. And that decision matters a lot. But you also play nine versus only needing to play three scoring cards.

The game also plays fast, but plays fast while giving you good thinky decisions. You try and figure out ways to optimize your points. But your choices are really simple. You either take a card for your green or a scoring card. And then play a card down. And with most likely 15 cards total played, the decision space is a very good size.

Who Would I Recommend It To?

I would say almost anyone. The game play is simple enough. The thinking of scoring for both rows and columns might fluster some people. But the game play itself is simple. So they can just focus on rows or columns. To optimize what you are doing you’ll need to pay more attention.

So my only time I’d not recommend it to people is if they play with Analysis Paralysis prone people. I think one AP player, if you know they are, it won’t be bad. But two would take a fast game to a much longer game. And I’m not sure that the depth of game play warrants a long play lenght.

Village Green – Final Thoughts

I was hoping that the solo play in this game would be better. It comes in a small box so one that is easier to take places and just play. But while it is a bit more random that way, it isn’t horrible. And the multiplayer is very good. Overall I enjoyed my plays of it a lot thus far, and I want to introduce it to more people.

And I think that’s the charm of this game. Like something like Ohanami or Floriforous, this is a pretty looking game that is going to charm most people. The artwork is nice, and even with it being a thinky game, it feels relaxing to play. And I like it when a game does that. That’s what makes me like Ohanami, A Gentle Rain, and Orchard so much, they are relaxing. And this is the one that makes you think more than any of the others.

Have you played Village Green? Do you like it, do you want to play it?

My Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: B
Casual Grade: B

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