How to Play Village Green | Board Game Rules & Instructions

Here's how to play Village Green, a game about making great little gardens!

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Read the Rules

The aim of the game

To win, you’ll need to build the best village green, by placing your cards in the most complimentary way in a 4 x 4 grid.

To set up

• Place a village card face up in front of each player.

• Shuffle the green cards and award cards.

• For a 2 player game, return 15 green cards and 10 award cards to the box.
• For 3 players return 10 green and 5 award cards.
• For 4 players return 5 green cards.

• Place the remainder face down in 2 separate stacks, then draw 3 cards from each and place them face up next to them.

• Deal 3 green cards and 3  award cards to each player.
• Keep the green cards secret in your hand and place the award cards face up in a row to the right of your village card.

The player who last watered a plant begins. 

To play the game

On your turn you may either draw and play a green card or an award card.

To play a green card:

• Take any of the 3 from the table, OR the card on the top of the deck and add it to your hand.
• Replace it with another from the deck.

• Then place any green card from your hand either into your village, OR to the bottom of the deck.

 To play an award card:

• Take one in the same way as you would a green card, however you MUST place it into your village if you do.

 Card placement:

When placing cards you will be forming a 4x4 grid, with your village card in the top left corner and award cards making the top row and left hand column. Green cards fill the spaces in between.

• Your garden cannot exceed this size.
• You do not have to place cards next to ones already placed.

• You may place an award card on top of another award card to override it.
• You cannot place an award card on top of your village card. 

• Green cards cannot be placed in the village or award card spaces.
• Green cards with flower icons must match any orthogonally adjacent cards by flower type or colour if they have a flower icon too.
• You cannot place green cards on top of one another, unless it’s on top of a lawn card.

•  If you place a structure, you must immediately draw and play an award card.

 Flipping your village card:

Once per game, before taking an action, you may flip your village card face down to perform 1 of 2 special actions..

1. Take either the three face-up green or award cards from the centre of the table, place them in any order at the bottom of the deck and replace them with new ones, before taking a turn as normal.
   
   
2. Take the ‘draw and play a green card’ action but this time you may place the card on top of another green card, as long as it matches the flower type or colour of any adjacent cards.

Game end and scoring

The game ends if either:

• A player has filled every green card slot in their garden OR
• One of decks run dry.

Each player has one final turn until it is the starting players go, then scoring begins.

• Score 1 point if you did not flip your village card.
• Score 2 points for every pond in your garden.
• Score the points for each award card in your garden, using every green card in its row or column to score.

The player with the most points wins!

If it’s a tie, whoever has the most visible green cards in their village wins. If that’s tied, share the victory!

That’s village green - a quaint little card game.  Enjoy!

Sound like fun?
Get yourself a copy of Village Green from the Happy Piranha Store!