Ladybird

Players: 1–4 players
Play time: 30–90 min
BGG rating: 8.8

Return to the garden of your childhood in this cozy yet fiercely competitive tableau-building card game. The roses are overgrown, the orchard is crawling with aphids, and only you and your old friends – the ladybirds – can help restore the garden to its former splendor. The game unfolds over five summer days. Day one is over after a single round, but each new day brings you an extra garden action and one more round than the day before, building to a grand finale on day five – fifteen rounds in all. Each round opens with everyone revealing a card at once; then, in turn order, each player places their card into one of five colored columns and performs one of the available garden actions. The life-cycle state on the card you play – egg, larva, pupa, or adult – determines which card you can draft next, so you're always weighing what you want on the table against what you want to draft next. Completing a full life cycle (collecting all 4 life cycle symbols) in a column or clearing aphids from the orchard boosts the value of your ladybirds. Every card you place changes the options available to everyone else at the table, and tension builds steadily as you compete for the exact ladybird type and color you need before an opponent snags it first. There's still time for a picnic along the way, as you lead your ladybirds onto the trail of their favorite dish: aphids (and in one special case, mildew). Score bonus points by completing sets of all five colors, feeding specific ladybird types, and unlocking forgotten childhood memories. And watch out for the Harlequin. She's invasive, and before you know it, you might lose your carefully tended life cycles...