🌱 Tea Garden – Zen on a Board, Strategy in a Cup

⭐ : 10/10

Players: 1–4
Playtime: 45–90 min
Difficulty: Light / Medium (strategic calm)
Type: Euro / Strategy / Point-Salad
Mechanics: garden building, card management, tea harvesting, fermentation, engine building, cup collection, research tracks, multi-path scoring

🎯 What Is This Game About?

Tea Garden is a strategic journey into the misty hills of Yunnan, where tea grows on layered terraces and time seems to flow a little slower. You build your own plantation: planting new gardens, improving harvesting techniques, fermenting leaves, collecting ornate cups, and uncovering bonuses and research — all wrapped in the calm rhythm of a gentle eurogame.

🎯 Goal of the Game

Over five rounds, you develop your plantation with one purpose: to end the game with the highest number of victory points. You earn them in many different ways — by growing gardens, harvesting and fermenting tea, sailing down the river, researching at the university, gaining the emperor’s favor, or assembling porcelain cup sets. Each decision nudges you toward a different strategic path, and none of them is dominant.
You choose your flow. When the final leaf is harvested, all your efforts convert into points — quietly, cleanly, and without embellishment — and the highest score wins.

🃏 How a Turn Works

A turn in Tea Garden is quick and elegant. You choose one main action — planting a garden, harvesting, fermenting, moving on the river, using a cup, or advancing in research — and optionally trigger bonuses from your cards or tracks.The board shifts gently, cards slide, and the game flows on without interruption.
This is the kind of design that makes you say:
“All right… just one more round.”

🏆 How to Win

This game rewards flexibility. You can win through cups, the emperor’s track, river progress, fermentation, or garden development — every path is strong when pursued with intention. Watch what others are doing, time your fermentation well, and finish your cup sets whenever you start them; the bonuses are worth it.

🌿 Why This Game Is Special

• Tea Garden enchants from the moment you lift the lid: a pastel board, pagoda meeples, cups that look like they belong in a tiny porcelain museum.

• Despite its gentleness, every turn holds meaningful decisions.
  The river, the emperor, and the university add just enough tension — nothing stressful, simply an elegant race for small advantages.

• Fermentation is the standout mechanism: leaves mature, change value, and reward perfect timing. There’s nothing quite like it in other eurogames.

• It works beautifully at every player count, and its replayability is enormous — new cards, new bonuses, new tempo every time.

• This is a euro that creates an almost perfect balance between thinking and relaxing.
  You engage your mind… but you also breathe.

• Even the box feels lovingly designed: every component has its place; nothing needs fixing.

💀 Why It’s Not Perfect

Honestly? It’s difficult to find a real flaw.
If anything, the iconography takes a moment to learn in your first game — and then disappears into the flow.

✨🧀🍵 Zen Joke Time 😄

Forget about planting thujas along the fence. Tea Garden offers a much better field of possibilities — now you can wall yourself off from your neighbor with tiered tea terraces and pretend you can’t see them through the thick mist of Yunnan! 🌫️🏯

☕ My Impressions

Tea Garden feels like a warm cup of sencha: gentle, soothing, yet unexpectedly deep.
Each play made me feel as if my garden — and I — were slowly unfolding, layer by layer.
It’s my favourite calm euro of the year.

🎯 Final Rating: 10/10

Elegant. Charming. Smart in its design. Beautifully replayable.
And touched with that subtle something that makes you want to brew a cup of tea… and set up the board again the next day.

Tea Garden is zen on a board — a must-have for anyone who loves beautiful, peaceful, strategic games.