Tang Garden Game Review

Tang Garden is a beautiful tile placement game in which one to four players compete to build and decorate a communal garden during the Tang Dynasty in the sixth century (considered China’s first golden age of arts and culture). When building the garden, you’ll have to balance water, rock, and greenery tiles and decorate it with pavilions, bridges, trees, flowers, birds, and fish. Over the course of the game, characters will visit the garden to inspect its progress and admire the surrounding landscape. Players do all of this in hopes of earning the most coins, which are the “points” in the game.

Check out our video review of Tang Garden.

Tang Garden Gameplay

On a player’s turn, they’ll perform one main action and possibly three optional actions. Players, in turn order, take turns in this way until the end game is triggered.

Main Actions

Players have one of two mandatory main actions to choose from: Build the Garden or Place a Decoration.

Build the Garden

To Build the Garden, choose one of the faceup Garden tiles and place it on the board following these placement rules:

• must be placed orthogonally adjacent to a tile already on the board
• the terrain type must match the edges of adjacent tiles (similar to placing tiles in Carcassonne)

After placing your tile, move the corresponding markers on your player board one space forward for each terrain edge you matched to adjacent tiles.

Then, if the placed tile causes an area to be completely enclosed, advance the marker matching the enclosed terrain one step. (In the picture above, the player enclosed the rock area so they would move the yellow marker one additional space forward.)

There are also gray footpaths, which you might have noticed aren’t represented on the player board. If you match one footpath edge, gain a coin — remember coins are how you win. However, if you match two footpath edges, you have a decision to make: gain two coins or advance the marker of your choice one space.

Additionally, if the tile you placed covers up a Landscape token, you must insert one of the two available Landscape tiles into the board. Landscape tiles come in two sizes: small (depicted by the house) and large (shown by the mountain).

After completing the Build the Garden action, if there is one or no tiles faceup, flip the top tile of each stack so there are four visible Garden tiles. If there is more than one, do nothing.

Place a Decoration

The other main action, that has a bit of a set collection element to it, is to Place a Decoration onto a tile in the garden. To do this draw two Decoration cards plus one for each facedown Garden tile, then choose one card to play and discard the others.

When choosing which Decoration card to keep, you first need to consider whether you can legally place the decoration in the garden. For example, if you want to play a Fish card, there must be an available tile (one that doesn’t have a decoration already) with water on it. You also want to think about its one-time bonus; sometimes this is a marker advancement and occasionally it’s Landscape tokens. Then you need to consider the end game scoring opportunity. For example, would you like to work towards collecting pairs of Fish and Birds, different types of Trees, or the most Pavilions?

There is a lot to consider when selecting which Decoration card to play…and there is even more to ponder when placing the decoration into the garden.

Finally, after choosing and placing a decoration, flip all facedown Garden tiles faceup.

Optional Actions

Once you’ve performed your main action, you may do the following optional actions:

• Influence a Character
• Use a Lantern
• Refresh a Lantern

First, let’s look at how to Influence a Character — at long last. Players start the game with a Character (card and miniature) who gives them a special ability, but as the markers move ahead on their player boards, they have the opportunity to influence more Characters and send some to the garden to activate their end game scoring ability.

Once you are able to Influence a Character, choose from one of the two faceup Character cards or draw off the top of the deck. Then play one of your Character miniatures to the garden board — either the newly acquired Character or the one you already had by your player board. Characters — like Fish, Trees, Bridges, etc. — are particular about where they’re placed and can only go on a Character spot.

Then you’ll choose a direction for your Character to face (up, down, left, right, or board game North, South, East, and West if you prefer cardinal directions). Just like they’re picky about where they’re placed, they’re also particular about what they look at; any decoration is fine (and earns coins at the end of the game), but not necessarily any landscape. The Character you send to the garden will have some kind of “sight preference” and if you want coins at the end of the game, you’d better do as they please.

Another optional action a player may take on their turn is to Use a Lantern. Each player has four different Lantern tokens and these Lanterns give players a special ability — place two Garden tiles, place two decorations, move a Character, or Influence a specific Character/choose a specific Landscape tile. Only one Lantern can be used per turn and once it is, it’s flipped facedown.

This brings us to the final optional action, Refresh a Lantern. Spend three Landscape tokens you’ve collected during the game to flip a spent Lantern back to its usable side.

End Game and Scoring

The end game is triggered when one of the four Garden tile stacks is depleted or there are three or fewer Landscape tokens on the board; at which point play continues until each player has an equal number of turns. Then players earn coins for their Decoration cards and from their Characters in the garden (both the decorations they see and their final scoring condition).

As Good As It Is Beautiful? – Final Thoughts

In my unboxing of Tang Garden, I was struck by how much care was put into the game’s production. First, the game’s artwork is evocative and stunning. Second, the component quality, particularly the cardboard components, is exceptional: nice and thick with a smooth matte finish. Finally, I couldn’t help but notice some cardboard components were thicker than others, depending on their use in the game. If you look at the Trees in comparison to the Coins, the Trees are much thicker because they need to be more stable on the game board. This is a small, yet important detail.

Admittedly some of this excitement quelled when I was then asked to play a guessing game. Guess how to assemble these 3-D components correctly. Guess which shade of orange base belongs on which Character miniature. Guess how to pack all the punched and assembled components into an unlabeled, yet clearly thought-through plastic organizer. Even for someone like me who loves organizing games, it was a little annoying.

The good news is that once you play this guessing game once, you won’t have to again; the assembled components and miniatures with their bases all fit in the game box — except for the Trees, which have to be disassembled.

I also wasn’t a fan of the rulebook. It made many assumptions and made my opponents and me have a lot of questions, specifically when it came to timing and resolving things. This was amplified in the solo game where the accompanying pictures meant to clarify the rules actually brought on more confusion.

Finally, my last criticism has to do with the overcrowded board by the end of the game. While Tang Garden looks marvelous on the table, it can sometimes be tricky to see everything well; the tall Pavilions and Trees make things particularly difficult. These two decorations also cover up most of a tile, which sometimes means that you aren’t able to discreetly check what’s on the tile’s edge to strategize for your next turn. At times, Tang Garden is more artistic than functional.

All the complaints I have about Tang Garden are things that you have to deal with before or during your first play, but then they’re — for the most part —  gone…and this game is so good that despite these minor annoyances, I still wanted to play it again.

Thanks to years of exercising and programming my Euro gamer brain, I’m trained to be skeptical of games with gorgeous artwork and a high production value because these are surely smoke screen tactics used to cover up a game’s weak design. (Yes, I know there have been improvements, but it takes time to retrain your brain.) I couldn’t believe that after only a few turns, I shyly said to my friend on our video chat that I was really digging the game. She, as a Euro gamer herself, felt the same. Tang Garden’s gameplay far exceeded my expectations.

There is something so wonderful about how Tang Garden balances everything — and does it well. Whether it’s balancing which Garden and Landscape tiles or decorations to place, balancing your actions and ensuring you aren’t helping your opponents, or even deciding which (balanced) path to victory you’ll take, it all just works. And in a game where the theme is mostly pasted on — you’re building a garden in the time of the Tang dynasty — it’s this element of balance (at the heart of Chinese medicine) that feels the most thematic.

Tang Garden is my second favourite 2020 release I’ve played and if the delightful artwork doesn’t initially draw you in, then I hope its gameplay does. (You can even try Tang Garden on Tabletopia; just beware that there have been some changes, most notably to the player board.)

Thematic Music for Playing Tang Garden

There is a lovely playlist for Tang Garden that is available on Youtube, Google Play Music, Spotify, and Apple Music.

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Since 2018 publisher Thundergryph Games has partnered with Trees for the Future to plant a tree for every game they sell — whether through Kickstarter, distribution, or direct sale. At the time of this review’s publication, more than 40,000 trees have been planted. Learn more at thundergryph.com/trees.