Take hold of the first wind of Spring and arrange a beautiful garden of lilies.
Designer: Bruno Cathala
Artist: William Aubert, Stefano Collavini
Publisher: Ace Studios, Blackrock Games, Evrikus, GDM Games, hobbity.eu, Id&aL Editions
In Haru Ichiban, or "The Wind of Spring", two apprentice gardeners compete to use this wind to their advantage to create harmonious patterns of their blossoms upon the lilypads.
Each gardener has eight flower buds numbered 1-8, with three of those buds being in hand at the start of a round. Sixteen lilypads are placed in the 5x5 pond, with one of them turned to its dark side.
Each gardener simultaneously chooses a reveals a bud, with the player with the lower number becoming the Little Gardener and the other becoming the Grand Gardener. In order:
As soon as a gardener creates a specific pattern with blossoms of his color, he scores points: 1 point for a 2x2 square, 2 points for a horizontal or vertical row of four blossoms, 3 points for a diagonal row of four blossoms, and 5 points for a row of five blossoms. If the gardener has fewer than five points, the gardeners reset the board and start a new round with three buds of their eight; if the gardener has five or more points, the game ends and he wins!