Board game review of Sattgrün – spiritual successor to Cascadia

In 2021, Flatout Games announced Verdant – a spiritual successor to the popular tile-placing games Calico and Cascadia. That with that Game of the Year award-winning Cascadia appeared over the Kosmos Publisher for the German market. Kosmos also takes over sales of Verdant and releases it under the name Sattgrün. You can find out whether Sattgrün, like its predecessor, is also convincing in the following review.

As plant lovers, we try to create the coziest home in lush green by placing houseplants, furniture and pets. The lighting conditions should be right for the respective plants, they should be cared for as much as possible and placed in suitable rooms so that the plants can grow beautifully. Our green thumb helps us make our homes even more comfortable, because whoever has the coziest home at the end wins.

Known mechanics

Basically, lush green plays similar to Cascadia. There is a display consisting of four columns. At the beginning of our turn we choose one, take the tiles or cards available there and place them in our home (in the Cascadia landscape). However, saturated green gives us a little more freedom in our choice. There is a room card and a plant card next to a tile in each column. We have to choose between the two cards. The other stays in the column and gets a green thumb. A player receives this as soon as he chooses the remaining card in a later turn. Green thumbs can be used for special promotions, more on that later.

The map is then laid out in the home in a 5×3 grid. The room and plant cards must always follow each other alternately, so that a checkerboard pattern is formed. When placing the cards, it is best to pay attention to the lighting conditions. For example, if you plant a plant that needs sunlight, it should also border the sunlight side of a room. On the other hand, room cards should ideally be laid out so that the sunlight side is adjacent to a plant that needs sunlight. If you do this, the plant will receive a leaf. As soon as the plant has collected a certain number of leaves, it is complete and can be potted. Completed plants provide important victory points at the end of the game.

Designing your own home

After we have placed the selected card, we can place or use the tile we received. There are two types of tiles: item tiles and care tiles. While item tiles have to be cleverly placed on room cards to generate additional victory points at the end, care tiles can be used for additional leaves on our plants. Alternatively, we can decide not to use the tile immediately and save it for a later turn. Only one tile in total may be kept. If you want to save another tile, you must use or discard the previously saved tile.

During your own turn, you can also use collected green thumbs to carry out special actions. For two green thumbs, you can renew the tiles or cards in the display, take any selection of cards and tiles or add another leaf to a plant. At the end of the turn, the empty spaces in the display are then filled again.

The game ends as soon as each player has completely built their 5x3 home. Points are earned for all potted plants, their pot type, room cards with matching plants adjacent, the variety of plants and rooms and the objects placed (furniture & pets). If necessary, target cards can be added as you play. Three goal cards are then laid out per game (a plant goal, an object goal and a room goal), which give additional victory points if the respective goal is achieved.

Many different game modes

In addition to the target cards, which add even more variety to the games and offer a version for advanced players, there is a simplified version and a solo mode. In the simplified version, plants are only completed using care tiles. All plants therefore have the same victory point. This means that all other game elements such as the green thumbs, the leaves, the lighting conditions and the pots are eliminated. In solo mode, the display works like an assembly line. The cards and tiles on the far right are discarded at the end of the turn, then the entire display moves to the right and is refilled with new cards and tiles on the left. At the end of the game you receive an award depending on the number of points you have achieved. In addition, there are challenges that introduce scenarios and rule variants that can be used to change the game a little.

While the simplified version could be a nice idea for playing with younger children, it doesn't otherwise add any value to the game. Sattgrün is, at its core, a fairly beginner-friendly game. So we would always prefer the standard game in any constellation. Unfortunately, the point hunt in the solo mode and the challenges didn't really convince us, but they are also a nice addition. People who would like to focus on achieving specific goals have a lot to do here. The scenarios alone offer 15 different challenges that you can face. In our opinion, the goal cards are a useful addition and bring more variety to the games. These have always been there since our second game. Here we get additional tactical options to generate points.

Conclusion

In summary, we can say that we also had a lot of fun with Sattgrün. The game impresses with its simple mechanics, which still offer us a lot of tactical scope. The components also feel pleasantly high quality. The cards have a non-slip linen structure, the leaf tiles are made of wood and there is a nice fabric bag for drawing item tiles. The illustrations by Beth Sobel, who was also responsible for Calico and Cascadia, are also beautiful.

In contrast to Cascadia, however, Sattgrün comes with many pseudo-rule variants and challenges that, in our opinion, do not provide much added value. It tried too hard to make the game more than it actually is. However, some people might really like these.

Overall, lush green is a nice addition to Cascadia. The game doesn't do anything fundamentally new, because here, too, we relax and puzzle around our home. But if you don't feel like playing Cascadia at the moment, you can safely fall back on lush green, because here you get the same mechanics with a few additional interesting tricks. For the price of around 37 euros, you definitely can't go wrong with the game.

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