MLGG: Pop Culture News, Reviews & Interviews

Despite its very diminutive size, Turf War packs a solid amount of gameplay into its tiny box.

You and your opponent are feuding neighbours, intent on having the most impressive garden in your street. The object of the game is to have the most victory points at the game’s end – which triggers when all available neighbours have been swayed into giving their seal of approval to either garden.

This is a fast paced, miniature deck builder with an awful lot of replayability and many different strategies that can be employed.

Starting with a 3×3 grid of dirt patches, you’ll work on your garden while at Home – making the dirt into fertile patches of grass to build on – and earn money, then spend it on garden improvements while you’re Away.

Be warned that while you’re away, your pesky opponent can unleash pests on your garden – making the balancing act of being there to protect and build upon your garden or earning money to get yourself decorations, plants and your own pests at the market a delicate one.

Everything you do feels surprisingly thematic; Turf War is a genuinely nicely designed game. It really does pack an awful lot into its tiny box of cards – and players are often forced to react in different ways not just to the cards available in the market, but also to what the picky neighbours want in order to be swayed.

It’s a great little game that also has a very sparse rule book; though this makes it incredibly easy to learn and teach, it does feel as if it could do with a few clarifications for certain cards, to ensure they’re being handled properly in the game.

That said, the game’s website does feature more in-depth explanations of the cards, with a searchable database; it would be better, however, if this didn’t feel necessary in several cases.

The rules themselves are a little small too, with some of the clarification illustrations being a bit too tiny to be useful – though this is due to the overall size of the game and its packaging. It is genuinely impressive how big this game feels despite how compact it is, with its unusual square cards.

Turf War is a really enjoyable and original deck building game that does a great job of utilising its theme to the full. It never outstays its welcome in terms of game length and, rules clarification issues aside, is really easy to pick up and play in minutes.

So that’s two green thumbs up from me for this garden designing, snooty neighbour impressing, sometimes cutthroat deck builder!

You can buy Turf War from Amazon here.

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