Once the garden is full, the players win. If the Queen ever reaches the gardeners, their beheaded bodies are probably dragged into the bushes. All we’re told is that they didn’t win. When a new tile is placed you’ll add cubes for how many adjacent tiles match your whim card. Game Experience: In this example, the player has drawn a Hard card that features a heart-shaped hedge and purple roses. Placing a diamond-shaped hedge with a purple rose on the board next to two heart-shaped hedges, they also place two cubes on the tile. All player pieces, tiles, cards, and miniature are of good quality. The miniatures in particular are nicely designed and each of them feels very unique. The acrylic tiles add a great value to the game compared to cardboard ones in the retail version and are definitely an upgrade to look after.

At the end of each turn, two things will happen: players must make a guess and The Red Queen will move. As in, move closer to you with her axe raised. The Deluxe Edition includes upgraded components like acrylic tiles, a custom GameTrayz insert and the Escape the Castle expansion all in one box. Each player will also get a whim card that shows a particular pairing of tiles the Queen would like to see. There are also three difficulties of whims. Easy difficulty shows “color-to-color,” a red tile next to a yellow tile, for example. Medium can be color-to-color or shape-to-shape. And hard whims can be either of those but may also be color-to-shape. Players attempt to fill the garden before the Queen catches up to them. The Queen's whims are shared via cards, secret instructions each player is given into how the garden should be arranged. Her whims are always changing, so as soon as you solve one, a new one is in your hand. My husband and I finally broke into this to play 2 players, and we enjoyed it (though I do think more players would add a deeper level of complexity). Here's a rundown of our experience:Set in the puzzling world of Alice in Wonderland, you and your friends are the newly appointed Royal Gardeners. You are working together to finish the palace grounds according to the whims of the Queen of Hearts. Use strategy, logic, and teamwork to finish the garden whilst staying one step ahead of the Queen, otherwise, the last thing you hear will be, "Off With Their Heads!". But Paint the Roses isn’t quite so straightforward. It’s not necessarily hard, although that is certainly a complaint a lot of people have. As complex as the rules above look, the game really comes down to (1) place a tile and (2) put cubes on it if it matches your whim. Obviously, if you can place a tile in a way that only your whim is the possible answer, that’s great. But the garden fills up fast and you only have four tiles in the greenhouse to choose from. It’s rarely that easy.

This is a co-operative game to beat the Queen and fill the garden before she catches up and beheads you all!

After my first play of Paint the Roses I was a little put off by what I perceived to be the imperfect information the game insists you play with. Color to color was fine, but the Medium and Hard cards presented too many choices with no clear idea as to which choice was correct. This was, I think, more of an issue when playing the game with two players. Having the consequences of a wrong guess, along with the possibility of losing the game, resting solely with my guess, didn’t sit all that well with me. Then there’s being a gardener in The Red Queen’s garden in Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland. You know, the ones who had to paint the roses to the Red Queen’s ever-changing whims and, if they got the colors wrong, it was off with their heads. Of course, for reasons (more mechanical than thematic) you can’t just say what those whims are. You have to secretly clue in your fellow gardeners to be able to complete the garden before the Queen loses her patience with you. Gameplay Overview: And of course, as the game goes on you have fewer options on where to place. So along with everything else, you’ll also want to try to keep open as many combinations as you can as you play. An Easy Whim will show a colour-to-colour match in a hexomino fashion, in one of ten combinations worth 1 or 2 points.. A Medium Whim has either a colour-to-colour match or a shape-to-shape match and is worth 2 to 3 points. Finally a Hard Whim will have either a colour-to-colour match, a shape-to-shape match or a colour-to-shape match, worth 4 to 5 points. Paint The Roses: Taking A Turn