About Varda, from BoardGameGeek:
A mysterious and adventurous journey from the bottom of the dark soil to the light of crystal flagons and a wonderful and stunning evolution from some simple flower to a prestigious essence!
The original Iranian board game, Varda, is the winner of the 1st prize of “Land of Beautiful Mind” game designing contest and an exciting strategy game which uses the process of planting flowers and producing “Golab” (The Persian Rose-Water) to make a great challenge and puts the players in the role of farmers and craftsmen who try to plant the best shrubs and flowers in the most fertile soils and upgrade their technology to produce the most aromatic “Golab”s and most precious essences…
But be careful, in the breathtaking industry of “Golab”, there is no trace of flowers' delicacy!
In Varda, you're farmers who should cultivate the best Damask Roses in your lands and produce the best Golab (Persian Rose-Water), Strong Golab and Essences.
You should send your workers (meeples) to 4 different areas of the board: Planting Area, Floriculture Area, Extracting Area and Technology Area.
At the beginning, a Year card is revealed. This card determines the capacity of each area for placing meeples, based on the number of players and shows the events of the beginning of the year and the end of the year, based on the rainfall amount.
Each game may be played in several years so be prepared for any upcoming events!
Blue meeples can only be placed in Planting and Floriculture areas and the Green ones can only be placed in Extracting and Technology Areas. Pink meeples are the most valuable meeples; You can place them in any area (even ignoring that area's capacity) and use them to obtain Event cards so take care of them!
After all players placed their meeples on the board, you should do the actions of the different areas by removing the meeples from the board and placing them in Resting Space.
Expand your farm and obtain the needed resources (Water, Light and Fertilizer) to have the best harvest. The Lands with special powers need more resources but help your achieve the products sooner.
Cultivate Saplings and harvest your lands and produce the best Damask-Rose products. You can develop your technology and gain new facilities, paying its price!
After all actions were resolved, take the meeples from the Resting Area as you wish and depending on your strategy, in clockwise order, starting with the First Player. Your choices would affect the others' play!
As a beginner, you can play Varda without the Event cards which give you combinatory actions and special abilities and add them to the game only when you got enough experiences!
The winner is the player who can produce the best and more precious Golab and Essences before the rivals, develop their technology more than the rivals and reach their goals.
-description from the publisher
