Combolands Gardener's Cottage: copy the right Nature target

Meet the copy conditions

The pictured Gardener’s Cottage card is precise about both ends of the copy. Source side: 1 adjacent Nature — a Nature-tagged building standing next to the Cottage. Destination side: a random tile in range — somewhere inside its shown range, chosen by the game. A Cottage with no adjacent Nature idles, and a Cottage whose range is fully paved has nowhere to put the copy.

Choose what to copy first

Copy the Nature target that pays on arrival. The documented basic route duplicates Flowers around bee-related and Nature scorers, because every copy immediately raises what those scorers count. Copying a piece that only matters after three more steps just spreads your board thinner. Before duplicating anything, also check what eats Nature or Resource tags nearby — a fresh copy inside a Nitrary’s diet is a copy you donated, per the paint guide’s warning about Wild and removal targets.

Copying things that are not Nature

Two documented workarounds exist for copying a non-Nature building, and both change a tag rather than the rules. Ghost Paint on the Cottage rewrites the accepted category in its effect, so a different kind of adjacent building qualifies — a player sample uses exactly this to duplicate targets the base card cannot touch. Rainbow Paint on the target makes the target itself Wild, which can let it count as Nature — with the trade-offs from the paint page: the author reads Rainbow as costing the Council multiplier benefit, and Wild can expose the building to resource removal. Read the paint rules before spending either.

When no copy lands

1. Nothing adjacent qualifies: the Cottage wants adjacent Nature (or your repainted category). “There is Nature on the map” is not the condition.
2. Timer not elapsed: it is a 5-week trigger on the documented card. A quiet Cottage two weeks in is waiting, not broken.
3. No legal landing tile: if every tile in range is occupied or illegal, the copy has nowhere to go. Leave deliberate gaps inside the shown range.
4. Copies keep disappearing: look for a consumer that accepts their tags — removal effects do not distinguish your originals from your copies.

Do not build the Cottage as a promise of a chosen tile or a chosen target; build it so every random outcome is acceptable. For targets that multiply standing Nature, the Fishing Boat shows the scorer side, and the four-link check covers range versus adjacency confusion.