Prize Marrow guide: how to play, rules and tips

1. Pick a garden on the start screen and press Play.
2. Plant: on The Lawn tap any open tile, on a path map tap a raised bed beside the path, then pick a plant. Plants cost seeds.
3. Press Start wave. Each pest that reaches your marrow takes a bite; pests you stop pay seeds.
4. Tap a plant to grow it: seed, sprout, then bloom. At bloom it glows, and you evolve it into one of two forms.
5. Keep going until the marrow is eaten or you hold wave 100, then see your best wave and the compost you earned.

• The Lawn has no path. Every plant and Hurdle blocks its tile, and pests take the shortest way round. You can never shut them out completely.
• Flyers ignore the maze and Moles dig under it.
• Not every plant hits everything. The Gnome Mortar is ground only; the Beehive chases anything, even flyers. Each plant's chips show what it can hit.
• New things keep arriving. The Beehive opens at wave 8, then the Nettle (15), Chilli (30), Dandelion (35), Venus Flytrap (40) and Sunflower (50). New pests turn up too, and a boss leads every tenth wave.
• Weather starts at wave 15, about one wave in three, never on a boss wave. You see it a wave ahead.
• Garden rules such as Thick skins join from wave 50.
• Compost a plant to dig it up for some seeds back, and feed the marrow between waves to win back health.

Make them walk. On The Lawn, Hurdles are cheap. Lay them so pests snake past your plants; before you build, the board previews the new walk and its length in steps.

Plan for flyers. Moths, Crows and Wasps skip the maze. A Beehive early, then a Dandelion from wave 35, saves a lot of bites.

Read the Garden Guide. Every pest has a "Best answer". Thorns glance off a Snail's shell, but a Mortar's flower pot cracks it.

Ring the Sunflower. It has no bite, but plants beside it reach further and work faster, and it drops seeds every wave.

Spend late seeds on the Prize. From wave 20 an evolved plant can be Prized, level by level, for more damage and reach.

Keep a Flytrap for bosses. It bites the toughest pest in reach, and bosses take three times as much.

• The Lawn: no path, you build it. It starts at 9 x 15; the Lawn extension in the Potting Shed grows it to 10 x 16, then 11 x 17.
• The Allotment: the classic winding path.
• The Orchard: a path that forks in two. Open it with the Orchard gate key in the Shed.
• Bosses: The Great Slug, The Rook, The Queen Beetle, The Mole King and The Badger. From wave 60 they come back with a new trick.
• The Potting Shed: compost buys upgrades that stay, such as Seed tin, Richer soil and each plant's second evolution. You can visit it mid-run.
• Head starts: reach wave 15 and you can start at 11 next time, reach 25 to start at 21, and so on. Garden points count only the waves you play.
• Your marrow grows with your best wave, from Bronze to Best in Show and beyond.