Arboretum

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Details

Sourced from: https://jmo.name/games

Player Aid Author: Jarrod Moore

Description

Build the Arboretum of your dreams, and prevent your rival from building theirs

The deck consists of 80 cards of 10 different species, with the cards in each species being numbered 1 to 8

  • Prepare and shuffle the deck
No. of PlayersSpecies Used2638410
  • The first player is the player to have most recently watered a plant
  • Deal 7 cards to each player face down
  • Place the remaining cards in centre as a draw pile

  • You will always start and finish each turn with exactly 7 cards in your hand
  • Players will take turns starting with the start player and then proceeding clockwise
  • On your turn, you will draw two cards, play a card into your arboretum and discard 1 card
  • You may play or discard any cards from your hand, including those drawn during your turn

  • For each card, you may draw from either:
    • the draw pile in the centre of the table
    • from the top card of any player's discard pile
  • You may view the first card you have drawn before choosing where to draw the other card from
  • You may draw your two cards from the same or different sources

  • On your first turn, play 1 card from your hand face up in front of you to start your arboretum
  • On each subsequent turn, play 1 card from your hand adjacent to at least one card already played into your arboretum

  • Discard 1 card from your hand into your personal discard pile, face up

  • The game end is triggered when there are no more cards in the draw pile in the centre of the table
  • The player who drew the last card completes their turn as normal, and then end game scoring takes place

  • For each species used in the game, all players reveal the cards in their final hand of 7 cards of that species. The player whose card values have the highest sum is able to score the single highest path of cards of that species in their arboretum:
    • Ties are friendly, even when no players have any cards of a given suit as that would mean all players tie for 1st place with 0 points
  • If a player has the 8 card and another player has the 1 of the same species, the value of the 8 cards is considered to be 0 for this step

  • A path is a sequence of orthogonally adjacent cards in ascending value where the first and last cards in the path are of the same species:
    • The cards in the path between the first and last cards may be of any species
    • The path must be at least 2 cards long
  • You score:
    • 1 point for each card in the path
    • 1 additional point for each card in the path if all of the following are true:
      • All cards in the path are of the same species
      • The path is at least 4 cards long
    • 1 additional point if the path starts with the 1 card
    • 2 additional points if the path ends with the 8 card
  • Each card may be used in scoring multiple paths for different species
  • You are only allowed to score one path for each species

  • The player with the most points wins
  • Tiebreakers are:
    • Most number of species in your arboretum
  • If there is still a tie, each player must each plant a tree and wait 5 years. The player whose tree has grown the tallest wins

Thumbnail courtesy of BoardGameGeek and the respective publisher.