Being in this Orchard can be a relaxing experience. But it might be slightly frustrating, too.
As with any board or card game, lady luck is there to make her presence known. But in Orchard game, the player is forced into making decisions – and perhaps developing a strategy.
You have to think, and your actions matter.
The game couldn’t be easier to carry around. It can go into the smallest holiday baggage.
It’s just a eighteen cards, fifteen little fruity dice, and two pieces of rotten fruit (with maggots). There are two tiny booklets too.
But it packs a fruity punch despite its size.
Orchard was planted in around 2018, and from its earliest days it has been much liked by people who enjoy solo game-playing. One, for example writes …. “it’s so simple yet engaging. I love sitting down and playing a couple games any time I need to relax and unwind, especially before bed”.
Each Orchard card displays six trees. The trees may carry red apples, yellow pears, or purple plums. Every card display a different layout of colourful trees.
The fifteen fruit dice also are coloured – there are five dice for each of the three fruits. The dice are used to show how many points you get when you place one card on top of another one.
Orchard can be set-up in a few seconds. The only effort that’s needed is to shuffle the deck of eighteen cards, deal nine face-down to yourself, and put the others aside for another game in a few minutes time.
You turn over the top card and put it down – it shows the first six trees in your orchard. The orchard will grow in size, starting from here. Take the top two cards as your starting hand, and you’re ready to get growing. The dice and the rotten fruit sit nearby.
On each turn, do just three simple things
Firstly
Add one of the two cards in your hand
to the starting card of the orchard.
It must overlap the card that’s already there.
At least one tree on the card you are playing must overlap a tree that’s already in the orchard.
The fruit of the overlapping tree must match the fruit on the tree beneath it. Apple trees need to go atop apple trees, for example.
You cannot mix your fruits up. A plum tree cannot be placed atop an apple.
If you do this, their fruit goes rotten – more later.
As more cards a laid down, new cards can be placed to overlap more than one other of the same type. Foe example, there might be an apple tree sitting on top of an apple tree that’s already on top of the very first apple tree.
This generates more fruit. The maximum dice score shows a basket of ten fruits.
Secondly
The dice come into play. Each tree on the newly played card that overlaps a tree in the orchard calls for a die to come into action. If the overlapping tree did not have a die on it already, place one of the same colour as the tree onto the top card : showing value 1.
If a die was already sitting there before you covered the tree with the new card, put it back in place on the top tree, and raise its value, like the central yellow pear tree above. There was a “1” die showing before the newest card was placed.
Already, you can see the size of your harvest increasing, and that’s the aim of the game – to gather most fruit! 👍
Thirdly
If there are cards still available, add one from the draw pile to your hand, and move on to the next turn.
Oh! Let’s not forget the rotten fruit!
No orchard’s ever perfect.
Within each orchard, two trees with rotten fruit are allowed – no more. Here’s where you can use the two rotten fruit tokens. If cards are placed such that a tree on the top card does not match the one beneath it, the new tree’s fruit rots. A rotten fruit token is placed upon it.
This shows that the tree is spoiled.
So spoiled is the tree that once the rotten fruit is hanging there, no other cards may ever be placed to cover it, and it can never be moved.
What a spoiler!
When can we gather the harvest?
The game ends at any time when you cannot place a card, or once you have placed the final card and its dice.
Total up all the pips on the uppermost face of each die. Subtract 3 from your score for each of the rotten fruits you’ve left dangling.
Scores are amusingly graded in the back of the rule book ~ a particularly low score’s “pal-tree”, for example 😁
The mechanics of Orchard are clean and simple, and you can probably finish it in ten minutes or less.
Every game is certain to be different, so you’re confronted with different options and decisions every time. You’ll probably never become so expert that you’re bound to score high every time. You may, of course, become a better decision maker and strategist.
Since the cards all are numbered, the same game can be played several times. It’s simply a case of sorting nine cards into the correct order, and going again. Indeed, this has allowed a lively monthly challenge to build up – which can be seen at here, at BoardGameGeek.
Buy your Orchard here
In a nutshell …
- takes mere seconds to set up each time
- the guide makes all very clear
- luck is involved, but decisions matter mightily
- replayable
- quiet and calm under the trees
