First of the Season
Designed by Jamie Thul
Players 2
Length 15 minutes
Extra Material None

Two players are working a communal garden, constantly planting and harvesting, hoping to get the best fruits, and to harvest the first fruit of the season.

Setup

Set the Crowns to the side, visible to both players. Shuffle the numeric cards and deal 4 to each player's hand, and 3 faceup to the garden, a shared play area in the middle of the table, then set one card aside unseen, which will not be used. Shuffle the Aces and place them in a facedown stack near the garden; reveal the topmost Ace.

Goal

Over the course of the game, players will be harvesting cards from the garden and placing them in their personal tableau, earning Crowns for having the majority of a given suit in their tableau and earning Aces for difficult plays. Whoever has the most Crowns and Aces at the end of the game wins.

Gameplay

Players alternate turns, and on your turn, you will always plant one card from your hand, adding it to the garden, and potentially harvest one or more cards, taking them from the garden and adding them to your tableau. You may then claim an Ace and one or more Crowns, and then draw a card, if possible.

Plant
Always start your turn by planting. Choose any card in hand and add it to the garden faceup. All cards in the garden should always be visible, and the order does not matter.

Harvest
You may now harvest any cards that meeting the following criteria, adding them to your tableau:
1. The card's rank is exactly one higher or one lower than the card that you planted.
2. The card has one or more common suits with the card that you planted, ignoring the suit of the revealed Ace.

The suit of the revealed Ace is out of season, and thus, you can't use it for a common suit when harvesting. So for example, the 8moons.pngsuns.png could capture any cards that have a 7 or a 9 for a rank and moons.png and / or suns.png for suits. However, if the current Ace is a moons.png, then moons.png are out of season, so the 8moons.pngsuns.png could only capture a 7 or a 9 of suns.png. Note that the 9moons.pngsuns.png could still be harvested because it shares a suns.png with the planted card.

End of Turn
Once you've harvested any cards, look at the suits on the harvested cards. If you harvested a card that shares a suit with the current Ace, you've harvested the first fruit of that kind for the season, so you place the current Ace in your tableau, and a new Ace is revealed. If you have more cards of any suit than your opponent, you take the corresponding Crown (even from your opponent) and place it in your tableau. Lastly, draw a card if possible.

Game End

When the deck is empty, play continues until both players have emptied their hands. Whoever has more Crowns and Aces is declared the better gardener and wins the game. In the event of a tie, the player who last harvested wins.

Credits

Friends and family for playtesting.

Links

Original thread on Board Game Geek. Please comment there with any feedback.

Comments

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