Verdant is live (Interior gardens)
Update: Verdant has launched on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 43 days. You may pledge for a copy of the game, or for the PnP. A signed hand-made prototype is also available.
Our preview post below was published on September 10.
Verdant is a 1-4 players tile-laying game in which you arrange plants in an interior, trying to get the perfect lighting conditions for each of them. The game explores the tile/token dual drafting already seen in Calico, Cascadia and Overboss. The campaign for the game will be live on Kickstarter on September 14.
You start by randomly picking a room card and a plant card to start your interior, placing them adjacent to each other. You are facing a display of 4 triplets, composed of a room card, an item token, and a plant card. The game is played in 13 rounds. Each round, you must draft a card and a token from one of these four triplets. You must place the card in your interior, which is a 3x5 grid of cards, alternating room and plant cards until your interior is filled.
Each room card shows a lighting condition on each of its edge. Each plant card also shows light conditions that allow them to thrive. Whenever the lighting condition of a plant matches the edge of a room card adjacent to it, you earn a Verdancy token (those must not be confused with the tokens you draft from the display). Each plant card has a number of Verdancy tokens that it needs to get in order to fully grow and bring you points in the end. Room cards, on the other hand, will bring one point for each adjacent plant of its matching type.
The tokens are of two types. Nature tokens (the green ones) grant you additional Verdancy tokens. The other tokens have a color and pattern that match the room cards. If you put a token on its matching card, this will allow you to double the score of the room card at the end of the game, thus gaining two points for each adjacent matching plant card instead of one. Usually, you must use or place a token immediately after placing the card you drafted, but you are given a free “storage” lot to reserve a token for further use.
Since each triplet has two kinds of cards, and you only draft one of these, you always forego one card. When you do so, you must put a green thumb token on the card, which you will claim when you draft it. You can spend a green thumb whenever you want to refresh the tokens from the market, pick any choice of a token and a card when drafting, or add a Verdancy token on a plant.
At the end of your turn, you refill the display so it shows three full complete triplets instead. The solo rules have not been revealed, but we may speculate from the previous three games, that you must also discard the rightmost triplet of the display. When the game ends, you score your interior, getting points for each room card (depending on how many adjacent plants match its type), each plant card (if fully grown, otherwise in proportion to the Verdancy tokens on it). Having all five types of plants and all five types of rooms also grants bonus points.
Concerning the solo mode, you can at least play the game alone and try to beat your own score. If it follows the previous games of the series, there will probably be achievements to complete, and specific scenarios (e.g. try to score at least X points while fulfilling Y condition).