Reforest: Old Growth Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Components
• Setup: Plants
• Setup: Visitors
• Card Overview
• Region Overview
• On Your Turn
  • A. Gather Plants
  • B. Play a Plant
  • Adjacency
• Paying for a Plant
• Stacking Cards
  • Succession Discount
• Covering Sun Plants
• Covering Half-Sun Plants
• Ending a Round
• Ending the Game
• Plant Effects
  • Playing a Plant (Order of Events)
• Solitaire Mode
  • Rule Changes
• What Is Old Growth?
• What's New in This Expansion?
• Stored Visitor Energy
• Old-Growth Trees
  • New Keywords
• Parasitic Plants
• Terrain Module
• Events Module
  • Standard Mode (Strategic/Competitive)
  • Casual Variant (Lighthearted/Random)
• Glossary

Overview

Compete to grow the healthiest forest ecosystem by arranging and evolving a synergistic collection of plant cards.

Each plant has a point value, a unique ability, and a cost to play them. Plants can grow in empty spaces or cover over others. You'll pay for them by discarding cards from your hand and/or your forest's energy supply.

The game is played in 3 rounds. After each, an animal visitor card is awarded to the player who best met their habitat preferences.

After the 3rd round, points are tallied from plants, visitors, and various bonuses.

Components

• 90 Standard Plants
• 23 Old-Growth Trees
• 11 Parasitic Plants
• 16 Visitor cards
• 6 Reference Cards

Optional Modules (setup described separately):

• 12 Terrains
• 4 Events

Setup: Plants

1. Shuffle all plant cards (standard, old-growth and parasitic) together. Keep the following amount based on the number of players:
   • 4 Players: 90 Cards
   • 3 Players: 70 Cards
   • 2 Players: 50 Cards
   • Solitaire: 30 Cards (use no more than 6 old-growth trees in a solitaire game)
   • Place these face down to form the plant deck. Leave space for a face-up discard pile.
   • Put away the other unused plant cards.
2. Deal 5 plants to each player. You may look at your own cards but keep them hidden from others.
3. Draw 3 plant cards from the deck and lay them face up to create the nursery.

Setup: Visitors

1. Shuffle all visitor cards together to form the face-down visitor deck.
2. Lay out 3 visitor cards as round-end visitors. These will be awarded from left to right.
3. Tuck the listed number of plant cards from the plant deck face down under both the 1st and 2nd round-end visitors:
   • 4 Players: 12 tucked cards
   • 3 Players: 10 tucked cards
   • 2 Players: 8 tucked cards
   • Solitaire: 6 tucked cards

Game Setup example: Round 1 and Round 2's round-end visitors each have tucked plants beneath them; Round 3's round-end visitor has no tucked plants. The table also holds the face-down visitor deck, the face-down plant deck, a face-up plant discard pile, and the 3-card face-up nursery.

Starting Player: The player who most recently took a walk in the woods plays first.

Card Overview

Each plant card shows:

• A. Plant Cost: The number of cards that must be discarded to play this plant. You may discard any combination of plant cards from your hand or stored energy cards from your region. Costs may be reduced in various ways. See Paying for a Plant.
• B. Elevation: The elevation rows this plant can be played into.
• C. Shade Tolerance: Determines if a plant persists or turns into stored energy when grown over. See Covering Sun Plants / Covering Half-Sun Plants.
• D. Height (m): The approximate maximum growing height of this plant. Only plants of a greater height may grow over (cover) this card.
• E. Plant Value: The plant's point value.
• F. Plant Effect: A plant's unique ability. See Plant Effects.
• G. Understory Overview: Details about the plant. Traits, icons, and other features are found here. These remain visible and relevant even after the plant is covered.

Region Overview

A player's play area is called their region. It has 6 spaces distributed into 3 elevation rows (High / Middle / Low) where cards can be played.

Multiple cards can be stacked within a single space. This allows players to have more than 6 cards in their region.

You'll want to balance your stacks to get a good elevation bonus! See Elevation Bonus.

On Your Turn

On your turn, choose one of the following actions. You can either A. Gather plants to your hand or B. Play a plant to your forest. Play then proceeds to the player on your left.

If the plant deck is emptied on your turn, stop your current action immediately and resolve the end of a round. See Ending a Round.

A. Gather Plants

Draw up to 2 cards from any combination of the deck and/or the nursery. Replenish the nursery between player turns.

B. Play a Plant

Pay a plant's nutrient cost to add it to your region.

• The first plant you play must be played at low elevation.
• Future plants must be played adjacent to an existing plant or cover over one. Plants may only cover others if they are taller than them.

Adjacency

• A card/stack is not adjacent to itself.
• All cards or stacks in spaces that share a border are considered adjacent to each other.
• All cards within the same stack are also considered adjacent.

In this example, all cards in the green spaces are adjacent to the marked space, including other cards in that same space.

Paying for a Plant

The nutrient cost of a plant can be paid in any combination of these two ways:

• Discarding X cards from your hand

• and/or Discarding X adjacent stored energy (stored energy are face-down cards tucked under stacks in your region — see Stored Energy Cards)

• Each discarded card is only worth 1 toward the cost to be paid, regardless of the discarded card's own nutrient cost.

• Covering existing plants reduces the cost you'll pay. See Succession Discount.

• Plants with When Played effects have effects that adjust their cost as they are played.

Stacking Cards

Plants may be played directly on top of others if they are taller. This is called covering a plant and grants the succession discount. Plants of the same height cannot cover each other.

When covered, sun plants turn into stored energy while half-sun plants persist. Covering either type of plant still grants the succession discount.

The term canopy refers to the topmost plants in stacks. The understory refers to all lower plants in stacks.

Succession Discount

Growing over a plant reduces the amount of nutrients needed to play the new plant.

• Subtract the cost of the topmost plant in the stack you are growing over from the cost of the new plant you are playing. Do not subtract the cost of other cards lower down in a stack.

Example: Salal is established in the canopy of your region. Since Salal has a cost of 2, the next plant that covers it will have its cost reduced by 2.

Covering Sun Plants

After growing over a sun plant, flip it over, turning it into stored energy. It can't survive in shade and instead joins the soil as nutrients.

Stored energy cards...

• ...do not count as plants.
• ...are each worth 1 point at the end of the game.
• ...can be discarded to pay for plants growing in adjacent spaces. See Paying for a Plant.
• ...can be looked at by their owner at any time.

Covering Half-Sun Plants

If growing over a half-sun plant, leave its understory overview (bottom section) visible.

• Covered half-sun plants lose their plant effects but are otherwise still considered in play. This means all information in their understory overview, including icons, traits, and plant value, are still relevant.

Stack Limit: There is no limit to the number of cards (plants or stored energy) that can exist in a single space of a region.

Hand Limit: After ending your turn, you must discard down to a hand of 7 plant cards.

Ending a Round

A round ends immediately when the plant deck is emptied. This may interrupt a player's turn/action. Resolve the following:

1. Award round-end visitor(s): Players compare regions to see who best met the Multiplayer goal of the leftmost round-end visitor(s).
   • The winner takes the visitor card. Visitors stay face up in front of you and do not count toward your hand limit.
   • If tied, the visitor becomes an additional goal for the next round. Discard unawarded visitors after the 3rd round.
2. Reset the deck: Shuffle the discard pile together with any remaining cards in the nursery and any plants tucked under the previous round's visitor. This becomes the new plant deck. Lay out 3 new nursery cards.
3. Resume turn: If a player's turn or action was interrupted to end the round, they may now finish their turn/action.

Ending the Game

After the 3rd round-end visitor is resolved, the game continues until it would be the starting player's turn again. Scoring then commences by adding up the following:

• Plant Value: Score the point value on each face-up plant, including those in the understory.
• Scoring Effects: Score the point value from the visible yellow scoring effects on plants in the canopy.
• Stored Energy: Score 1 point for each face-down energy card in your region.
• Visitor Value: Score the point value of all visitors you have earned or drawn.
• Elevation Bonus: Count the number of plant cards in the smallest stack of each elevation row. Score 2 points for each of those cards. Do not count stored energy. Empty spaces count as stacks of 0.
• Cards in Hand: Score 1 point for every 2 cards remaining in your hand.

Plant Effects

Plant effects are optional. If you choose to use an effect, you must resolve it entirely.

• When Played: Activates only once, when this plant is being played into your region.
• Passive: Always in effect until covered.
• Reaction: Activates any time its condition is met. Does not trigger itself when played.
• Before/After Gathering: Activates any time you take the Gather action.
• When Covered: Activates when this plant is in the canopy and is then covered by another.
• Scoring: Earns you bonus points if this plant is in the canopy at the end of the game.

Plants are included in their own effects. E.g., a plant with a berries icon counts itself when counting berries.

Playing a Plant (Order of Events)

1. Choose a space or stack to play the plant onto.
2. Calculate and pay the plant's cost.
3. Place it onto the space or stack. It is now played (grown). Plants under it are now covered.
4. If you covered a plant, turn it into stored energy if it is a sun plant, or leave it alive if it is a half-sun plant.
5. Activate any relevant When Covered, Reaction, and/or When Played plant effects in any order. Plants do not trigger their own Reaction effects.

Solitaire Mode

Reforest can be played by a single player at one of two difficulty levels:

• Standard: Score higher than the total value of all 30 plants in your game to win.
• Hard: Add the value of any unearned round-end visitors (including those added in-game) to the Standard target score.

Rule Changes

• Gathering: After gathering, you must discard a card from the nursery or deck.
• Visitor Goals: Use the Solitaire goals of round-end visitors. Usually this means you must have a certain number of plants with a specific trait. Be sure to only use the correct round's goal amount. The layout is: Goal Criteria: Round 1 Goal / Round 2 Goal / Round 3 Goal.
• If a visitor is not earned at the end of its round, remove it from the game. Keep it to score Hard mode.
• Game End: When you empty the deck for the 3rd time, play 1 more turn before ending the game. Compare your score with your chosen challenge to see if you won! Ties are losses.

What Is Old Growth?

Old growth is the final stage of forest succession where a large proportion of ancient trees supports an intricate web of smaller coexisting species.

It is where falling trees create habitats for new life, forming damp, shaded pits as their roots pull up the soil, dry elevated perches along their trunks as they lay to rest, and sunlit gaps in the canopy they once filled. It is where decaying matter makes up roughly half of the forest's biomass, ready to feed the next generation of plants in an endless cycle of nutrients from new to old to new again.

In this final stage, a forest gains resilience, reliably stores carbon, regulates our climate, and supports keystone species in the interconnected ecosystem that sustains us.

It takes hundreds of years to achieve. We already have these invaluable forests, we simply need to protect them.

What's New in This Expansion?

The Old Growth expansion introduces more standard plants, visitors, and events to the base game along with new concepts such as old-growth trees, parasitic plants, and terrain.

• Shuffle the new plants and visitor cards together with those from the base game.
• Terrain and Events are optional modules and can be included if desired.

Stored Visitor Energy

Some cards now allow you to store visitor cards as energy. A stored visitor card is equivalent to 3 regular stored energy in all aspects of the game (e.g., when scoring, spending stored energy, counting a stack's total stored energy, etc).

Stored visitor energy is spent all at once, even if it is only partially used. Stored visitor cards that are removed from your region for any reason are returned to the bottom of the visitor deck.

Stored visitor cards do not count as plants or as visitors in your region.

Old-Growth Trees

High-scoring alternate versions of trees from the base game with information based on the giants of their species.

Old-growth trees have an icon beside their name and a green understory overview (card bottom).

Solitaire setup note: Use no more than 6 old-growth trees in a solitaire game.

Gameplay: Old-growth trees are played like any other plant but are limited to 1 per stack. You cannot play an old-growth tree in a stack where one already exists, even if one would turn into stored energy when covered. Old-growth trees can still be covered by other taller plants.

Limit 1 old-growth tree per stack.

New Keywords

Reveal: Expose a covered plant effect. Slide up any covering cards so that the effect is visible.

• There can be any number of revealed effects in a stack.
• Revealed effects remain visible unless otherwise specified.
• Effects cannot be "revealed" again if already visible.
• When Played effects trigger immediately.
• When Covered effects are triggered every time a taller plant is grown in their stack. I.e., they can now be triggered multiple times.
• Passive, Reaction, Gathering, and Scoring effects trigger as usual.

Regenerate: Flip a card from stored energy into a live plant at no cost. Plants regenerate to the same stack they were stored in.

Regenerating a plant counts as growing it. It must still:

• Follow elevation rules. Example: You cannot regenerate a low-elevation plant in a high elevation row.
• Follow plant limits (i.e., 1 old-growth tree per stack).
• Be positioned in its stack by height. If tied with another plant, regenerate below it.

Sun plants regenerated under other plants in a stack become half-sun plants. In the rare case where they become the canopy plant of their stack, they return to being sun plants.

A regenerated plant's effect does not trigger unless it is in the canopy. Regenerated plants in the understory may still have their effects activated via the "reveal" keyword.

You cannot regenerate a stored visitor card.

Parasitic Plants

Some plants lack chlorophyll and cannot photosynthesize their own energy. Instead, saprophytes parasitize nutrients from fungi while root parasites attach themselves to other plant roots, stealing directly from their host. Both are referred to as parasitic plants in this game.

Parasitic plants have an icon beside their name and a grey understory overview (card bottom).

Gameplay: Parasitic plants are treated like other plant cards but are grown differently.

Playing a Parasite: Plants with this icon have a cost of 0 but must be played under at least 1 taller plant.

If a trait (e.g., a fungi icon) is also specified on this icon, there must also be at least 1 plant with the matching trait in the stack.

Position parasitic plants in their stack by height. Grow below plants of the same height. Parasites remain in play even if all other plants in their stack are removed.

No Light Requirement: These plants are neither sun nor half-sun.

Limit 1 parasitic plant per stack.

Terrain Module

(Optional Expansion)

Terrain cards grant effects to your elevation rows.

They bring more structure to your region at the start of the game and can help you form richer forests.

Setup: After setup, deal 3 random terrain cards to each player. Players may discard any unwanted terrain cards. For each discarded terrain, they draw a plant card from the deck.

Arrange terrains in your region. Limit: 1 per row.

Once all players have decided on their terrain placements, resolve any Setup abilities on terrain cards in player order.

Gameplay: Terrain cards do not take up space in their regions. Their effects are applied to their entire row. Terrain effects work the way as plant effects do. See Plant Effects. E.g., when tallying plant scoring effects, score terrain scoring effects as well.

Solitaire: Increase the difficulty of solitaire games, by adding 6 to your target score.

Events Module

(Optional Expansion)

These cards represent natural and human factors that can affect a forest. They vary from helpful to challenging.

Standard Mode (Strategic/Competitive)

Setup: After normal setup, place an event between each of the 3 round-end visitors. Choose specific events to use or pick at random.

Gameplay: Activate the laid-out event cards between rounds. See Event Card Timing below.

Casual Variant (Lighthearted/Random)

Setup: No additional setup, just shuffle the event deck and place it nearby.

Gameplay: Draw and activate a random event card between rounds. See Event Card Timing. Do not draw an event after the 3rd round.

Event Card Timing: Activate event cards immediately after the round's visitor has been resolved but before resetting the deck. Between steps 1 & 2 in Ending a Round.

Glossary

• Adjacent: Cards/stacks in spaces that share a border are adjacent to each other. All cards within the same stack are adjacent to each other. A card/stack is not adjacent to itself.
• Canopy: The topmost plants of their respective stacks.
• Draw X Card(s): Take X cards from the deck and/or nursery. If a source is specified, draw from it instead.
• Draw a Visitor Card: Draw a card from the visitor deck for its point value. Ignore its goal requirements. Place it next to your region. It counts as "in your region".
• Elevation: A row in a region: low, middle, or high.
• Empty Space: A space with no plants in it. May contain stored energy.
• Gather: Spend your turn to draw 2 cards.
• Look at: Inspect but do not draw. Does not trigger round end.
• Move: Move a card to a specified space. Does not count as growing a plant but can activate When Covered effects.
• Nursery: Three plant cards from the deck laid face up and available to be drawn. Replenished between turns.
• Regenerate: Turn stored energy into a plant. See Old-Growth Trees.
• Region: A player's play area. It consists of 6 spaces distributed into 3 elevation rows.
• Reveal: Expose a covered plant effect. See New Keywords.
• Space: A zone in a region where cards can be played. Can hold any number of stacked plants/energy.
• Stack: A collection of cards (plant and/or energy) placed atop each other within a single space.
• Store X Card(s): Place X cards face down under the designated stack(s) as stored energy.
• Stored Energy: Cards placed face down in your region. They do not count as plants, have a value of 1, and can be discarded to pay for plants in adjacent spaces. You may look at your stored energy at any time.
• Stored Visitor Energy: Counts as 3 stored energy in all aspects of gameplay and scoring. Spend all at once.
• Understory: Any plants below the top card in a stack. Stored energy does not count as understory.