You’ve graduated from wizarding school with a PHD in spells and potions. It’s time to put that education to work. However, magical ingredients don’t grow on trees…they grow from rare plants cultivated for their powerful properties. Luckily, you earned a minor in enchanted horticulture. With the help of your faithful assistant Sprites, you’re on a mission to grow the most powerful plants and harvest the most magical Gems.
Magically fertile land is hard to come by, so you've reached a tentative agreement with some fellow wizards to 'share' a plot. As the garden grows, you want your team of Sprites to control valuable patches and fields. The bigger the better! But look out for your rivals! Competition is fierce, and if you want to gain control of the garden and walk away as the most influential wizard in town, it’s going to take all your planting skills!
Power Plants is the new game from Adam Daulton and KTBG featuring illustrations by Apolline Etienne. In it, you compete with other wizards adding new plant patches to the garden. Only one of you will be able to earn the most Gems and thus the eternal and unwavering respect of your peers. A game of Power Plants always uses five different types of plants of eight total (to start). The collection of flora you decide upon will make each gaming experience unique.
Plants like Deeproot, Honeyleaf, and Tanglethorn allow you to add lots of your Sprites to the garden. Wingbean and Frightshade change the conditions in the garden and shift Sprites around. Starflower and Emberwood add precious Gems to the board or directly to your supply. Finally the Snapjaw allows you to snatch your opponents' Sprites and hold them for endgame ransom!
Each turn, you add one of the two magical plant patches from your hand to the garden as well as the Wizard pawn to indicate the newest patch. Then you activate it for its mighty Plant ability or activate all of the tiles it touches for their weaker Grow abilities. In some situations it will make more sense to gain a singular strong action, but other times you would be wise to get several less powerful abilities. It’s going to take all your wizarding skills to decide.
You can see in the following example that when you add a Deeproot patch to the garden, you have a decision to make.
You can choose to activate its strong Plant power, adding two Sprites to one patch and one Sprite to another patch in straight lines from the Wizard, OR...
You can choose to activate the less powerful (but still pretty useful) Grow powers of the Deeproot, Emberwood, and Frightshade patches it touches.
As the garden grows, many different situations can arise. Sometimes the right move to gain control of a field or secure a number of valuable Gems might be obvious, but you'll have to weigh where in the garden you want to add a patch and how you want to activate it.
Most plant patches you place in the garden allow you to add one of your Sprites with the as well. Many different Plant and Grow abilities also let you add Sprites somewhere in the garden. If you are allowed to add Sprites and an opponent already has Sprites in that patch, you remove theirs instead. Hey, magical gardening is a tough business.
A wise wizard knows that strategically deploying their Sprites in the garden is key to earning Gems! At the end of the game, every field is scored. The bigger the grouping, the more Gems it is worth to the player with the most control.
At the end of the growing season, you tally up your Gems and decide which wizard has a magical green thumb.
Power Plants is coming to Kickstarter on October 26.
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