“Strategically grow your ecosystem card engine with unique flora, fauna, and terrains.”
Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/350184/earth
Playing Time: 45-90 Minutes
Weight: Light-Medium
Genre: Tableau Builder
Designer: Maxime Tardif
Players: 1-5
In Earth, you’ll be building your own ecosystem. While it is largely a card-based game, it’s heavier than it looks. In many ways, it’s reminiscent of tableau builders like Ark Nova and Terraforming Mars. And yet, it’s much simpler than THOSE games.
On your turn, you’ll be doing one of four actions, but the end result is that you’ll mostly be trying to acquire soil in order to plant plants in a 4×4 grid. How you arrange these plants matter quite a bit – you’ll want to place your cards in ways that create synergy with each other. Results of doing so are things like planting sprouts (the cubes) or vertically growing trees, which both help you in the endgame.
The reason why Earth stands above a lot of other similar nature-themed or tableau-building games is a game mechanic called the lesser action. Every action you take also results in everyone else at the table being able to take a lesser version of the same action. Did you just take the plant action, which allows you to plant 2 cards in your tableau and draw 4 cards and keep one? Great, that means that everyone else gets to plant 1 card and draw 1 card. This not only speeds up the game, but it also keeps you paying attention when other people are going. You may find your entire planned turn has to be rethought by the time your next turn comes – but only because everyone else accidentally gave you what you were looking for! Merry Christmas!
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