Planted: A Game of Nature and Nurture Board Game: Rules and Instructions for How to Play

Objective of Planted: A Game of Nature and Nurture

The objective of Planted is to acquire and grow plants in order to score more points than the other players.

Setup

Place the nursery board in the middle of the table.

Each player takes a player board. You will place your player board in front of you on the table.
Separate the Resource cards from the Item cards.
Shuffle the Resource cards and place them face down on the corresponding spot of the nursery board.

Shuffle the Item cards and place them face down on the corresponding spot on the nursery board.

Find the six Plant cards that say “Beginner” below the plant’s name. The cards are shuffled. Each player is dealt one of these Plant cards at random and places it face up above their player board. The remaining beginner Plant cards are returned to the box.

Shuffle the rest of the Plant cards. Place them face down on the corresponding spot on the nursery board. Draw four of the cards and place them face-up in the corresponding spots next to the draw pile. This will create the “nursery row”.

Place all of the Light, Water, Plant Food, Green Thumb, and Growth tokens into supply piles next to the nursery board.

Anatomy of a Planted Plant Card

Each Plant card has a few important pieces of information used in gameplay.

Type: The type tells you what kind of plant it is. This is relevant in final scoring. The type is shown in the top left corner of the card.

Growth Spaces: Along the left side of each Plant card is a number of Growth spaces. If you can cover these spaces during the game with Growth tokens, you will score points equal to the number listed on the space.

Required Resources: In order to grow your plants you must provide them with the required resources shown at the bottom of the card.

Plant Card in Planted — Here is an example Plant card. This card’s type is hanging. Along the left side are three growth spaces each worth three points. Finally along the bottom are the required resources. To feed this plant, you will need to acquire one Water and two Plant Food tokens.

Playing A Round

Planted is played over four rounds. Each round consists of eight turns. In each round the goal is to acquire the resources required to feed your plants. You can also acquire special decorations to score more points, tools to give you additional benefits, or even more Plant cards to take care of.

To begin each round all of the players will draw six Resource cards and two Item cards from the corresponding draw piles. These eight cards will form each players’ hand at the beginning of the round. You should not show your cards to the other players.

Starting Hand — To start the round this player was dealt these eight cards. They will choose one of the eight cards to play this turn.

Each turn consists of each of the players choosing one of the cards from their hand to play to the table. Cards are played face down below your player board. If there are cards already there, place the new card on top of them. All of the players will choose their card at the same time.

Choosing a card to play — This player has decided to choose the Workbench card this turn.

After each player has placed their card face down on the table, they will pass the rest of the cards in their hand to another player. The cards will be passed face down. The player you will pass your cards to depends on what round it is.

Rounds 1 and 3: Pass your cards left.
Rounds 2 and 4: Pass your cards right.

Passing cards to next player — After choosing a card to keep, the player passes the rest of their cards to the next player.

Once everyone has placed their chosen card on the table and passed their remaining cards to the next player, all of the players will reveal their cards at the same time. Depending on what card each player chose, they will take a specific action.

Resource Cards

When you play a Resource card, you will take Resource tokens from the general supply. The number of tokens you will take depends on the number of icons shown on the card.

Using A Resource Card — This player has chosen the two Water token card this turn. They will take two Water tokens from the supply.

This can be modified if a player owns the right Tool card.

Using A Tool Card — This player choose a two Water token card this turn. On a previous turn they acquired the Watering Can. Due to the Watering Can, they will take three Water tokens instead of two like they would normally take.

You will add these tokens to your player board.

There is no limit to the amount of Resource tokens a player can acquire in a round.

Should the supply run out of a type of Resource token, a player may take one of their Resource tokens and place it in the “X4 Token Area” of their board. This token will count as four of the corresponding type. They will then return three tokens of the same resource to the supply.

Decoration Cards

The purple cards in the game are Decoration cards. When a player plays one of these cards, they will place it in the corresponding area on their player board (bottom right). Decoration cards have no effect during the game. They are mostly used to score points at the end of the game.

You may acquire as many Decoration cards as you want. You may also collect multiple copies of the same Decoration card.

Each Plant card may contribute to the scoring of multiple Decoration cards.

The types of Decoration cards in the game and how you score them are as follows:

Macramé Basket: The card will score one point for each Plant card that has the “hanging” icon on it.

Ceramic Planter: For each Plant card that has the “shelf” icon, you will score one point.

Plant Stand: You will score one point per Plant card that has the “floor” icon.

Display Shelves: To score points from the Display Shelves, you need to have one hanging plant, one shelf plant, and one floor plant. If you have all three types of plants, you will score three points. If you have two sets of the three types of plants, you will score six points.

Indoor Greenhouse: You will score one point per Plant card that you fully grow. To fully grow a Plant card, you must place a Growth token on each growth space on the card.

Workbench: You will score one point for each Tool card you collected during the game.

Tool Cards

Tool cards (gray) give you a passive ability that you can use throughout the rest of the game. When you play the card, you will place it in the corresponding section of your player board. After you acquire a Tool card, you can use it as many times as you want for the rest of the game.

There is no limit to the number of Tool cards that you can acquire during the game. You may also acquire multiple copies of the same Tool card. If you acquire multiple cards of the same tool, you will get the benefit for each card whenever the conditions for the card are met.

The Tool cards are as follows:

Grow Light

If you play a two icon Light card during the game, you will get to take one additional Light token.

Window Planter

When you play a one icon Light card, you will gain one Green Thumb token.

Watering Can

The Watering Can gives you one additional Water token whenever you play a two icon Water card.

Spray Bottle

Should you play a one icon Water card, you will get to take one Green Thumb token.

Potting Mix

Whenever you play a two icon Plant Food card, you will get to take one additional Plant Food token.

Fertilizer

If you play a one icon Plant Food card, you will gain one Green Thumb token.

Buying Additional Plants

When you play your card each turn, you can use it for its associated action. You also have the choice to discard the card to buy a new Plant card.

When you reveal your card, you will say “nursery”. You will then get to choose one of the Plant cards placed in the nursery row on the nursery board.

Acquiring A Card — This player has decided to acquire one of the Plant cards. They can choose to take one of these four cards.

The Plant card you choose will be placed next to the Plant cards that you have already acquired. You may only acquire a maximum of six Plant cards during the game. Once you have acquired six, you can no longer buy additional plants.

Acquire Plant Card — This player decided to pick the Corn Plant Card. They will place it at the top of their player board next to their beginning plant card.

After you take a Plant card, you will take the top card from the Plants deck to replace the card that you took from the nursery board.

Empty space on nursery board after card is taken — As the player took a Plant card, there is now an empty space on the nursery board.

Fill empty space on nursery board — As the player took a Plant card, there is now an empty space on the nursery board.

If multiple players want to purchase Plant cards on the same turn, the order that players will take cards depends on the numbers printed on the cards they played this turn. The player who played the card with the lowest number will get to choose a Plant card first. They will then replace the card with a new Plant card from the draw pile. This is followed by the player with the next lowest card and so on until all of the players have chosen a Plant card.

Multiple Players Wanting to Acquire A Card — In this round two players wanted to acquire a card from the nursery board. The two players will compare the cards that they chose this round. The Plant Food card has the number four while the two Green Thumb card has the number 33. As the Plant Food card has a lower number, the plant food player gets to choose a card first.

End of Turn

Once every player has taken an action with the card they played, the current turn will end.

Each player will take the pile of cards passed to them from another player. This will form their hand for the next turn. The players will then play the next turn in the same way as the previous turn.

This continues until all eight turns from the round have been played (each player plays the last card from their current hand). This constitutes the end of the current round.

Feeding Your Plants

After a round ends, all of the players will get an opportunity to feed their plants.

End of Round in Planted — During the round this player acquired four Water tokens, two Plant Food tokens, and two Green Thumb tokens.

Each plant card features a number of resource icons at the bottom of the card. These icons show what Resource tokens you must use to feed the plant. In order to feed a plant, you must have all of the icons printed on the card.

To feed the plant you will discard the corresponding Resource tokens to the supply.

Feeding A Plant — To feed this plant you need one Water token and two Plant Food tokens. If they use the tokens pictured, the plant will be fed this round

You may use two Green Thumb tokens to replace one of the required resources needed to feed a Plant card.

You will then take a Growth token from the supply. This will be placed on the lowest valued growth space remaining on the plant you just fed (the space closest to the bottom of the card). By placing this Growth token, you will score points at the end of the game equal to the number beneath the token.

Fed Plant in Planted — As the player fed the plant they will take a Growth Token. They will place the token on the lowest Growth Space on the card.

You may not feed a plant that has had all of its growth spaces covered with Growth tokens.

You may feed multiple plants at the end of a round. Each Plant card can only be fed once each round though. If you have multiple options of plants to feed, you can choose which you want to feed.

Propagation Jars

After feeding your plants you likely will have Resource tokens that you can’t use to feed your plants. For each two Resource tokens that you didn’t use to feed your plants, you can take one Growth token.

You will place this token on the propagation jars space. At the end of the game, each of these tokens will be worth one point.

You may take this action as many times as you want with the Resource tokens you were unable to use.

Green Thumb tokens do not count as Resource tokens for the propagation jars. Instead you can turn in two Green Thumb tokens to count as one of the two resources required to take the action.

End of Round

After all of the players are done feeding their plants and using their propagation jars, the round will end. Before the next round begins, players will take the following actions:

Each player will discard any unused Resource tokens to the supply.
All of the cards played during the round will be added to the corresponding discard piles. The Tool and Decoration cards will stay with the player that played them if they weren’t played to acquire a Plant card.
If you are playing a three player game, you will have to shuffle all of the Resource cards from the discard and draw piles after the third round. This will form the draw pile for the fourth round.
In four and five player games, you will have to shuffle all of the Resource cards from the discard and draw piles after the second round. This will form the draw pile for the third and fourth round.

As long as you didn’t just complete the fourth round, you will play another round. This round will be played in the same way as the previous round. The one change is that the direction you will pass cards will reverse from the previous round.

End of Game

Planted consists of four rounds. The game ends after you play the fourth round.

Each player will then add up the points they scored during the game. Players will score points from three different sources.

First each player will look at their Plant cards. You will score points for each growth space that you covered with a Growth token. You will score points equal to the number printed on the growth spaces that you covered up.

Scoring Growth Tokens in Planted — Here are the plants that this player acquired during the round. They fed their plants ten times during the game. They will score 35 points from the Growth tokens (3 + 3 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 2 + 5 + 2 + 3 + 5).

Next you will score points from your propagation jars. You will score one point for each Growth token placed on the space during the game.

Scoring Propagation Jars in Planted — During the game this player placed three Growth Tokens on their Propagation Jars. These tokens will score three points at the end of the game.

Finally you will score points for each Decoration card that you collected during the game. Check out the Decoration Card section for details on how to score each type of Decoration card.

Scoring From Decoration Cards in Planted — During the game this player acquired three Decoration cards.

Scoring Decoration Cards in Planted — During the game this player acquired three Decoration cards.

The player that scores the most total points, wins Planted. If multiple players scored the same number of points, you will compare how many Growth tokens they placed on their Plant cards. The tied player that placed more Growth tokens, wins the game. If there is still a tie, the tied players share the victory.

Planted FAQs

If you have any questions about how to play the game, leave a comment below on this post. I will try to answer any questions asked as best and as quickly as possible.

Components

60 Resource cards
42 Plant cards
42 Item cards
20 Light tokens
20 Water tokens
20 Plant Food tokens
20 Green Thumb Tokens
65 Growth Tokens
5 player boards
1 Nursery board
1 score pad
5 Resource bags
Instructions

Year: 2022 | Publisher: Buffalo Games | Designer: Phil Walker-Harding | Artist: Hannah Bailey

Genres: Card Drafting, Engine Building, Family

Ages: 10+ | Number of Players: 2-5 | Length of Game: 30-45 minutes

Difficulty: Light-Moderate | Strategy: Moderate | Luck: Moderate

Where to Purchase: Amazon, eBay Any purchases made through these links (including other products) help keep Geeky Hobbies running. Thank you for your support.

Written By:

Eric Mortensen

Eric Mortensen is an owner and head writer on Geeky Hobbies since 2014. He is an avid board game player and collector with over 3,000 board and card games in his collection. Since 2014 he has written more than 1,100 board game how to play guides.