Rules
How to play a Season
Ten minutes, five ideas, and no rules lawyering. Read this once and you will never need it again.
The table
Two Keepers, thirty cards each, and three Glades laid face up between them. That is everything.
Your rival
A Glade: needs 8 Bloom
A Glade: needs 9 Bloom
A Glade: needs 10 Bloom
You, the Keeper
- Keeper
- You.
- Troupe
- Your thirty cards. At most two copies of any one.
- Glade
- A place worth restoring. Three of them, shared.
- Works on a table
- Every rule here plays with printed cards and a handful of counters. The app only does the counting.
How to win
Restore two of the three Glades and the Season ends at once, in your favor.
At the end of a Moon, look at each Glade that is still open. If one Keeper's total Bloom there meets its number and beats the rival's total, that Keeper Restores it. It locks in their favor for good, and the Fablings standing there become tenders and stay put.
Sunny Meadow needs
8
- You
- 9
- Rival
- 7
9 meets 8 and beats 7, so Sunny Meadow Restores in your favor and is settled for good.
If Moon eight passes and neither Keeper has two, the most Restored Glades wins, then the highest total Bloom. A full tie is a Shared Garden.
- Bloom
- How much a Fabling adds toward restoring its Glade.
- Restored
- A Glade won, locked in your favor for the rest of the Season.
- Fabling
- A creature you settle at a Glade. Carries Bloom and Vigor.
A Moon in five steps
- Both Keepers draw one card.
- Both Keepers gather Dew equal to the Moon number. Moon three gives three.
- Take turns, one action each, in either order, for as long as you both want to.
- When both Keepers rest in a row, the Moon ends.
- Every Glade is counted. Any that can Restore, does. Then the next Moon rises.
- Season
- One match. Up to eight Moons.
- Moon
- One round.
- Dew
- What you spend. It refills to the Moon number and does not carry over.
Four things you can do
- Settle a Fabling
- Pay its Dew and place it at one of the three Glades. Its Bloom counts there from that moment.
- Play a Trick
- Pay its Dew, take its effect once, and it rests in the Burrow.
- Use a Knack
- Some Fablings have an ability you can call on while they stand at a Glade.
- Rest this Moon
- Pass. You can still act later this Moon if the rival acts first.
- Trick
- Plays once for its effect, then rests in the Burrow.
Three ways to be clever
Commit last
Bloom placed on the final turn of a Moon counts exactly as much as Bloom placed first, and it tells the rival far less.
Read the number
A Glade needing fourteen Bloom is a late-Season promise. A Glade needing eight is a race that starts now.
Two is enough
You never need all three Glades. Giving one away cheaply, on purpose, is often the strongest move on the board.
What costs money
The game is free, all of it. The only thing for sale is how your garden looks.
| In the garden | Price |
|---|---|
| Every one of the eighty-four cards1 | 0 |
| All twelve Glades, and every quirk they carry | 0 |
| The Restoration Trail, start to finish | 0 |
| A Season against a friend, by private link | 0 |
| Every Moon of every Season, for as long as it runs | 0 |
| The Founder's Pack: card frames and garden skins2 | $15, once |
| Bloom, Dew, Vigor, or a card you have not earned3 | Not for sale |
- Note 1Earned by playing, on a straight track with the price in Seeds written on it before you start. There are no randomized packs anywhere in the game.
- Note 2Cosmetic only, and a frame never covers a card's Bloom, Vigor, Dew cost or rules text. If it did, it would be information you had paid for.
- Note 3There is no mechanism to buy these. Not throttled, not rate-limited, not sold at a premium: absent.