Canopy is a quick and light primarily 2-player game to build trees and populate your forest with flora and fauna cards, scoring on the basis of height and number of trees, as well as for sets of plants and animals. There are somewhat clunky tweaks to enable 3 or 4 players, as well as a solo mode.
Setup for 2 Players
Lay out the Season/Growth cards as shown above, with the Point Tokens, Tree Awards and Wildlife Tokens nearby. Shuffle the orangey-backed Seed Cards and place them in a face down deck as shown. Next, shuffle the greenish-backed Rainforest Cards, remove 10 and divide the rest into 3 roughly equal piles placed face down at the Current Season, Season 2 and Season 3 spots by the Season Cards.
Put one card from the Current Season pile face down into the New Growth 1 space, 2 in New Growth 2, and 3 in New Growth 3.
Give each player a Starting Trunk (purple back), and you’re ready to go.
The box includes ‘advanced’ plant, threat and wildlife cards (marked with a purple box symbol at the bottom right); if you want a slightly harder game, you can switch various combinations of these cards with the basic ones, as described on page 14 of the rulebook before you shuffle the Rainforest Cards.
If you want to play the Shifting Seasons variant, shuffle the cream-backed Shifting Seasons Cards and place them face down within reach.
Turn Structure
The game is played over 3 rounds, referred to as seasons, during which players alternate turns to inspect the new growth stacks of cards in sequence, choosing one to play into their forest until the season’s Rainforest Cards run out.
Before the round starts, if Shifting Seasons Cards are in play, draw the top one and apply the rule during or at the end of this season as instructed, e.g., the Season of Diversity card (shown in the picture above) grants the player with most wildlife an extra 3 points as the end of the season, while the Season of Symbiotes says that any time you complete a tree, draw two cards, keeping one and passing the other to your opponent.
On your turn, you first pick up and inspect the stack of cards at the New Growth 1 space (which will be just a single card at the start of the season) at which point you have two options: either keep the cards or pass.
If you pass, return the cards to their space face down and add one more from the Current Season deck, then repeat this process with the cards on New Growth 2. If you keep the cards, you immediately add them to your forest (more on that in a tick) and take one card from the deck to create a new pile in its place. If you pass on New Growth 2, you again replace the cards, adding another, and move on to New Growth 3; and if you pass on that, once again adding another card, you must take a single card from the deck. If there are no cards left in the deck during any of this, you obviously can’t add cards to a passed-on pile, nor create a new one; more significantly, if there are no cards in the deck, you aren’t allowed to pass on the final pile—you must take it.
Whatever option you chose, you will now have one or more cards to play into your forest, growing or adding to your trees, or placing flora and fauna, etc. alongside the trees. You must play all the cards (with the single exception of canopies, if there are no trees to place them on).
Rainforest Cards fall into the following classes:
· Trunks (first card in the image at the start of the section)—you can add these to an existing partly grown tree to increase its height, or use one to start a brand-new tree;
· Canopies (shown below the Season of Diversity card)—these must be placed on top of a tree that doesn’t already have one, completing that tree, such that it can grow no higher, but note that only completed trees count towards scoring, and the taller they are the more points they’re worth; there is an additional end-of-season award for the person with the tallest tree, as well as an end-of-game one for whoever has most trees; if you can’t place a canopy, you have no option but to discard it;
· Flora—provide end of season scoring, e.g., the Bromelia scores 2 points if you have 1 of them, a massive 7 points if you have 2, but cost you 3 points if you have more than that; some of the advanced flora cards have actions you can take during a turn, e.g., the Coincap Fungi (let’s not get hung up on it being called a plant despite fungi and plants being different!) lets you discard it and any other card to draw another from the deck, which you can choose to play or discard;
· Wildlife—mainly end of game scoring, but some have specific abilities which can be played during your turn, e.g., the first Leafcutter Ants card shown in the picture above scores 2 points by itself, but if you have both cards, you get 5 points, while the second Ants card doesn’t score anything by itself, but will let you discard a card from your forest.
· Weather—pairs of sun (shown above) and rain cards score 5 points at the end of each season.
· Threats—fire and disease can trigger end of season penalties, while drought cards act immediately, causing you to lose a card of your choice from your forest (apart from completed trees)—this can be a good way to get rid of a troublesome card! The advanced cards include lightning as well.
· Seeds—give you extra cards at the end of a season, which you can play into your forest before scoring.
During your turn, if you have any flora or fauna in play with active abilities, you can make use of those abilities beginning with the turn after the one in which you played it. In most cases, you can use each card’s ability at most once per season, so I suggest rotating the card as a reminder that it’s been activated. If you’re instructed to discard a card from your forest as the result of any card action, this can be any card except those making up completed trees.
Once you’ve placed your cards, play passes to your opponent. When your turn comes around again, you will know what several cards are in the New Growth piles that both you and your opponent will have passed on, so will have some knowledge of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ cards in the pile, which will help you judge when to take a pile and when to wait for the next one…
As mentioned earlier, once the Current Season deck is empty, players are forced to take one of the New Growth piles, until all the cards have been played.
Forest cards have small numbers on the bottom right, telling you how many of them are in the deck, to help you judge probabilities of the cards you want turning up—though don’t forget to take into account the 10 cards discarded at the start, and that some of the same plants, animals and weather can turn up as Seeds Cards.
Season and Game End
At the end of a season, you first perform any relevant wildlife effects (advanced cards only).
If you have any seed cards, draw 3 cards from the separate Seed deck, and an additional one for every fire card you’ve collected; optionally add one to your forest for each seed you’d collected and place the remainder on the bottom of the Seeds deck. The Seed deck cards are similar to the Rainforest ones, spread across a subset of the same types, so can grant you the extra plant or weather card you need to get a few extra points.
If you have fire or disease cards, it’s time to deal with those now: if you have exactly 2 of one or the other, you have to discard 2 plant or wildlife cards, respectively, from your forest. If you have 3 or more, the fire has spread, and both players have to discard a single card of the appropriate type.
Next comes scoring, handing out the leaf-shaped Point Tokens to keep track. Completed trees that haven’t already been scored (e.g., in a previous season) gain the number of points indicated on their trunk cards plus an additional canopy bonus (number of trunk pieces times the multiplier marked on the canopy card). The image above shows a tree which scores 3 points for the trunk elements, but nothing for the canopy (since its multiplier is 0), then one scoring nothing for the trunk, but 2 (2×1 trunk element) for the canopy, and the third doesn’t score because it lacks a canopy and is therefore incomplete.
Once a tree has been scored, place a Wildlife Token on it as a reminder that it’s no longer eligible for scoring. The tallest tree across both players’ forests which hasn’t already been given a tallest tree award gets a tall tree award (worth 3 points for season 1, 4 for season 2, and 5 for season 3); place the corresponding token on it. If there’s a tie, both players get the points, but as there’s only a single token, one player can add the appropriate Point Tokens to the canopy instead—it seems unnecessary to even bother with the Tree Award pieces when you could just do that always, but anyway…
Sets of plant and weather cards score as indicated on the cards. Animals do not score at this stage.
Finally, discard plant, weather and threat cards—i.e., all that persists to the next season will be trees and wildlife (and points, of course). If you’ve rotated any activated wildlife cards, rotate them back now, to indicate they’re available again
At the end of the first and second seasons, move the next season deck into place, add cards to the New Growth areas as before, and begin a new season. The person with fewer points plays first; if there’s a tie, whoever took the last card of the prior season goes first.
The game ends after end of season scoring for the third season, at which point wildlife cards are scored as well, as indicated on their cards. In addition, the 10-point largest forest bonus is given to the player with most completed trees.
The player with most points wins, ties broken by most wildlife.
Three or Four Players
In a game with 3 or 4 players, the New Growth layout is different, with the cards arranged as shown above (for 3 players). There’s a single central New Growth 3 space common to all players, with different New Growth 1 and 2 between players. Each player will have a New Growth 1 on their right, New Growth 2 on their left, and New Growth 3 in front of them, which they will examine and play or pass in that order, as in the 2-player game.
In a 3-player game, remove 10 Rainforest Cards, as before; for 4 players, add in all the standard and advanced wildlife, and remove no cards. There will only be 2 seasons in these games, so split the deck into 2 piles, and play each season as you would in the 2-player game, with a few small changes: at the start of the season, place a single card in New Growth 1/2 (i.e., between players) and 2 into New Growth 3; in addition, if a player chooses to keep the New Growth 3 pile, replace it with 2 new cards instead of one.
The season ends when one player has no New Growth areas to choose cards from, and since different players have access to different New Growth areas, this means there could still be cards on the table at season end—these are discarded.
Scoring is slightly modified too, in that the largest forest award is worth only 5 points instead of 10.
To be frank, 3–4 player mode here is a bit of a bodge. The newer Canopy: Evergreen does a much better job, perhaps to the detriment of 2-player mode.
Solo Challenge
In the solo game, you play against the Forest Spirit.
Setup is as for the normal 2-player game, except that neither you or the Forest Spirit have a Starting Trunk (though the rulebook states that you can have an easier game if you do take one).
At the beginning of each season, the Forest Spirit gains a Starting Trunk, and you always take the first turn in a season.
You play your turn as normal, except that if you pass on a pile, you place all threat cards into the pile face up.
The Forest Spirit’s turn proceeds as follows:
1) Select the pile with most face down cards; if there’s a tie, take the one with fewest face up cards; if there’s still a tie, choose the leftmost.
2) Add a facedown card to each pile the Spirit has passed.
3) If the Spirit gains any face down threat cards, add an additional card to New Growth 3.
4) Add the cards to the Spirit’s forest; if the picked-up cards include trunks, create a new tree if the Spirit has fewer than 2 incomplete trees, otherwise, if you have a tree that hasn’t won an award which is taller than any of the Spirit’s trees, it will grow its tallest tree, or if not, it will grow its shortest; canopies will be added to the Spirit’s tallest incomplete trees.
When the Spirit needs to make a choice or is forced to discard, always take the option that gains the Spirit most points or loses fewest.
At the end of the season, if the Spirit has more threat cards than you, it gains 7 points, and it scores double for wildlife at the end of the game.
About the author
Current favourite boardgames are Ark Nova and Spooktacular, with a side of Dune: Imperium - Uprising and Paleo. When not playing games or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside over 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). In any time left over after all that, L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
