Earth - First Play!

21st July 2023

It's a Friday evening and we're round Simon's for some gaming fun!

​Life finds a way.... to create a tableau of cards with little green cubes and plastic plant stalks in Earth, a engine-building, action-selection game.

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What's in a game?

• Fauna board: This board has places to put 6 cards which provide the extra scoring opportunities.
  4 of the spaces are given over for fauna cards and alongside each fauna card will be a scoring track where players put a token when they meet the objective; for fauna cards, the earlier a player gets there, the more victory points (VPs) they get.
  2 spaces are for ecosystem cards which provide common scoring objectives which unlike fauna cards are scored at the game end.
  In the centre is a spot that earns VPs for the player who triggers the endgame.
  Additionally; the board is double-sided and the flip side features more friendly scoring which earns players the same VPs regardless of when they complete the objective and no ecosystem scoring

Fauna board.

• Player (island) board: One of these large boards is given to each player and they contain quite a lot of information.
  • Actions: Along the top are listed the 4 different 'actions' the active player may choose to perform during their turn. Each action displays what actions the non-active players can also take when that role is chosen. Additionally, each action is also colour coded, the colour coding is important and will be explained later.
  • Card spaces: Below the roles are 5 spaces for cards. The top row of 3 spaces is used during setup while the remaining to come into use during play.
    The top 3 are spots for Island, Climate and Ecosystem cards to go. More on those later.
    The remaining 2 spaces are the Events discard pile and Compost discard pile.
    There're also spaces for 4 leaf tokens and soil tokens which are the game's main currency.
    Below all of that is a list of many of the games various icons as well on the right information on how the game scores. Phew!
    Finally; all the player boards are also double-sided and are used for variations on the game including solo-play and team based play.
    

Player board.

• Cards: There are just over 360 cards in Earth! Not only does Earth use a lot of cards, it uses a lot of different cards, furthermore each card also tends to display a lot of information. I really mean it - a lot of information. That a lot of lots!
• Earth cards: This type of card is broken down into 3 further types; Flora, Terrain and Event.
  To some extent, they share the same elements.
  The central part of each card will show an image of what it is.
  Cost: The top left corner displays the cost in soil to play the card.
  VP value: Just below a card's cost, is its VP Value.
  Habitat: In the top right corner will be displayed which habitats that card can be found in.
  Action: Along the bottom of each earth card it will show which action(s) that card can perform. Actions are all colour coded according to the action's background and indicate when these actions can occur. These colours for the most part match the colours of the game's 4 roles.
  Finally, on the backs of earth card is shown a soil symbol, this is important for composting​.
  Below is listed unique elements to event, flora and terrain cards.
  • Flora cards: These constitute the bulk of the game's earth cards.
    Name: The name with the flora will be displayed in the top half along with the type of flora it is.
    Growth: Some flora will have an option for growth which will be marked out but a large green circle overlapped by a numbered smaller circle on the left and a VP value on the right. The first number indicates how tall a growth can get and the second how much that full growth is worth in VPs.
    Sprouts: Some flora cards can hold sprouts. These will be represented by little white squares that run along the bottom of the image.
  • Terrain: Terrain cards provide can provide opportunities to score extra VPs. This may be according to the terrain card's position in player's tableau or may have some other scoring criteria.
    
  • ​Event cards: Event cards are slightly different to other Earth cards since they are once-only cards that are not played into a tableau and lack a soil cost and habitat.
    Cost: Event cards also quite often have a VP cost which means events can lose players VPs!
    Name: The card's name will shown in the top half of the card and next to the name will be a lightning bolt symbol to indicate it's an event.
    ​Below that will be listed what the event does. 

Examples of flora, terrain & event cards.

• Island cards: These are double-sided and each side features a different island.
  Name: The island's name along with the island icon is displayed in the top half of the card.
  VP value: The card's VP value is shown close to the card's top left corner.
  Starting resources: Along the bottom, on a black background will be displayed the starting resources a player gains for choosing to use that island card.
  Action: Alongside the starting resources, each island card will have a unique ability which the player can make use of.
• Climate cards: Also double sided, each player will have a climate card on their player board and each one has several features.
  Name: The climate's name along with a thermometer icon will be displayed in the top half.
  VP value: Towards the top right corner of a climate will be displayed its VP value.
  Action: The climate card's actions will be displayed along the bottom part of the card.
• Ecosystem cards: Ecosystem cards are unusual since they are they only type of card that are used on both the fauna board and player board. Ecosystem cards are also double-sided.
  Name: Each ecosystem's name along with the ecosystem icon is displayed on the top part of the card:
  Scoring: Ecosystem cards do not have actions, instead each one provides a scoring objective.
  Ecosystem cards on the flora board provide common objective for all players while those on a player board provide a scoring objective for that player only.

Island, climate & ecosystem cards.

• Fauna cards: These brown cards are also double-sided and feature various types of animals as you might expect. Fauna cards are used exclusively on the fauna board.
  Name: The name of the animal type and the fauna appear in the top half of the card.
  Scoring: As with ecosystem cards, fauna cards provide extra scoring opportunities for players.

Some fauna boards.

• Leaf tokens: There are 5 of these leaf-shaped cards in each player colour.

Yellow leaf tokens.

• Soil tokens: These tokens are made of card.

Soil tokens.

• Growth tokens: These plastic tokens are used to track growth and are broken down into 2 further types; trunks and canopies.
  Trunks: These are basically beige coloured cylinders that can stack on top of each other.
  Canopies: These come in 3 colours and are dome shaped, they are used to indicate when a growth has reached its maximum growth.

Trunks.

Canopies.

• Sprout tokens: Bright green coloured wooden cubes are used to represent sprouts.

Sprout cubes.

• Player tokens: There is a circular first player token and a rectangular active player token. I don't usually bother mention components that don't have a infuence on gameplay but here, both of these thick card tokens are double-sided and both feature lovely nature themed images as is fitting for the game.

Active player token & first player token.

Flip side of the tokens.

Earth uses a variety of different component types; wooden cubes, plastic segments and card tokens as well as tiles, boards and cards. It's a bit of a eclectic choice but all of them are good quality and work together well.
Although the growth tokens, which are meant to stack upwards are a little fiddly to handle, because they're cylindrical they're a little slippery and have a tendency to roll around or even off the table!

In the past, I've been critical of games that have made use of photos in place of art. Especially so of licensed games that use stock photos from their source material. It seems cheap and lazy.
Earth does use photos but bucks that trend in great fashion here. The use in depicting nature makes sense as it shows varied animals, plants and landscapes all in glorious, vivid detail, lending the game a documentary-like quality.
Additionally, it appears that each of Earth's large numbers of cards features a unique image as well as some flavour text that talks about the subject matter.
As a result, it doesn't look anything like the cheap or easy option, works very well and shows the effort and thought taken to make the game look good.
In short; Earth is a great looking game with eye-catching table presence.

​When it comes to iconography, Earth definitely has quite lot that players will need to get to grips. 4 types of habitat, 4 types of flora, 4 types of actions and sub actions, several types of resource etc.

Some of Earth's iconography

I wouldn't call it a barrier to playing the game considering the type of player the game is aimed at but still there are quite a lot learn.
​If I had one criticism, it would be that the 4 colours associated with the 4 actions could be a more contrasting.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Fauna board: First decide which side of the fauna board to use.
  For this blog, we'll be using the standard side.
  Fauna cards: Shuffle the fauna cards into a deck and deal 4 on to the pertinent spaces on the fauna board. Either side of the fauna card can be used.
  Ecosystem cards: Shuffle the ecosystem cards into a deck and deal 2 and place them on to their spaces, again, either side can be used.
  Earth cards: Shuffle the earth cards (that is the flora, terrain & event cards) into what will be a quite large face-down cards
• Players: Give each player a player board and tokens in their player colour. The standard side of the player board should be used.
  Cards: Shuffle the island and climate cards into their respective decks. Next deal 2 island, 2 climate and 2 ecosystem cards to each player.
  Players must now decide to keep 1 of each type, they are free to use either side of the cards they were dealt, thus will have a choice of 4 for each.
  Starting resources: The island card that a player chose will dictate what the player's starting resources will be. This will involve drawings a number of earth cards into their hand, some of which will then have to be composted​. When cards are composted, they are placed face-down on to the compost space on a player's board. Players compost cards in 2 ways; from their hand or from the deck.
  Players will then also acquire an amount soil tokens.
• First player: Determine the starting player then give them the first player and active player tokens.

On to play
In Earth, players will be looking to create a tableau of earth cards (which for the most part will be flora cards) to earn VPs as well as create an engine. They will need to acquire and 'plant' cards in a 4x4 grid that will allow them to create growths and sprouts which in turn will also have uses as well as being worth VPs in this very interconnected game.

Earth uses a traditional turn order with the active player selecting 1 of the 4 available actions to perform during their turn as well as trigger additional associated actions. Other players, albeit to a lesser extent will also be able to perform that action as well as triggering their own additional actions.
Even though only 1 player is the active player, it is generally possible for all players to perform their actions simultaneously.
A turn plays out as follows.

• Action Selection: The active player now chooses 1 of the 4 available actions and places the active player token above that action on their player board. This easily allows other players to see which action has been chosen.
  • Plant: This is the green action.
    Play card: This actions allows active player to put 1 or 2 cards from their hand into their tableau by paying their cost in soil.
    Tableau creation: Each player will create a card tableau over the course of the game. A tableau cannot exceed a 4x4 grid. When starting a tableau, the first card can be placed 'anywhere' in the tableau. Subsequent cards must be adjacent to another card, either diagonally or orthogonally.
    Draw cards: The active player then draws 4 cards from the earth deck and keeps 1.
    Other players: All other players plant 1 card as per the rules and draw 1 card.
  • Compost: This is the red action.
    Gain soil: The active player gains 5 soil.
    Compost cards: The active play can compost 2 cards from from the earth deck on to their compost deck face-down.
    Other players: All other players may either gain 2 soil or compost 2 cards from the deck but not both!
  • Watering: This is the blue action.
    Gain sprouts: The active player gains 6 sprout cubes. These must immediately be placed on to available sprout spaces on flora cards. Any sprouts that cannot be placed are lost. Sprout cubes cannot be stored in a reserve or on a player board.
    Gain soil: The active player now gains 2 soil.
    Other players: All other players can either gain 2 sprouts or gain 2 soil.
  • Growing: This is the yellow action.
    Gain cards: The active player takes 4 cards from the earth deck into their hand.
    Gain growth: The active player now gains 2 growth which they can put on to growth spaces on flora cards.
    How growth works: For each growth a player has, they may place a stalk on to the growth space on a flora, if they are completing the last segment of growth, they ass a canopy as sign the growth has been completed.
    Each growth space has 2 numbers associated with it. On the left is shown how many growth segments can be stored there and on the right, how many VPs a fully created growth will score. As with sprouts, any growth that cannot be immediately stored will be lost.
  • Other players: All other players may either gain 2 cards or gain 2 growth.
• Additional actions: What are these additional actions mentioned above? Well, the 4 main actions each have a colour associated with it and when that action is chosen by the active player, all actions on all cards with the matching colour may also be activated by all players.
  Activation order: When actions on cards are activated, particularly when more than one is activated, they are always activated in a specific order, which is left-to-right and top-to-bottom.
  Player board or tableau: If actions on both a player board and tableau are activated at the same time, the player may choose whether to activate the board or tableau first. However, whichever one is activated first must be fully resolved before moving on to the other. The activation order mentioned above applies to both board and tableau.
  Multicoloured actions: Some actions are multicoloured. This means they are activated whenever a red, blue or yellow action is chosen, never the green.
  ​Black actions: A black action is a once-only action that occurs only when the card is first played.
  ​Brown actions: These actions will either have an ongoing effect during the game or provide a end of game scoring opportunity.
• Bonus action: Technically unrelated to colours, each player has the option to spend 3 sprouts to gain 2 soil. This can be done at anytime except during the watering action and prevents players from simply turning sprouts into soil to make room for more sprouts.
• Event cards: These can be played pretty much at any time during the game except in the middle of another action and have a variety of functions. Event cards have no cost but may earn VPs, it's also fairly common for them to lose VPs as well.
  Once played, event cards are discard face-up in the event card pile on a player's board. They are not composted and thus score the VPs found on the front.
• Next player: Once all players have resolved all their actions. The turn is over, the active player passes the active player token to the player on their left who now become the active player.

Endgame
The endgame is triggered as soon as any player plants the 16th card in their tableau. That player should place one of their leaf tokens on to the 7VP spot on the fauna board.
Play then continues until all players have had equal turn and then goes to scoring.

Earth provides players with a wide variety of avenues to score points.

• Base VPs: Score the VP values shown on all cards in play, this also includes cards on the player board.
• Event cards: Score VPs from all event cards in the event card discard pile.
• Compost: Score 1VP per card in the compost pile.
• Sprouts: Score 1VP per sprout on flora cards.
• Growths: Completed growths score their full VP value while incomplete growths score 1VP per section.
• Terrain cards: Calculate VPs earned from terrain cards.
• Ecosystem cards: Each player scores their personal ecosystem card as well as the 2 shared cards.
• Fauna board: Players now add in the VPs acquired from leaf tokens they placed on the fauna board - this includes 7VPs for the player that triggered the game end.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
In Earth, the tableaus that players are creating are literal islands that will expand and grow from their origin point, where different terrains and flora will spread, endure events and attract fauna. Each island will develop its own set of interconnected ecology in the form of its game mechanics and engine.
In this regard, Earth fits its natural world theme pretty well.

​Mechanically, Earth blends tableau building with resource management and action selection.
Whilst not particularly complicated, there are a lot of 'moving parts' to Earth and a lot for players to think about and many ways to score. Soil, sprouts, growth and even cards are all resources that must be managed and all of those bar soil also generate VPs. The game's engine building frequently demands that one resource be spent to gain more of another and so on. Classic engine building stuff.

It means that players need to really think about which cards they will use to create their tableau, this will involve considering not only the abilities on the cards but also their position within the tableau as this will affect how well they 'combo' off of each other.
​Furthermore, players will probably need to think about the plant and habitat types of the cards they want to play and how that effects their scoring opportunities. Terrain cards throw even more into the mix with some often almost random objectives requiring the placement of cards in certain ways or scoring off of hand size or compost size.
With so many ways to score that can arise in diverse combinations, it's kind of hard to describe how to play Earth but players will need to recognise opportunities to exploit when they appear and possibly rethink their approach. There's some flexibility to how an island expands and players may find themselves changing strategies partway through the game to accommodate new goals they have acquired

While Earth has a fairly lengthy playtime, especially with a higher player count, it never feels like it due to how most of the game can played out simultaneously.
It's also definitely not one for beginners and leans towards the heavier end of the difficulty scale. Fortunately, it's not too hard to learn and cards will contain a lot of the information that players need.

For me, Earth strikes all the right notes and is a game I enjoy playing:  It provides a balance between accessibility and depth along meaningful decisions and has a engaging theme. It doesn't hurt that it's filled with fantastic imagery and components that looks great on the table.
Definitely one to try.