Designers: David Chircop (…and then we held hands., Petrichor, The Pursuit of Happiness), Dávid Turczi (Anachrony, Cerebria: The Inside World, Kitchen Rush)

Artist: Daniela Attard (Petrichor)

Publisher:  Mighty Boards (Days of Ire: Budapest 1956, Petrichor, Posthuman)

Genre/Mechanisms: area majority/influence, expansion, hand management, modular board, solo/solitaire game, voting

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Petrichor: Collector’s Edition and Cows Expansion is already fully-funded. Pledges currently total more than 9x the initial funding goal with 2 days left to go on the campaign!

Player Count: 1-4

Solo Mode: yes

Complexity: medium-heavy

Risk: medium-low

What It’s About: “Cloud & raindrop-themed area control game Petrichor adds a Collector’s Edition with deluxe components including custom molded floating clouds, as well as a third and final expansion, Petrichor: Cows.”

How It Works: “In a game of Petrichor, players use cards symbolizing four types of weather to manipulate clouds above the fields and influence the upcoming weather. Each player tries to guarantee that their water is in the majority on the growing plants when it comes to the Harvest. Points are scored for having the most water on a tile in the Fields during Harvest, and by having the most votes on the two selected Weather effects each round.”

Gameplay takes place over 4 or 6 rounds, depending on whether players are playing the short or long version of the game (there is also a solo mode, designed by Dávid Turczi). In a typical game, each round is comprised of 4 phases: Action, Weather, Harvest, and Clean-up.

During the Action phase, unless a player chooses to pass this phase of their turn, the active player plays a card, performs the corresponding card action, and votes on a weather effect or Harvest. There are 4 types of card actions: Frost, Sun, Rain, and Wind. During a Frost action, the active player takes a cloud from the general supply, adds a raindrop to it from their personal supply, and then places it on an unoccupied tile location, During a Sun action, the active player takes 2 raindrops from their personal supply and adds it to an existing cloud that already contains at least 1 of their own water drops. A regular cloud is called a light cloud, and can hold up to 3 drops. Once it accumulates 4 or more drops, it becomes a thundercloud. And once a thundercloud holds more than 8 drops, it overflows all of its drops onto the tile below. During a Rain action, the active player chooses 2 clouds where they already have at least one water drop, and adds one drop to both clouds. During a Wind action, a player chooses a cloud where they already have at least 1 of their own water drops and moves the clouds to an orthogonally (i.e. not diagonally) adjacent tile. If there’s another cloud already present on that tile, the two clouds merge together, possibly overflowing. A player may always play 2 cards of any suit(s) (instead of 1 card of the appropriate suit) to take the action they desire. The player may then vote, either for the type of weather played or the type of weather following it on the weather sequence wheel, or decrease a Harvest die by 1 to gain a victory point. Once a Harvest die has been reduced to 0, it will show the Harvest face.

Then in the Weather Phase, the 2 types of Weather with the most current votes will activate. For Frost, all light clouds become thunderclouds, no matter the number of water drops they hold. For Sun, in clockwise order, each player choose to double the number of their drops in any one clouds. Then any sprouting Coffee develops. For Rain, all drops from all thunderclouds are dumped on the tiles below, and then any sprouting Rice develops. For Wind, in anti-clockwise order, each player chooses a rain drop on a tile and moves it to an orthogonally adjacent tile. Then each/any players with a majority on an activated Weather space advances their scoring marker by one space on the Voting Wins track.

During the Harvest Phase (which only occurs in the final round or in rounds where all 3 dice show the Harvest face), all growing crops (crops containing Growing tiles) are Harvested. Scoring varies for each type of plant. But in general, the player with the most drops on a tile will score the left-most number on the tile, the player with the second-most drops on the tile will score the next number on the tile, and so on. The player with the most drops does not always score the most points, which is where some of the strategy of the game comes into play.

During the Clean-Up Phase, the round marker moves forward, and if there was a Harvest during the round, all Harvest dice are re-rolled. Then all players will draw a new hand of 6-7 cards, depending on player count.

“The game end triggers when the final round is over: round 4 when playing short form, round 6 when playing long form. Each player gains points equal to the number depicted on their current location on the Voting Wins track. The player or players with the most Wheat tokens also gain 12 bonus Victory Points (in the case of a tie, each tying player scores 12). The player with the most total points wins the game. In the case of a tie, the player who is highest on the Voting Wins track wins.”

The various expansions add new tiles with new plant-types and different scoring rules to the game, as well as new mechanics. The new Cows expansion, for instance, adds Cows to the tiles and Methane to the clouds, and presents new scoring opportunities; it also adds Climate Events to the game.

Comparisons: Petrichor is a puzzle-y game that combines card selection and card actions with area control, and then balances that with voting and more area control. It’s also a very pretty game with appealing components, abstract-style gameplay, and a unique nature theme. Considering voting is largely a purview of party games and social deduction games like Coup, The Resistance, Secret Hitler, and Dixit, with a few other hidden traitor games like Dead of Winter and Battlestar Galactica thrown in for good measure, there aren’t really any other games out there that combine voting with area control and abstract gameplay. In the end, I’d maintain that Petrichor is a fairly unique game.

So heres’s a fairly extensive list of games that also combine area majority/influence with hand management, even though the themes and styles of gameplay may vary widely: 13 Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1960: The Making of a President, 1989: Dawn of Freedom, Adrenaline, Battle for Rokugan, The Battle of Five Armies, BattleLore, Belfort, Blackout: Hong Kong, Blood Rage, Blue Moon City, Cacao, Cerebria: The Inside World, Chaos in the Old World, China, Civilization, Clash of Cultures, Condottiere, Cry Havoc, Deus, Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, Dogs of War, Dune, Empires of the Void II, Endeavor, Ethnos, Evo, Feudum, A Few Acres of Snow, Forbidden Stars, A Game of Thrones: The Board Game, The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire, El Grande, La Granja, Hanamikoji, History of the World, Inis, Kemet, Liberte, Labyrinth: The War on Terror 2001 – ?, Lisboa, Lords of Hellas, Louis XIV, Die Macher, Medieval Academy, Memoir ’44, Mission: Red Planet, Mombasa, Nexus Ops, Ninjato, On Mars, Pax Pamir, Quartermaster General, Plague Inc.: The Board Game, Reef Encounter, Rex: Final Days of an Empire, Rococo, Root, Samurai, Smash Up, Spirit Island, Star Wars: Rebellion, A Study in Emerald, Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends, Three Kingdoms Redux, Tigris & Euphrates, Torres, Triumph & Tragedy: European Balance of Power 1936-1945, Twilight Struggle, War Chest, War of the Ring, Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire, Web of Power, and Zhanguo.

What Should I Pledge?:
$19 Greener Pasture: includes the Petrichor: Cows Expansion, the KS-exclusive Volcano promo tile, and any stretch goals specifically related to the Cows expansion.
$39 Starter Gardening Kit: includes the base game only.
$64 Master Agriculturist: includes everything in the Greener Pasture pledge, plus the Collector’s Edition Upgrade Kit (the CE Box, Custom Molded Floating Clouds, GameTrayz storage system, Venus Flytrap Promo Tile, and Complete and Unified Rulebook), the rare Swarm Promo Card, and all stretch goals.
$100 The Eternal Fields: includes everything in the Master Agriculturist pledge, plus a copy of the base game, the Flowers Expansion, Honeybee Expansion, and the Anthill, Cactus, and Lake Promo Tiles from previous campaigns.

Add-Ons:
$19 Cows Expansion
$14 Honeybee Expansion
$9 Flowers Expansion
$45 Collector’s Edition Upgrade Kit
$39 Petrichor Base Game
$9 Promo Tile Bundle: includes the Anthill, Cactus, and Lake Promo Tiles
$6 Individual Promo Tiles (each): choose from among the Anthill, Cactus, Lake, Venus Flytrap, and Volcano Promo Tiles

KS Exclusives
The 5 Promo Tiles and the Swarm Promo Card are, to the best of my knowledge, Kickstarter exclusives that can only be obtained via Kickstarter campaigns or directly from the manufacturer. It is unclear to me at this point in time if the Collector’s Edition Upgrade Kit will eventually make it to retail outlets or not.

All-In Total: In the continental U.S., you’re looking at $100 for The Eternal Fields plus $25 in shipping for a total of $125.

Petrichor: Collector’s Edition and Cows Expansion completes its Kickstarter on Monday, August 17th and tentatively ships in May 2021.