Arboretum

Turn Actions

On your turn, perform all three steps in this exact order:

Action	Details
Draw 2 cards	Take from the face-down draw pile and/or the top of any player's face-up discard pile (including your own). You may mix sources freely.
Play 1 card	Place one card from your hand face-up into your personal arboretum.
Discard 1 card	Place one card from your hand face-up on top of your own discard pile.

Placing Cards in Your Arboretum

• Your first card may be placed anywhere.
• Every subsequent card must be placed orthogonally adjacent (up/down/left/right) to a card already in your arboretum.
• Cards are never moved or removed once placed.
• There is no limit to arboretum size.

End of Game Trigger

The game ends immediately when the draw pile is exhausted. The player who drew the last card plays her turn normally, and then scoring occurs.

Components & Dealing

Arboretum contains 10 tree species, each with cards numbered 1–8 (80 cards total). Remove species before shuffling based on player count:

Players	Species Used	Cards in Deck
2	6 species	48 cards
3	8 species	64 cards
4	10 species	80 cards

Deal Order

1. Randomly choose which species to remove (set aside face-down). 2. Shuffle the remaining deck and deal 7 cards to each player. 3. Place the remaining deck face-down as the draw pile in the center. 4. Each player's discard pile starts empty in front of them. 5. The starting player is chosen randomly.

End-Game Scoring

Scoring happens in two phases: who may score each species, then path scoring.

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Phase 1 — Scoring Rights (per species)

For each species in the game: 1. Every player reveals all cards of that species from their hand. 2. Compare the sum of revealed card values. The player with the highest sum earns the right to score paths of that species in their arboretum. 3. 1-card rule: If any player holds the 1 of a species, the 8-cards of that species in in other player's hand are treated as 0 for this comparison. 4. Ties: All tied players each score their own paths for that species. 5. A player with 0 cards of a species in hand scores 0 for that species.

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Phase 2 — Path Scoring

For each species you have scoring rights to, find your best valid path in your arboretum:

Valid path requirements: - Starts and ends with a card of the scored species. - Consists of orthogonally adjacent cards (no diagonals). - Card values must be strictly increasing along the path (each card higher than the last). - Any species may appear in the middle of a path. - A path may turn in any direction. - You choose the single highest-scoring path per species.

Path scoring formula:

Condition	Points
Each card in the path	+1 pt per card
Path is 4+ cards and every card is the same species	+1 pt per card (doubles base score)
Path starts with the 1 of the scored species	+1 pt
Path ends with the 8 of the scored species	+2 pts

> Bonuses stack. A 4-card all-same-species path starting with 1 and ending with 8 scores: 4 (base) + 4 (all-same bonus) + 1 (starts-1) + 2 (ends-8) = 11 pts.

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Tiebreaker

If players are tied on total points, the player with the most cards in their arboretum wins. If still tied, the win is shared.