The Orchardist

The Orchardist is a simultaneous-action card drafting game designed to teach the basics of pest management and crop care in orcharding systems.

Players are dealt eight face-down pest cards, each of which may contain 0 to 4 pests of four different types. Players also receive a hand of four crop cards comprising resources and actions for successfully growing and harvesting a crop, or revealing eliminating the pest cards. Each round, players all draw one more card for their hand, choose one to play, and pass the rest of their hand to the next player. Players must decide between monitoring and managing their pests, applying fertiliser and other crop enhancers, or amassing the seasonal workers, pack houses and export licences needed to make the most profit.

The cards run out after eight rounds, when players take turns to tally their scores. Type of orchard they have and the resource cards they have collected determine their base profit level. This is increased by fertiliser, pollination etc, but decreased by the particular pests that remain in their orchard. The game can be customised for regional orchard types.

Integrated Pest Management is part of an educational kit used in schools to teach children about horticulture and biology.

—description from the publisher