Canopy: How to Play

- Hey everyone. Welcome to Girls' Game Shelf. Today we're gonna be taking a look at Canopy from Weird City Games. Now in this tableau builder you're competing to put together the nicest rain forest. So you'll be growing philodendrons and tying to encourage sloths to come inhabit your area.

So we're gonna dive in but keep in mind that this is a prototype copy so it may vary a little bit from the final version. Begin by setting the season and new growth cards in the middle of the table as shown and put the various tokens within reach. Shuffle the seed cards and put them face down next to their designated spot.

Then shuffle the rain forest deck.
There's 112 cards in this deck so be careful when you shuffle. Then you're gonna put 10 cards of those back in the box without peeking at them, leaving 102 cards in the deck. Now split that rain forest deck into three equal decks, placing one on the current season and setting the other two in season two and three prepped for later.

Take one card from the current season deck and place it face down on new growth one. Put two cards in new growth two and three in new growth three. On your turn you'll start with new growth one. Take a peek at all the cards there. You then have two options, you can either add them all to your tableau in any order and deal one card to the new growth spot or you can pass by returning those cards to the new growth spot and dealing one more card to them.

If you pass, move to the new growth two spot and peek at them but you can't go back to the new growth one spot if you realize you like them better. Now you can decide if you want to keep those cards or take a chance on what's in new growth three instead.

So that's the entire game. You're gonna build your tableau over the course of three seasons and there's a little element of "what's behind door number two" in the choosing of cards. The rain forest is a delicate ecosystem and that risk kind of mirrors that.

So let's dive in and take a look at what the cards look like. So what's a rain forest without trees? There's two kinds of tree cards: trunks and canopies. And trees remain in your tableau between seasons. If you keep a trunk card, you can either use it to start a new tree or tuck it behind a tree you're growing to make that tree taller.

When the tree is complete, each trunk piece is worth the listed points. When your tree is as tall as you want it to be, you can cap it off with a canopy. Canopies prevent further growth of the tree but they lock in the trunk points and can give a bonus to all of the trunk sections in their tree.

Plant cards are the first set collection element in the game. Each type of plants scores a number of points based on how many copies you keep in this round. Plants are discarded at the end of the season. The second set collection element is weather. Each pair of rain and sun you collect is worth five points but neither card it worth anything if not paired with the other because you need a proper balance of rain and sun.

Weather cards are discarded at the end of the season as well. Animal cards come in mating pairs. One of the cards of an animal type is worth a few points at game end but more points if you also collect their mate. The other animal in the pair grants you a special power but isn't usually worth very many points on its own.

Animals remain in your tableau between seasons. Seed cards allow you to draw three cards from the seed deck just before scoring at the end of the round. The seed deck cards are the same kind of cards as the general rain forest deck but can be a perfect way to snag a card that's been elusive through the new growth piles.

You can draw more cards from the seed deck by keeping fire cards. Speaking of fire, let's talk about the threat cards. There's three kinds: fire, drought, and disease. If you collect fire cards, while they'll fuel with fresh ash, they'll force you to throw away a plant card before scoring.

Disease cards work the same way. But they cause you, and maybe your opponent, to discard animal cards. Drought cards cause you to throw away a single other card from you forest including threat cards if you want. The only other factor to keep in mind is at the end of each season, the tallest completed tree is given the round's tallest tree award which is a few points even if that tree was completed in a previous round.

Whichever is the tallest tree of those that weren't previously awarded gets a bonus. At the end of three seasons, add up your scores. Uncompleted tree trunk segments are the tiebreaker. And that's Canopy. Thanks for watching and if you enjoy the video, be sure to like and subscribe below.