Tabletop Spotlight: Petrichor
Petrichor is not only a great vocabulary word and a great comforting smell it’s also a fantastic and strategic game where every player’s turn changes everything.
Petrichor is an area influence game with hand management and voting mechanics. Players take the role of clouds and will influence the weather and rain in order to meet their goals. The goal of each player is to have the most points after the final round. Points are scored primarily through harvesting crops, which is done by having rain drop tokens on the crops when they are harvested.
On each player’s turn they will take actions by playing cards from their hand. Each player will be attempting to place their water tokens on the crops in play, manipulate the clouds carrying those water drops and harvesting the crops at the right time to score the most points.
Each card corresponds to an action, and playing the card will perform that action. The four available actions relate to the four types of weather within the game: Frost, Wind, Sun and Rain. Each of these actions manipulates the board for all players, making Petrichor a delicate balance of strategy and planning. Frost creates clouds which are required from players to be able to move their rain drops on the board, as rain must begin in a cloud, after all. Wind allows players to move clouds around the board. Sun allows players to add rain to clouds already on the board and Rain allows players to move raindrops from clouds to the crops below.
At each harvest, which occurs in a somewhat controlled random fashion, players score points based on the amount of rain they have on each crop ready for harvest. Crops are ready for harvest if they have at least as many rain tokens on them as noted in the rain drop icon on the tile. The player with the most rain scores the first listed number, the second most scores the second number, and so on. More is not always better since some crops give the most points to whichever player has the second most rain on the tile.
After 6 rounds, the game ends and players tally their points. Points are also gained through other effects we did not cover here, such as voting for weather, moving towards a harvest, bonus wheat tokens, and others. The player with the most points wins the game!
Petrichor is a quick and fantastic and highly strategic game for as simple as it may seem on the surface. Because each action affects the board for all players, every action is highly impactful and every turn comes with multiple viable options, which is great for exciting gameplay. Finding that balance of helping yourself more than your helping your opponents is crucial. And highly skilled players will learn how to manipulate the game state to set up for an unexpected sweeping victory in the last moments.
via APE Games
Petrichor – $54.99 – Available Now
In Petrichor, you are a cloud. Use weather to your advantage to ensure you grow the most crops. This sounds like an easy task, but all of the other clouds are trying to do the same thing! Prepare for some mischief in the sky as you trick and outsmart your friends to make sure you are reigning cloud!
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- 1 – 4 Players
- 20 Minutes/player
- Ages 14+
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