Orchard – A 9 Card Solitaire Game

This is a pretty simple game. In it you are playing down cards to overlap them. The goal is to match the tree types, apple, plum and pear. As you stack the cards you put dice out on the matching parts. You start with one and then can move up to 10 if you have four cards with the same tree lined up correctly. The tricky part comes from the fact that you can only have two mismatched trees in the cards you play down. So how much you can overlap the cards can be really limited. And the cards have different layouts of apple, plum, and pear trees on them, but always two of each. In the end you are seeing how high a score you can get.

What Doesn’t Work

Honestly, this is a very simple game. My only negative for my copy of the game was that it didn’t come with a rule book. Now, this game originally was a print and play, so finding rules on Board Game Geek was extremely easy. But it’d have been nice to have the rules in the box like they were supposed to be. Granted, I’m not going to go to the publisher, like I said the rules were easy to find and I’ll print them off and be good.

What Works

I could actually start to use my – What I Look For In A Solo Game – article to determine if a game works or not. And I might later on, but I want to keep what I normally do as well. I really like that this game is small. It has a tiny box, I think 18 cards, 15 dice, and two bad apple tokens. And because you are overlapping the cards the nine cards won’t even take out that much space. I could see putting this in my pocket if I knew I was going to be waiting somewhere at a table for a while.

The card mechanic is also really interesting. The first few times I played the game I didn’t do extremely well, 22, 24, and 32 points. But then I got 42 points because there are a few different ways you can overlap the cards. Obviously the higher you stack the better because you go from 1 to 3 points and then 6 followed by 10. So if you can get a 10, that’s a lot of points. If you can manage to pull one or two off, that is a ton of your points there. However, you aren’t as likely to have all 15 dice out.

I also like that Orchard – A 9 Card Solitaire Game gives you a wide variety in your points. The one downside I have with A Gentle Rain, besides the amount of room it takes up, is that the points range from 0 to 8. If you get all 8 discs put out, it’s a win, really, but it gives you that score. Here you can score very few points, 22 to a lot of points 42, that I’ve done thus far. I like the feeling of scoring a lot of points. It feels better to have gotten 42 as compared to 22 than it does with 7 compared to 4 in A Gentle Rain.

Solo Game Score

As I write more of these “What I Look For” articles, I’m going to start adding in this section. I want to highlight how I use what I wrote about and to show you what matters to me to help you make an informed decision.

The three small box solo game criteria are, length, ease of play, space. Thinking about it, I want some interesting decision making as well, so I’m adding that as a criteria for a small game.

1. Game Length – 5/5
   I played 8 games in a sitting one evening. That was about 1.5 hours, so just over 10 minutes per game. And some of that was learning the game. The game is extremely fast and it’s an easy to sit down and play.
2. Ease of Play – 5/5
   This is a very simple game to play. It’s very easy to get to the table, it’s easy to shuffle up those 18 cards, take half of them and play the game.
3. Space – 4.5/5
   A very small game with a very small footprint. Like I was saying, this is one that I could have with me if I was waiting somewhere. You do need a little table space, but not that much. It could even work on an airplane tray.
4. Decision Making Space – 4.5/5
   This actually has some really good decisions in it. Yes, there is a lot of luck as to what 9 cards you have in your deck and what order they come out in. But there is a lot of decisions to make as you play out the cards.

What Is Orchard – A 9 Card Solitaire Game For?

It’s going to sound obvious, but solo gamers. This is not a game that I see getting people into solo gaming. The theme isn’t there. A Gentle Rain, I think, is more inviting, but this one is a ton of fun. This is for that solo gamer who wants to have more small games to take place. Or more small solo games to pull out in an evening. It falls into that category of game that someone would get who likes the Oniverse games like Onirim.

Final Thoughts

This is a fun small box solo game. I don’t know that I place it above A Gentle Rain in my favorites in that genre. A Gentle Rain is just so relaxing to play that it feels different. Orchard – A 9 Card Solitaire Game definitely has a little bit more going on to it. But your choices are limited in what you can do. Two cards and matching stuff, so it doesn’t offer too many brain burning choices. Definitely a small solo game that I’m really glad I picked up.

My Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: C
Casual Grade: B+

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.

Chronicles of Crime: Welcome to Redview

These first three are all fro a sale that was titled Gamer’s Choice, and they really were choice games. They had a lot of great ones in there. I decided to take the opportunity to grab this expansion for Chronicles of Crime. Mainly because it’s a kids on bike style expansion and story for the game.

If you aren’t familiar with the concept of kids on bikes, think of Stranger Things, that is a kids on bikes story. Or the Goonies would also meet that style of story. Basically it’s an adventure that kids have with only a little adult interference or interaction.

And if you aren’t familiar with Chronicles of Crime, it is an app assisted board game where you are investigating crimes. It gives you a view of the crime scene through the app as well as facilitates the questioning and story elements as you scan in QR codes to ask people about things. It allows the game to have a more dynamic world than you could without the app.

Under Falling Skies

The first of two solo games in the order. Under Falling Skies is a resource management dice game. It has you fighting off waves of aliens. The better the dice you activate are or the better the ability the faster the alien ships will make it to earth. So it’s a balancing act of using lower dice so that when you need to use a higher die value you can. I want to build out my collection of solo only games because I do enjoy them. Expect to see this on Malts and Meeples before too long, I just need to finish up Aeon’s End Legacy first.

Orchard: 9 Card Solitaire Game

While Under Falling Skies is a bigger solo game, but not a big solo campaign game, Orchard is clearly a small game. Nine cards is not much. I am hoping that this gives me a nice puzzle to try and solve and then maximize my points for. It has you laying out and overlaying cards while you are putting dice on them. This one really interests me because it is again a small footprint game and a fast game. It says 5-10 minutes so I could knock out a bunch of these fast while watching football or soccer in the upcoming months.

Ascension: Immortal Heroes + More

I didn’t list out everything I got for Ascension, but I got a few theme packs as well. Leprechaun, Rat King, Samael Claus, and Rat Queen. All of those were $2.50. Just like a fun extra thing for sure. The Immortal Heroes is a bigger box expansion which is always fun to add in. I now have a nice collection of different Ascension sets to play around with. Though, I do mainly play with the base game. The game as a whole is a lot of fun though. I do want to find a better way to track the different resources that I have in that game as a player.

Downforce: Danger Circuit and Wild Ride

So, after playing Downforce last weekend, you can see how much I liked the game here. Danger Circuit gives two new tracks and some new powers. And if you saw my complaint, you’d know that I wanted more powers. But Wild Ride adds in a number of things. There is one that features a water jump and ramps. The other side has wild animals that might show up on the track. I’m curious to see how those two different things play out but I think they’ll be a ton of fun. And I guess I should say, the Danger Circuit has loops and splitting roads. While the other side has rough terrain.

I’m definitely going to be creating a Downforce league at some point in time. Like a once a month Saturday racing league, that just seems like too much fun. Now I just need to find my racers.

So that’s everything new that I ordered. I did just sort all my board games on the shelves again, and I have one game I’m planning on leaving my collection so I’ll talk about that here as well.

Captain Sonar

Captain Sonar is a great game. I love the hidden movement trying to figure out where the other teams sub is in real time and sink it before they can sink yours. But I just know I’m not likely to play it much again. At least I won’t play my copy too much. Why, because the game is a lot to teach. Each different person, Captain, First Mate, Radar Operator, and Engineer all play differently. And that means that you need to teach four different things each time. While it has been fun to do in the past, I just have other games that are easier to get to the table that can play eight, or more. And that’s the other thing, Captain Sonar is ideal with eight.

Which of these games would you try and get to the table first?

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.