Oh My Orchids!

• Designer: Daryl Chow
• Publisher: Origami
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 8+
• Time: 20-30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

It’s always flowering season in sunny Singapore! In Oh My. Orchids!, cleverly and expertly gather seed cards to plant different types of Singaporean flowers into your garden, from dazzling heliconias to delicate orchids. Lots of thorny decisions await you in this flowery game of hand management and set collection!

On your turn, either gather seeds from the display, or plant flowers. You can gather seeds of the same type OR colour from the display, with a limit of 7 cards. Planting flowers will require you to match the seed requirements of the different flowers in the display. Orchids are harder to match, but earn the most points. Planting different flowers will also earn you a variety bonus. Once one player has 7 flowers, the player with the most flower points wins!

To start, shuffle the three different types of cards separately and then make a display. The purple Orchid deck is on top, with 3 cards face up next to it, then the orange Flora deck in the middle with 4 cards on display, and the brown Seed deck on the bottom with 5 cards on display.  Each player gets a Player Aid card and then leaves room on the table for a row of 7 seeds and a row of 7 flower cards.  A starting player is chosen, and this player starts with nothing.  Going around the table, each successive player takes one more Seed card from the deck than the player before them, and places these starting Seeds face up in front of them in the Seed row.

On a player’s turn, there are two main options: Take Seeds or Plant Flowers.

To Take Seeds, the player looks at the display of seeds and must take either all the cards of the same color or all the cards of the same type (number of seeds on the card).  There is a hand limit of 7 Seed cards, if you have more, you must compost the excess seed cards by placing them underneath your player aid card where they will score you negative 1 VP at the end of the game.  Refill the display to 5 Seed cards when you are done.

To Plant Flowers (either Orchids or Flora cards), you pay the cost of the card – shown in small print at the bottom of the card, discarding the Seed cards used and then planting the Flower card face up in front of them.  You can plant as many Flower cards as you can afford on your turn.  When you are done, refill both rows to their capacity (3 Orchids and 4 Flora).

The game end is triggered when a player plants their 7th Flower card. All other players can one more turn where they can only Plant Flowers.  Then the game is scored:

• Points on each Flower card shown in the upper left
• 3/6/10/15 pts for 4/5/6/7 different flower types  (every orchid is unique + different Flora)
• -1 point for each Seed card composted under your player aid card

The player with the most points wins.  Ties broken in favor of the player with the most Orchid cards.

My thoughts on the game

Oh My Orchids! is a nice little card game that has a bit of set collection combined with the mechanics of getting cards from the market.  The Seed cards are your currency, and you generally want to try to get as many cards as you can in order to have the most options in your hand.  Of course, you may want a specific card, and if so, you might not be able to take the maximum quantity in order to get what you want.  Additionally, if you take too many, you’ll pay a composting penalty, and that isn’t great…  

Everyone has an open hand of Seed cards so you can look around and see who is collecting what type of cards.  You might use this to hate draft – i.e. taking cards you know someone else is trying to collect.  You might also use this information to simply figure out what cards people are gunning for, and then move your attention in a different direction in order to not be in competition.

For me, I just go with the flow.  The game is pretty easy going and fits into the filler genre for me, and as such, I tend to just concentrate on what I want to do and not worry so much about hate drafting.  I’m generally looking for the highest scoring cards, especially the orchids.  If I am even looking at my opponent’s hands, it’s to see if anyone else looks like they have the capability of going for whatever Orchid I happen to be targeting. If I can’t get that, then I am looking for diversity as the bonus for different types is pretty strong in the end game scoring.

I do like the way the game forces you at times to just plant a flower, even if it is not exactly what you want – the penalty for composting can really add up, so sometimes you just need to buy a Flower card to get Seeds out of your hand to allow you to try and collect the “right” Seeds later.

Games take about 15 minutes, and usually you can teach the game after setting it up.  You can usually show the different options on how to draft Seed cards from whatever you flip over, and as each of the flower cards come up, you can explain the cost for each.  If there is a question, there is a website that gives more information/clarification – but we didn’t need it.  I would mention that about a third of the rules have flavor text about Singapore flowers/orchids, and perhaps the card descriptions could have been fit in this space instead; thus removing the need to access something online for actual game purposes.   Overall, a light and fun game for casual play that I’d be happy to recommend to the gaming table.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale
• Neutral.
• Not for me…