Grow Life 420

CANNABIS CULTURE –  Growing up I board games were my jam. Whether is was your typical game of life or even a campaign in D & D at the local comic book store, I spent lots of time trying different styles of games.

I was delighted to try out Auto Farmer a Card/Dice game where you grow and defend your crop from other growers, diseases, and raids.

It just so happens that I was going camping with my roommates so I decided it was the perfect time to try it out.

Included in the box you get the game instructions, 48 seed cards

63 custom art playing cards

3 round indicator cards 

2 six-sided dice

45 positive and 35 negative chips

To be fair the group of folks who made this game are from Brno in the Czech Republic so the instructions were not complete english all the way through.

Things started getting confusing when we started to read the instructions, The instructions are all over the place. 

The rule book shares vital information about the history of cannabis and cultivation, but the rules get lost in translation.

There’s only a little bit of guidance on gameplay. Without clear instructions I was left with the same feeling I used to get in high school math class after a lunch-hour “safety meeting.”

BUT we figured out to set up the game and got down to business.

The game really is a lot of fun once you’re rolling. 

You play 3 rounds, one seed, one growing, and one Blooming. My roommates and I ( lets call them M and S) each took turns rolling the one of the 2 six-sided dice included to determine who went first.

Luck was on my side because I got to go first! I rolled the dice again (twice actually) but this time using the both dice to determine how many seed card I got and how many actually got to germinate.

I rolled a 7 and 9 so as the rule book states “The first player rolls two dice, adds the two values together and remember the results. Then, the exact steps are repeated once again. The higher of them determines the number of seeds take from the deck. The lower or same number indicates the number of plants to germinate” meaning I have 9 seeds and got to germinate 7 of them.

M ended up with 4 of 8 seeds germinated, and S brought up the rear with 2 of 6.

With our gardens planted, time to cultivate. 

Each of us drew 4 cards from the playing card deck, to be honest we weren’t really sure if we were on the seed round or the flowering round when we drew the cards.

And frankly, I’m still not certain as the instructions were, again, a little hazey.

So we played on in the flowering round.

We did, however, figure out how to get an advantage over the other players — the mold card — Mold spreads disease to other players plants, and forces opposing players to waste turns dealing with the spread, or suffer the consequences.

The dreaded mold

The player must spray the mold to remove it before the end of their turn or it will destroy affected plants and moves to the heaviest plant in your opponent garden.

In the end we ended up playing 2 games in total (so 6 rounds) and we had lot of fun. Still, we felt like the instructions really need some work. Personally I wish the game was a little longer as well, we zoomed through the games in under 20 minutes which was nice but I wanted more of an epic. 

Overall its a great game with charming art and a sound concept but again, we felt we had to make up our own rules to cover the gaps.

Still, there’s great potential here and I’ll pull it out at the next social distance smoke sesh to see what great gardens we can create.

Note: This preview uses pre-release components and rules. What you see here may be different from the final, published game!