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Tavernly

FernglassPlay online, free

An Ark Nova alternative

You keep an old walled garden with glasshouses. Build beds and glasshouses on your garden plan, grow rare plants from five climates and win patrons. Visitors and care race toward each other on one line. When they meet, the game ends.

Play against bots

Join a table of 2. Bots take the empty seats within five seconds.

Opponents
Bots
Garden plans
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With friends

Start a table now, or reserve one for later, and send the invite.

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At your pace

Real people, no rush. Play when you like, and a notification tells you when it is your turn.

Find players

Beginner

A real game, with a coach at your side.

Learn by playing

No sign-up. 1 to 4 players; a game takes about 75 to 100 minutes with 2 players.

Fernglass is not affiliated with or endorsed by the owner of Ark Nova. Ark Nova is a trademark of its owner. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

How to play

Each player starts with 25 coins, a garden plan and 4 cards kept from 8. A turn is one action. The game ends when your visitors marker and your care marker meet or pass each other on the scoring line. Then every other player takes one more turn.

  1. Your action cards. Five action cards lie in five slots under your plan: Plant, Gather, Build, Society and Patrons. The slot number is the card's strength. After you use a card, it goes to slot 1. The cards to its left move up one slot.
  2. Trowels. Spend trowels to make an action stronger. Or take the trowel action: move any card to slot 1 and gain 1 trowel. You can hold 5 trowels.
  3. Build. Build beds of size 1 to 5, tea stalls, gazebos and the herb garden for 2 coins a space. A new building touches one you have. A bonus under a space pays when you cover it.
  4. Plant. Pay a plant's coins and put it in a bare bed of its size or larger. The bed turns planted, and you gain the plant's visitors. Some plants grow in the cactus house or the palm house.
  5. Gather. Draw cards from the deck, or take a card of the display. Your esteem sets which folders of the display you can reach.
  6. Society. Send a volunteer to a task: gain esteem, take a sister garden, take a college or support a project. A project gives care.
  7. Patrons. Play a patron card for its effects, or take coins. Gather moves the season marker toward the winter. Patrons does too when you take the coins.
  8. Winter. At each winter you get coins for your visitors, and each tea stall pays for the buildings next to it.

How you score

Your points are your visitors plus the value of your care space. Low care has a value below zero, so you need both. At the end, your final goals give more care.

Table options

A private table takes 1 to 4 players. All players use plan A, all players use plan 0, or each player chooses one of 2 plans. Alone, you have 6 seasons to reach 100 points.

Why it is fair

Every shuffle comes from a secret seed. You see its fingerprint at the start of the game. You see the seed itself at the end. So you can check every card that was dealt. Verify a game.

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