To get going with Bud Barons, first shuffle the purple Event Deck and the green Plant Deck, deal one Plant to each player, face up in their first Plant Slot. Deal from the Event Deck, 5 cards per Player. Place the Bud, Turn and Coin counters where all Players can reach. Each player rolls a 6 sided die. Highest roll goes first; proceed clockwise (to your left).

There are 5 steps to each Player Turn:

1. Plant Maintenance – For each Plant in play, add Bud counters to the card equal to its Bud Rate, plus or minus any modifiers in play. Keep in mind Plant Decay (detailed in the Plant Decay section, below). Also add one Turn counter to each active plant.
2. Discard – The Player may discard any cards in their hand, or Plants or equipment they have in play. They cannot discard another Player’s card without discarding the card it affects.
3. Draw – The Player now draws from the Event Deck until they have 5 cards in hand.
4. Play – The Player can play any, up to all, of the cards in hand. The exception is Harvest type cards (see Harvesting, below), only one of which can be played in a single Turn.
5. Plant – If the Player has any available slots for Plants, a new Plant can be drawn and put into play. This ends the Player’s Turn.

Continue this process for each Player. The first to earn 20 coins from Harvesting is the Winner!

Harvesting: When playing a Harvest Card, the Player is able to take a number of Buds off their own Plants equal to the amount designated/rolled on the particular Harvest Card played. Those Buds can then be changed for Coins, at the rate indicated by rolling the Transfer Rate Die. The Player must sell for at least one Coin, and will always be able to get at least one Coin (even if the Harvest doesn’t get any/enough Buds) from trading Buds for Coins at this rate. 2 Buds per Coin is the best rate, so a common strategy is to save all the Buds one can until the next chance to roll a better rate.

Plant Decay: Each Plant Card has a Max Turns rating. During Plant Maintenance on the round following a Plant’s last round (no more Buds can be added), if there are any Buds left, remove half of the remaining Buds, add another Turn counter. Do this same process every round until all Buds are depleted, then discard the Plant. A Plant can be discarded at the appropriate part of the Player’s Turn at any time in this process. Discarded Plants lose any remaining Buds to the discard pile, as well.