PINESENLARGEMENT

How to grow the biggest forest

• Plant a sapling: pick a card, then click a soil tile — or just drag the card onto one. Costs 1 energy (◆).
• Merge is the whole game: plant a pine next to another of the same kind & size and they fuse into a bigger one. Chains cascade! Tiles that complete a merge glow gold.
• Or merge two matching cards in hand — click one, then its highlighted twin (costs 2).
• Hold (the pin on a card) keeps it for next week instead of discarding — up to 2.
• Click any standing tree to read it. Every species grows differently — a Mugo caps out as a shrub, a Sugar becomes a GIANT.

Nature's turn

• End Week and nature strikes. Each hazard has a pine that shrugs it off:
  • Frost — nips exposed saplings (T1). Jack ignores it.
  • Drought — kills isolated trees (no adjacent neighbour). Cluster your pines! Piñon holds on.
  • Beetle — blights your most-planted species. Stay diverse. Bristlecone resists it.
  • Wildfire — razes a whole column, and you're told which one a week early. Lodgepole survives the burn. Rare and late: twice a season at most.
• The ground shifts too: rich soil sprouts your next sapling a tier bigger, and a rockfall blocks a tile for two weeks.

Winter scores you

• Canopy — every standing tree's size (the pt on its card).
• Biodiversity — a bonus per distinct species left standing.
• Ancient — a surviving Bristlecone pays big for its age, not its size. Keep it alive.
• Keystone — Whitebark is a nurse tree: it pays for every different pine beside it. The one species that wants variety, not its own kind.
• Nursery orders — little jobs that rotate in. Each one filled multiplies your final score by +3%.

Biggest isn't always best — a varied, hardy stand beats one fire-bait giant.