Push Up Poppies

Be a plantation owner in Afghanistan. Use your devilish tricks and creative tools to grow and harvest poppies.

Discover the rich and deep world of Push of Poppies, where - just like real life - everything is possible and nothing is fair.  

You've never seen a game like this. 

The sheer quantity of zany characters and card-card interactions makes playing Push Up Poppies absolutely addictive. It's quite simple to start up and play the first few games and the winner is primarily determined by tactics and strategy instead of luck. Infinite possibilities for combining cards means you can play Push Up Poppies over and over and continue to discover new tricks to thwart fellow players. 

At the same time, Push Up Poppies is relentlessly unpredictable. At any moment, some or all of your plantation — and even the cards in your hands — can disappear. This unpredictability motivates players to play powerful cards quickly. The more cards in play, the more exciting the game becomes. 

When using multiple decks and playing in teams, Push Up Poppies can be played with up to 12 people. 

After playing Push Up Poppies a few times, you'll begin to understand just how much background work and game testing went into perfect the gameplay. There is truly no other card game ever created that is so varied, so unpredictable and so damn fun. You've never seen a game like this.  

Gameplay

Goal: Earn the most points by harvesting poppies. First player to 69 points wins — approximately a 30 minute game, depending on how much opium you consume ;-)

Setup: Scope out the diagram card. Each player has five cards in their hand, five spaces to put cards in their field and unlimited spaces to put cards in their infrastructure. Together the field and infrastructure make up the plantation. One deck is suitable for 2 to 6 players.

Start: Shuffle and deal five cards face down to each player. Put all remaining cards face down in a stack. Each player should review their cards. Whoever has used the most opioids recreationally goes first. If nobody has used opioids recreationally, then the youngest player goes first.

Gameplay: Each player takes turns, proceeding clockwise. At the beginning of your turn, draw one card from the stack and then play one card from your hand. Next, if you choose, play a 2nd card from your hand and then draw a 2nd card from the stack, ending your turn. There are four types of cards that can be drawn and played during your turn, but regardless of what cards you draw and play, maintain this order “draw - play - play- draw”. You can also discard a card instead of playing.

Earning Points: During your turn, you can choose to place Poppy cards on the table in front of you into your field. Once you have five Poppy cards in your field, you can harvest. Harvesting is how you earn points! Harvesting with fewer than five Poppy cards is only possible when enabled by the infrastructure cards in your plantation, or through the use of certain action cards. Upon harvest, put the Poppy cards from your field into the discard pile and add the number of points equal to their sum to your total score. Keep track of your points yo!

Discard Pile: This is where all played, discarded and destroyed cards go. When the stack begins to run low, shuffle the discard pile and place underneath the stack to continue play.

There are four types of cards

1. FIELD CARDS - placed in the five field spaces on the table in front of you.

2. ACTION CARDS - played to boost your poppy production or stifle your opposition. Action cards go directly to the discard pile once played. You can only play action cards (like all other cards) during your turn.

3. INFRASTRUCTURE CARDS - placed in the unlimited infrastructure spaces on the table in front of you.

4. WILD CARDS - behave differently depending on what you choose them to be.

 

Origin Story

Push Up Poppies was developed over many years with input from numerous individuals of all walks of life and while traveling across the world through countless countries and landscapes. 

The initial origins can be traced back to canoe trips through British Columbia's beautiful network of lakes and rivers. Often on the rainiest of nights, we would gather under a tarp to play cards. At some point, we started writing on our regular cards with pens and markers, to give ourselves special abilities. We were literally making up the rules as we went along, without any structure or unified setting.

It wasn't until one of the game creators was on a plane too mashed to work that thought was put into the setting. By the time the plane landed, the world of Push Up Poppies was born and much of the game structure was put in place.

The next phase was refinement. We wrote on many decks - one of which was a deck of Michael Jackson playing cards (hence the Smooth Criminal card) - and tested the game play with our friends during Push Up Poppies evenings with 15 or 20 people playing at various tables. We carefully tested various versions of the decks, timing the length of each game and keeping track of how engaging the gameplay was. Various cards emerged and disappeared during this process. Styles of play came and went. It was a lengthy process to get everything just right.

The next step was to enroll the talented artist Jamie Lawson of Poly Studio to draft art for the game. This process also took almost as long and several versions of each card were developed and rejected until each and every card was both beautiful and consistent with the overarching theme of the game.

Throughout the creation process, we paid attention to detail. For example, the Foxtail card that occupies a Poppy card space is a "foxtail", as in the common English name for alopecurus apiatus, which is the actual grass that invades poppy fields in Afghanistan. And the plantation owners fight against the invasive grass species by burning it away - hence the Foxtail Fire card.

Meanwhile, the scud mission showcases a cartoon image of the actual Russian produced B2 scud missiles that flooded Afghanistan in the 70's and 80's.

Also, the Molale Motahed card is the Pashto term for the United Nations. Pashto is the language spoken in the region of Afghanistan where we find most of the country's poppy plantations.

There are more hidden details in the game and we hope you have fun finding them.

All-in, Push Up Poppies was a ton of work, but also a total blast (and privilege) to create. We're thrilled with the final outcome and hope you have a blast playing it!