Tag: Pattern Building

In Pattern Building games players place various game components in specific patterns to achieve various results.

Azul: Queen’s Garden

| T3d-1978
Azul: Queen's Garden

Azul: Queen's Garden

Welcome back to the palace of Sintra! King Manuel I has commissioned the best garden designers of Portugal to construct the most extraordinary garden for his wife, Queen Maria of Aragon.

In Azul: Queen’s Garden, players are tasked with arranging a magnificent garden for the King’s lovely wife by arranging beautiful plants, trees, and ornamental features.

Using an innovative drafting mechanism, the signature of the Azul series, players must carefully select colorful tiles to decorate their garden. Only the most incredible garden designers will flourish and win the Queen’s blessing.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Pattern Building
  • Puzzle
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.91

Zoom in Barcelona

| T3d-1978
Zoom in Barcelona

Zoom in Barcelona

Travel around the city of Barcelona and take the best photos to win the game!

In Zoom in Barcelona, players compete in a photo contest to try to take the best photos of the city. Hop on a bike, catch a taxi or a bus to get to the best spots before the other players. During the game you will take photos of its beautiful locations, the iconic structures that create the skyline of Barcelona, and… dragons!

Find the best views of the city, from its seashore to the mountains of Collserola and Montjuïc. Discover its incredible architecture, and the outstanding Modernist sites including those of visionary architect Gaudí.

Did you know that you can find more than 400 dragons in the city of Barcelona? Many artists and architects have included dragons in their works, and dragons and other fantastic beasts are at the centre of cercaviles and correfocs (traditional fire parades). Barcelona is a city of dragons!

Are you ready? Grab your camera and win the game!

The goal of this board game for 2-6 players is to score the highest number of points to win the photography contest. When a player takes their 8th landmark photo the game will end, and the photographer with the most points will win.

Points can be scored by:

  • Taking photographs of the landmarks selected by the judges, with bonus points awarded if the photos contain the relevant themes of the game (different themes will be revealed for each game)
  • Taking photographs of the different buildings of the skyline of the city.

This game contains 86 landmark cards with beautiful illustrations of locations of the city of Barcelona.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Managment
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.82

Wasabi!

| T3d-1978
Wasabi!

Wasabi!

Wasabi! is a light and fast game where you compete against other players to assemble your quota of unique sushi recipes in a rapidly dwindling space. Players draw a variety of delicious ingredients into their hand from the pantry and play them one at a time onto the board, building off of each other’s previously-placed ingredients in the attempt to complete recipes of varying difficulty.

Completing a recipe earns you your choice of special actions from the kitchen to perform later (Chop!, Stack!, Switch!, Spicy!, and the dreaded Wasabi!) that will help you in your efforts or disrupt your opponents’ carefully arranged creations-in-progress.

Completing a recipe with style will earn you bonus points, but you might not always have the time to set up such stylish maneuvers… balancing speed with technique will be crucial if you plan to win the game!

Victory comes as soon as the board fills up with ingredients. Points for completed recipes plus bonuses are tabulated, and the winner is the player with the most points. An extremely skilled player might score an instant victory by completing their quota of recipes before the board fills up.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Pattern Building
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.90

Tiny Towns

| T3d-1978
Tiny Towns

Tiny Towns

You are the mayor of a tiny town in the forest in which the smaller creatures of the woods have created a civilization hidden away from predators. This new land is small and the resources are scarce, so you take what you can get and never say no to building materials. Cleverly plan and construct a thriving town, and don’t let it fill up with wasted resources! Whoever builds the most prosperous tiny town wins!

In Tiny Towns, your town is represented by a 4×4 grid on which you will place resource cubes in specific layouts to construct buildings. Each building scores victory points (VPs) in a unique way. When no player can place any more resources or construct any buildings, the game ends, and any squares without a building are worth -1 VP. The player with the most VP wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • City Building
  • Grid Coverage
  • Pattern Building
  • Player Elimination
  • Puzzle

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.06

Takenoko

| T3d-1978
Takenoko

Takenoko

A long time ago at the Japanese Imperial court, the Chinese Emperor offered a giant panda bear as a symbol of peace to the Japanese Emperor. Since then, the Japanese Emperor has entrusted his court members (the players) with the difficult task of caring for the animal by tending to his bamboo garden.

In Takenoko, the players will cultivate land plots, irrigate them, and grow one of the three species of bamboo (Green, Yellow, and Pink) with the help of the Imperial gardener to maintain this bamboo garden. They will have to bear with the immoderate hunger of this sacred animal for the juicy and tender bamboo. The player who manages his land plots best, growing the most bamboo while feeding the delicate appetite of the panda, will win the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Movement
  • Network Building
  • Pattern Building
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.97

Sudoku Board

| T3d-1978
Sudoku Board

Sudoku Board

In this variation of a game based on the Sudoku puzzle, a “host” (referee) sets up the board with the initial Sudoku puzzle (using one of the 162 puzzles supplied, broken into Easy, Medium, and Hard groups, or by using others found on the web site whose URL is provided in the instructions) by laying the numbered tiles on the blank Sudoku layout board. Players (or teams) take turns adding one tile (and only one tile) to the board.

Points are scored for correct placement based on the number of the tile laid (placing a “6” gets the player 6 points). Points are lost for misplayed tiles (placing a “6” incorrectly costs the player 6 points). A misplayed tile is removed from the board.

Bonus points are won or lost for correctly/incorrectly completing a row or column (5 points each) or a 3×3 block (15 points) or the whole puzzle (20 points).

Repeat until each player has had a turn being “host”, and the player with the most cumulative points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deduction
  • Pattern Building
  • Puzzle Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.83

Shelfie Stacker

| T3d-1978
Shelfie Stacker

Shelfie Stacker

So you’ve picked up a new game, eh? Or did you finally get your eager hands on that expansion you’ve been waiting on for the past year? Well now the real game begins — how on Earth will you fit it into your alphabetized, colour coordinated and divinely crafted new board game shelf? Well, what does it really matter? It’s probably going to just sit there in shrink for the next six months anyway — sorry, too real? Let’s just move on then…

In Shelfie Stacker, players compete to accumulate the most illustrious board game collection, by carefully filling their shelf with their most recent purchases.

The game is played over the course of 7 rounds. Each round, groups of 3 dice are randomly rolled and placed into piles. These dice represent groups of board games. From their hand of 8 action cards, players must select 1 card to play facedown. These cards will not only determine turn order, but also provide a one-time ability to help players better stack their shelf.

There are specific rules around how dice can be placed into players’ shelves, so careful planning is required. At the end of 7 rounds, the player with the best shelfie wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Pattern Building

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.10

Sagrada

| T3d-1978
Sagrada

Sagrada

Draft dice and use the tools-of-the-trade in Sagrada to carefully construct your stained glass window masterpiece.

In more detail, each player builds a stained glass window by building up a grid of dice on their player board. Each board has some restrictions on which color or shade (value) of die can be placed there. Dice of the same shade or color may never be placed next to each other. Dice are drafted in player order, with the start player rotating each round, snaking back around after the last player drafts two dice. Scoring is variable per game based on achieving various patterns and varieties of placement…as well as bonus points for dark shades of a particular hidden goal color.

Special tools can be used to help you break the rules by spending skill tokens; once a tool is used, it then requires more skill tokens for the other players to use them.

The highest scoring window artisan wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Coverage
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Puzzle
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.92

Rauha

| T3d-1978
Rauha

Rauha

After millennia of sterility, life has sprung again on Rauha. As a venerable Shaman, one of its five worlds has been entrusted to you. Your powers are divine and allow you to shape the environment in order to turn this world into a cradle of life energy, keeper of serenity and harmony for the centuries to come.

Obtain the most victory points, represented as Life Energy, to win the game. You have 2 Ages to turn your world into an energetic core of Rauha. In Age 1, vegetation, terrain, and wildlife will appear. In Age 2, civilizations will thrive.

The game takes place over 4 rounds, each divided into 3 turns followed by a scoring phase. Each turn, you will follow 5 steps:
1. Simultaneously take all Biome cards from the satellite whose symbol matches the one beneath your Avatar on your Player board (moon or star).
2. Choose one card to place on any square of your Player board or discard to the Black Hole.
3. Receive a Divine Entity if you create a row or column of matching symbols on your Player board.
4. Activate your Avatar, plus any Divine Entities in the same row or column as your Avatar.
5. Finally move your Avatar one notch clockwise along the edge of your Player board, changing the row or column that will be activated on the next turn.

During the Scoring Phase, you will activate all your Biomes with Spore tokens and any Divine Entities you may have, gaining crystals and points as shown on the components.

Game Mechanics:

  • Pattern Building

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.54

Quadropolis

| T3d-1978
Quadropolis

Quadropolis

Each player builds their own metropolis in Quadropolis (first announced as City Mania), but they’re competing with one another for the shops, parks, public services and other structures to be placed in them.

The game lasts four rounds, and in each round players first lay out tiles for the appropriate round at random on a 5×5 grid. Each player has four architects numbered 1-4 and on a turn, a player places an architect next to a row or column in the grid, claims the tile that’s as far in as the number of the architect placed (e.g., the fourth tile in for architect #4), places that tile in the appropriately numbered row or column on the player’s 4×4 city board, then claims any resources associated with the tile (inhabitants or energy).

When a player takes a tile, a figure is placed in this now-empty space and the next player cannot place an architect in the same row or column where this tile was located. In addition, you can’t place one architect on top of another, so each placement cuts off play options for you and everyone else later in the round. After all players have placed all four architects, the round ends, all remaining tiles are removed, and the tiles for the next round laid out.

After four rounds, the game ends. Players can move the inhabitants and energy among their tiles at any point during the game to see how to maximize their score. At game end, they then score for each of the six types of buildings depending on how well they build their city — as long as they have activated the buildings with inhabitants or energy as required:

  • Residential buildings score depending on their height
  • Shops score depending on how many customers they have
  • Public services score depending on the number of districts in your city that have them
  • Parks score depending on the number of residential buildings next to them
  • Harbors score based on the longest row or column of activated harbors in the city
  • Factories score based on the number of adjacent shops and harbors

Some buildings are worth victory points (VPs) on their own, and once players sum these values with what they’ve scored for each type of building in their city, whoever has the highest score wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Hand Management
  • Pattern Building
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.21