Tag: Tile Placement

Games with Tile Placement mechanics require players to place tiles on a game board to create and modify the game’s environment.

Land Vs. Sea

| T3d-1978
Land Vs. Sea

Land Vs. Sea

Part puzzle, part game. Play as either Land or Sea (or the Cartographer in a 3 player game). Each player plays with 2 double-sided hex tiles containing a mix of land and sea shapes. They take turns placing a tile each to make a map together. Land places tiles trying to complete land areas, and Sea places tiles trying to complete sea areas. Completed areas score a point per tile; land areas for Land, sea areas for Sea. Some tiles score bonus points for whoever completes the area they are in. So players may decide to strategically complete rival’s areas to gain their bonus points. Other tiles allow players to play their second tile, or steal a player’s tile – but not their last one!

Game Mechanics:

  • Network Building
  • Puzzle
  • Team Based
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.79

Kohaku

| T3d-1978
Kohaku

Kohaku

Kohaku is a peaceful koi-pond-building, tile-laying game. Each turn, players will draft both a Koi and Feature tile from the central pond board to place into their personal koi pond.

Score points by surrounding flowers with koi containing matching colors, placing frogs next to koi tiles that have dragonflies, and ensuring that baby koi have a safe place to hide by placing them near rocks.

Butterflies score based on line of sight, so make sure to line them up with similar-colored koi. Turtles and statues bring a sense of balance to your pond and score points more easily, but sometimes aren’t as valuable as some of the other features.

You must carefully plan the placement of your tiles, because once they are in your pond, they can’t be moved! With no restrictions on the shape of your pond, you can build a unique layout to maximize your koi pond’s appeal.

After there are no koi tiles available to refill the central pond board, the game ends. Players will total the points scored by each feature in their pond. The player with the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.70

Karuba

| T3d-1978
Karuba

Karuba

Many moons have come and gone since your boats departed on the journey to Karuba. Once you arrive on the island, each player will lead an expedition team of four adventurers. Now you just have to navigate your way through the dense jungle to make it to the temples. “Just” may be something of an understatement; the ancient jungle trails have to be found and uncovered first! Hurry up and be the first to reach the temples to collect the most valuable treasures. Many paths have dead ends and you need to be patient to find the right/best way (through the jungle). Look! A gold nugget! You can pick it up and collect it, same applies to the shiny crystals along the paths.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bingo
  • Grid Movement
  • Network Building
  • Puzzle
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.45

In the Footsteps of Darwin

| T3d-1978
In the Footsteps of Darwin

In the Footsteps of Darwin

Twenty years after his expedition around the world, Charles Darwin is writing On the Origins of Species. He wants to gather new information about animal life, particularly about continents he hardly explored. Who other than young naturalists, eager for discovery, could help the renowned scholar finish writing his most famous work?

In In the Footsteps of Darwin, players are junior naturalists who have just arrived aboard the Beagle to help Charles Darwin finish his book On the Origin of Species. During this journey, you will study animals, carry out cartographic surveys, publish your findings, and develop theories. Starting with the naturalist controlling the Darwin token, naturalists take turns in clockwise order, performing these two steps in order:

  • Study an animal or take inspiration from a character: Choose one of the three tiles facing the Beagle and place it onto your naturalist’s notebook. It may be either an animal to study or a character from the Beagle’s previous journey who will inspire you. Gain the bonuses depicted or any additional scoring bonuses triggered by the tile’s placement.
  • Voyage of the Beagle: After placing a tile on your notebook, move the Beagle as many spaces forward as the distance between the Beagle and the tile you just selected (1-3 spaces), then draw a new tile to replace the empty space on the journey board.

Your goal is to score more points than your opponents to determine who contributed the most to On the Origin of Species.

Game Mechanics:

  • Grid Coverage
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Rondel
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.54

Garum

| T3d-1978
Garum

Garum

Garum was a fermented fish sauce used as a condiment in the old ages; its manufacture and export was an element of prosperity and perhaps an impetus for the Roman penetration of Lusitanian and Hispanian coastal regions.

Garum from today’s Portugal and Spain was highly prized in Rome and has now inpired a versatile strategy boardgame for the whole family, ages 8 and up, that plays 2 to 4 players. Garum is a tile-laying game, which plays in about 30 minutes, it is language independent and features endless replayability, due to its board system, that ensures no two games are alike.

In Garum, each player represents a master in the preparation of a specific type of fish sauce and receives a set of 16 Cetarian Tiles; each one has 4 spaces filled by 4 colors in different proportions, though the color that the player is defending is the predominant one.

The goal of the game is to play Cetarian Tiles strategically, in order to get a huge number of his own colour symbols in selected rows or columns – the greater the influence, the higher the reward! While placing the tiles, players may apply to score, collect some bonuses and also block their opponent’s intents. Whoever scores most points is the winner.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Area Control
  • Hand Management
  • Pattern Building
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.44

Fjords

| T3d-1978
Fjords

Fjords

Explore a landscape so stunning that even a Viking would hold their breath in awe…

Fjords is a tile-laying game that takes place in two phases. The first one invites the players to explore the fjords around them by laying hexagonal landscape tiles, creating a map that serves as the gameboard. In the second phase, players begin from the longhouses they placed during phase one and will walk the landscape, claiming as much of the plains and cliffs as possible.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Pattern Building
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.26

Escape the Curse of the Temple

| T3d-1978
Escape the Curse of the Temple

Escape the Curse of the Temple

Escape is played in real-time, with all players rolling dice and taking actions simultaneously. You must roll the right symbols to enter a room, and if you’re at an open doorway, you can roll to reveal the next tile in the stack and add it to that doorway. Some rooms contain combinations of red and blue symbols, and if you (possibly working with other players in the same room) roll enough red or blue symbols, you “discover” magic gems, moving them from a separate gem depot onto that tile.

The real-time aspect is enforced by a soundtrack to be played during the game. At certain points, a countdown starts, and if players aren’t back in the safe room when time is up, they lose one of their dice.

Once the exit tile is revealed, players can attempt to escape the temple by moving to that tile, then rolling a number of blue dice equal to the magic gems that haven’t been removed from the gem depot. Thus, the more gems you find, the easier it is to escape the temple. When a player escapes, he gives one die to a player of his choice. If all players escape before the third countdown, everyone wins; if not, everyone loses, no matter how many players did escape.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Dexterity
  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Movement
  • Push Your Luck
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 10 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.48

Carcassonne: 20th Anniversary Edition

| T3d-1978
Carcassonne: 20th Anniversary Edition

Carcassonne: 20th Anniversary Edition

Carcassonne is a tile-placement game in which the players draw and place a tile with a piece of southern French landscape on it. The tile might feature a city, a road, a cloister, grassland or some combination thereof, and it must be placed adjacent to tiles that have already been played, in such a way that cities are connected to cities, roads to roads, etcetera. Having placed a tile, the player can then decide to place one of their meeples on one of the areas on it: on the city as a knight, on the road as a robber, on a cloister as a monk, or on the grass as a farmer. When that area is complete, that meeple scores points for its owner.

During a game of Carcassonne, players are faced with decisions like: “Is it really worth putting my last meeple there?” or “Should I use this tile to expand my city, or should I place it near my opponent instead, giving him a hard time to complete their project and score points?” Since players place only one tile and have the option to place one meeple on it, turns proceed quickly even if it is a game full of options and possibilities.

Carcassonne: 20th Anniversary Edition is a special edition of Carcassonne to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its Spiel des Jahres win in 2001. This edition includes the tiles from the Carcassonne base game, “The River” mini-expansion (with five new river tiles), “The Abbot” mini-expansion, and a new 15-tile “anniversary” mini-expansion. All tiles are adorned with UV-print, with many detailed easter eggs being hidden in the art. Costume stickers are included in case you wish to “dress” your meeples.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • City Building
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.74

Brandon the Brave

| T3d-1978
Brandon the Brave

Brandon the Brave

Want to be as strong, brave and glorious as the knight Brandon the Brave? To become a knight, all knaves first have to master regal tasks and prove that they have good intuition. Your task is to seek out giants, dragons, witches, and other dangers!

In Brandon the Brave, the player who can skillfully place the field tiles next to one another, thus mastering the tasks, will be the lustrous champion at the end of the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~10 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.06

Blokus

| T3d-1978
Blokus​

Blokus

Blokus (officially pronounced “Block us”) is an abstract strategy game with transparent, Tetris-shaped, colored pieces that players are trying to play onto the board. The only caveat to placing a piece is that it may not lie adjacent to your other pieces, but instead must be placed touching at least one corner of your pieces already on the board.

There is a solitaire variation where one player tries to get rid of all the pieces in a single sitting.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Grid Coverage
  • Hand Management
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.76