Tag: Pattern Building

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

Harmonies

| OTSG Staff

In Harmonies, build landscapes by placing colored tokens and create habitats for your animals. To earn the most points and win the game, incorporate the habitats in your landscapes wisely and have as many animals as you can settle there.

Starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, each player will choose a set of 3 terrain tokens from the central area to place on their personal board. They may optionally choose an Animal card from the 5 displayed and/or place an Animal cube from their Animal card(s) on any completed patterns on their board that match their personal Animal cards. There is a 4-card limit per player. After their turn, refill with a new set of 3 tokens and a new Animal card if needed.

Placement of the terrain tokens will depend on the personal Animal card goals, and scoring rules for the various terrain types (mountain, field, forest, etc). For example, mountain tiles score based on how high they are (1 tile scores 1, while 3 tiles stacked score 7), but the mountain scores zero if it is not adjacent to at least one other mountain. If all the cubes on a given Animal card have been placed, the card is set aside and a new card can be drawn. The cards are scored at game end based on the highest number that isn’t covered by a cube.

The games ends when there are no tokens left in the bag to refill the central area, or at least one players has 2 or fewer empty spaces on their player board. Play continues until all players have had an equal turn that round. The player with the highest points is the winner.

Optionally, you can use Nature’s Spirit cards for richer gameplay. During setup, each player chooses 1 of 2 spirit cards and places a Spirit cube on the card. They follow the same placement rules as Animal cards, but tend to have an ongoing effect once completed. The spirit card does count towards the 4-card hand limit.

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.01

Grand Carnival, The

| OTSG Staff

Ladies and gentlemen, step right up — the carnival is coming to town! In The Grand Carnival, players compete to create the most impressive carnival this town has ever seen. You’ll need to carefully plan your carnival’s layout, build attractions, hire staff, and manage the crowds, all while learning a few tricks of the trade.

Each turn, players cover a number on their player board, then select an action. The covered number determines the effectiveness of their action — and won’t become available again until the next round — so players need to think carefully about which number to use. Possible actions include:

• Place a Foundation Tile: Select a foundation tile to place on your fairground. The higher the number you cover, the more tile options you have. Each tile is a 2×2 grid and is made up of construction sites and walkways. Attractions can be placed only on construction sites, whereas guests can move only on walkways, so place your tiles carefully.

• Build an Attraction: Select a polyomino attraction and place it on the construction sites on your fairground. The size of the attraction you can select depends on the number you cover. Larger attractions can collect more tickets (and can be worth more points), but can be difficult for guests to move around.

• Move a Guest: Select a guest token and move it along the walkways on your fairground. The distance a guest can move depends on the number you cover. If a guest moves next to an attraction, place a ticket token on that attraction. If you move enough guests, you can hire a carnival barker; barkers help guests move quickly through your carnival, but take up precious space in your fairground.

After taking your action, see whether you qualify for any of the three “Tricks of the Trade” cards. Each trick has a requirement that must be met before you unlock its unique ability. Once a player unlocks a trick, each of their opponents has one turn to meet the same requirement or lose access to that trick for the rest of the game.

After seven rounds, the game ends. Players earn points from sets of the same size attractions, sets of each size of attraction, carnival barkers, guests that move all the way through your park, and their tickets. The player with the most points wins!

—description from the designer

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.21

Go

| OTSG Staff

In Go, players alternately place stones on the empty intersections of a 19×19 grid. The goal: to enclose territory behind stone perimeters and, secondarily, to tightly surround and capture enemy stones. After both players pass, they add up their territory and deduct the number of captives lost, higher score wins.

As you see, the concept is simple, yet the challenge can enrich a lifetime. In truth many lifetimes, for Go has been played for thousands of years. With that long of a lineage and a worldwide following, it has come to be known by different names (Weiqi, Igo, Baduk) and to be played by slightly differing rules, but those differences seldom affect play.

So welcome to this masterpiece that is the game of Go, the race for geographical control of an unclaimed land. Experience running battles and swift reversals, bold invasions and painful sacrifices, each sally, each setback playing out to the dulcet tap of stone on wood.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 30 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.91

Cathedral

| OTSG Staff

In Cathedral, each player has a set of pieces of a different color. The pieces are in the shapes of buildings, covering from one to five square units. The first player takes the single neutral Cathedral piece and places it onto the board. Players then alternate placing one of their buildings onto the board until neither player can place another building. Players capture territory by surrounding areas that are occupied by at most one opponent or neutral building. A captured piece is removed and captured territory becomes off-limits to the opponent. The player with the fewest ‘square units’ of buildings that can’t be placed wins.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.79

FUSE Countdown

| OTSG Staff

FUSE Countdown is a new entry in the FUSE family, one that’s playable both standalone or as an expansion for the original FUSE!

Originally launched in 2015 as one of Renegade’s very first games, Kane Klenko’s FUSE brought the tense action of bomb defusal to the tabletop, in a quick and simple, but extraordinarily challenging cooperative game! Taking just ten minutes to play and minutes to teach, FUSE has appeal for all types of gamers!

Veteran FUSE bomb-disposal techs may think they have the original game down to a science, but FUSE Countdown will throw some new obstacles in their way while also providing some great new tools! Multi-colored dice, Spark cards, new configurations, and Roles all add new elements to the game! Multi-colored dice can fill spots of either color, allowing a new level of flexibility AND challenge!

FUSE Countdown Includes:

  • Multi-colored Dice – can fulfill either color
  • Spark Cards – When you can’t place a die, instead of rolling it and removing a related die, you draw a Spark card. They work like a mini-bomb card for you to fulfill. You cannot win the game unless all active Spark cards are resolved.
  • Roles – Each player has a special player power.
  • New Cards! New bomb cards using some of the new features/icons. *New Fuse cards featuring multiple colors/numbers

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~10 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.14

Fit to Print

| OTSG Staff

Fit to Print is a puzzly tile-laying game about breaking news, designed by Peter McPherson and set in a charming woodland world created by Ian O’Toole!

Thistleville is the world’s most bustling little town — it’s a challenge to keep up with everything going on, from who took home first prize for their baked goods at the community fair to who has been digging in Mrs. Brambleberry’s carrot patch.

As an editor at one of the local newspapers, your job is to tell their stories!

The front page is due in just a few hours and you have no time for perfection. Grab the big stories before the other papers get a chance, and make sure you get the right photos too. A newspaper is a business, so the money has to come from somewhere — don’t forget the ads! After you’ve picked out a combination of stories, photos, and ads, it’s time to lay out the front page. Did you take enough tiles to fill the paper, but not so many that things have to be cut? Over the course of three hectic days, your skills will be tested as you compete to be the most newsworthy editor!

Fit To Print is a tile-laying game for the whole family. Players simultaneously collect newspaper tiles, stacking them on their desks until they think they have what they need to make the perfect front page. Then, they will yell “Layout!” and begin to lay out the page by carefully considering the placement of centerpieces, articles, photographs, and advertisements. When everything is just right, they yell “Print” to be the first off the press and gain their choice of centerpiece for the next round! This hectic spatial puzzle features over 100 unique newspaper tiles, 6 characters with their own special abilities, as well as 3 decks of Breaking News cards — so that each and every time you play you will be solving a new puzzle!

If real-time games aren’t your style, Fit to Print has a number of alternative modes to satisfy every type of puzzle gamer. In Slo-Mode players take turns drafting tiles from a shared market and arranging them on their front pages. In Puzzle Mode, take a specific set of tiles and piece together the highest-scoring arrangements. Whether you enjoy relaxing solo puzzles on your own, or frenetic action for up to 6 players, you will have a blast helping the critters of Thistleville tell their stories!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.12

Enchanted Plumes

| OTSG Staff

In Enchanted Plumes, players strive to complete magical peacocks by assembling plumes in sparkling rows from top to bottom.

Skillfully placing feather cards of the same color from row to row is key, as the top row value will count against your score, while all lower rows count as positive values.

Once the peahen card is revealed, the player with the most valuable plumes wins the game and is bestowed with the luck of the peacock!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.38

Big Sur

| OTSG Staff

Cruise along California’s State Route 1 on the Big Sur Coast Highway to check out the views and landmarks along the most scenic driving route in the world — or rather, invite others to cruise on the highway that you build over the course of play.

In Big Sur, players draft cards to use them either as resources to build new road sections or as the road sections themselves. Your linear path of cards will score for connecting terrain types and meeting other conditions. You can also add notable landmarks to your highway for other unique scoring conditions; these landmarks are based on actual scenic lookouts and locations on Big Sur.

Game Mechanics:

  • Multi-Use Cards
  • Pattern Building

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Cities

| OTSG Staff

You’ve been tasked by the city council to put together a plan to transform a whole neighborhood in the city. You have the opportunity to build new housing, office buildings, parks, and leisure areas near the waterfront. It is in your hands to make the city a better place.

Cities is a city-building game in which you draft the best projects and arrange them in your own playing area. With action and resource draft mechanisms, it will give you the opportunity to visit the cities of Sydney, Venice, New York, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, Lisbon, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires. Can you design the most magnificent neighborhood?

The game is played over eight rounds (or four rounds in a two-player game). Each round, players use their workers to collect 1 scoring card, 1 city tile, 1-2 feature tiles, and 2-4 building pieces. City tiles are made up of park spaces, water spaces, and building spaces. Building pieces are placed on building spaces of the same color to form buildings, which can be 1-4 stories high. Whenever a player fulfills an achievement, they place one of their discs on the achievement board. At the end of the game, players add up the points they have gained from all of their scoring cards and achievements.

Game Mechanics:

  • Contracts
  • Pattern Building
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Set-up
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.92

Codex Naturalis

| OTSG Staff

In Codex Naturalis, you are competing with your opponents to create the best manuscript of living species in primary forests. You’ll do this by placing down cards, overlapping them to assemble an overall manuscript, providing yourself with resources or points! You’ll have to plan carefully to maximize your points, and you’ll have to be willing to make sacrifices to get the best possible outcome.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Layering
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.76