and cross that with the setup and goals of. And it works, somewhat surprisingly, once you get past the fiddly bits. Those two games shouldn’t taste great together, but they kind of do., each player has the familiar board with gridlines on it, with a central area in light shading surrounded by squares with dark shading. Each player starts with three of the game’s polyomino shapes, and on a turn may place one of those shapes anywhere on the light spaces on their board.
There are three decks of cards that show patterns you’ll try to match with the squares you place on your board; they’re laid out in three rows, just as in, and become more difficult from deck one to three. If you match a card, you take it, earning the game-end points shown in the upper left and the immediate rewards shown on the bottom.
Most of the pattern cards, including all of those from levels two and three, show an hourglass symbol with a number from one to four. Once any player has acquired a total of 10 or more hourglasses on their pattern cards, the game enters its final round, so game lengths are limited to under an hour, and you may choose not to take a pattern card because the trade off of hourglasses for points doesn’t make sense for you.
The six player boards are two-sided, with a basic side that’s the same for all players and an advanced side that comes with a unique player ability for each board. Those vary widely in utility and, in my view, strength, and I prefer not to use them because I think they might create too much of an imbalance—and they’re definitely not suitable for new players.Hanamikoji