Harmonies: Review
Information:
Mechanics: Tile (token Placement), Open Drafting, Ecosystem, Pattern Building
Player Age: 10+ Player Count: 1 - 4 PlayersTime to Play: 30 - 45 Minutes
Game Designer: Johan Benvenuto
Player Age: 10+
Game Designer: Johan Benvenuto
Introduction:
Harmonies is a tile(token) placement game where you have to find the balance in scoring tokens based on their end-game scoring, while also creating patterns to score animal cards. The big score payoff occurs when you achieve the animal card goal multiple times.
Game Anatomy:
Personal Board and Central Board:
Each player will have a personal board which is where they place the tokens as they draft them throughout the game.
The central board is where players draft from. The central board has five locations that will each hold three tokens every turn.
Tokens:
The tokens are the core element of the game. They come in six colours; grey, brown, green, red, blue, and yellow. When played some of these tokens can stack on each other, as shown in the below image. Some of the token scoring and animal scoring will require certain stacks to be created.
Each token type has a unique method of scoring that makes it tricky to properly build a harmonious board.
Trees:
Each green token is a tree and will score one point by itself. If there are one or two brown tokens underneath it, it will instead score three or seven points, respectively. No points are awarded for brown tokens placed by themself.
Mountains:
Mountains score based on their stacked height. 1/2/3 high will score 1/3/7 points. The condition to this is that it must be beside at least one other mountain to score.
Fields:
Fields score when there are two or more tokens connected, this will score the player five points. Each field no matter how many tokens will only score five points. With fields, to score big you require multiple two-size fields.
Water:
Water is a unique token as there are two different ways to play then based on the board being used. Side A of the board wants a river and will score based on how many consecutive blues are connected on one path. Scoring based on the amount of tokens, where 1/2/3/4/5/6 tokens will score 0/2/5/8/11/15 points with another 4 points added for any extra amount.
Side B of the board wants islands so you are separating the board into cut off sections using the water tokens, you will score five points for every section cut off from the rest of the land on the board. In the below example, you have four islands so you will score 15 points.
Buildings:
A building is created by the red token being placed on a brown, grey, or red token. The building only score five points if it is surrounded by at least three different coloured tokens from a top-down view (stacked colours only count the top one).
Animal Cards:
The first point to make is that each animal card has wonderfully unique art. They also have a unique pattern that needs to be met (flipped and rotated is ok) to remove one animal cube off the card. This leads to better score points at the end of the game. When the animal token is removed from the card it is placed on the token indicated on the card. The other tokens can still be used in the next formation of this puzzle but a token can only hold one animal token. At the end of the game, the bottom-most revealed score is the amount that will be counted for the card.
Nature Spirit Card:
Spirit cards are an advanced way to play where at the start of the game each player will choose one spirit card out of two options. Each spirit card has one animal cube but a harder pattern to achieve. At the end of the game, they also have a bonus way of scoring certain tokens. This scoring is in addition to the normal scoring, it does not replace it.
Setup:
- Place the central board in the middle with the 2-4 player side face up. Point the number 1 arrow at the first player.
- Each location on this board will be filled randomly with three tokens pulled from the token bag.
- Shuffle the animal cards and reveal a row of five animal cards.
- The animal cubes and deck should be within reach of all players.
- Each player will set up the personal board in front of them (all players have to be on the same side) each player will take a reminder card as well.
How to Play:
Each turn the players will do one mandatory action of taking and placing tokens, with the optional action of gaining one animal card and placing animal cubes. At the end of every turn, players will refresh the empty spot(,s) on the central board and animal row, if needed.
Take and Place Tokens:
The three tokens a player takes can be placed anywhere on the board, including being stacked on others. The only exception to placement is you are unable to place a token under another token or place it on any token that holds an animal cube.
Take One Animal Card:
One animal card can be drafted from the five publicly available. A player cannot have more than 4 active animal cards at a time, including the nature spirit animal if you are playing the advanced mode. If all the cubes are removed from an animal card they will move into your scoring pile and no longer be counted in the card limit.
Place One Animal Cube:
This action can be done multiple times on a turn and can also be done in between the placement of the three tokens. If you meet the pattern on one of your animals, remove the lowest animal cube and place it on the token indicated in the pattern. You cannot place an animal cube on a token with an existing cube.
Scoring:
The game will end either once the bag of tokens runs out so you cannot refill the central board, or one player has two or fewer vacant spots on their personal board. After that, turns will continue until everyone has had an equal number of turns.
Each player will score their tokens, calculate any extra points for their spirit animal and score points equal to the top-most vacant spot on an animal card.
Final Thoughts:
- Challenging to balance the patterns on the cards while considering how each type of token scores.
- Great components, especially the storage compartment in the box and the wooden tokens.
- Great art.
Harmonies is a very interesting point-salad tile-placement game. Each time you play a token you are trying to reach the maximum points possible by meeting your animals and unique token scoring. Each token has its own puzzle that needs to be solved, such as spreading out the fields or making sure your mountains remain in contact. It's not always easy to gain the right tokens as you have to pick one from the pool bundled tokens. The animals are a great way to score sometimes bouncing off the other animals you have already worked towards scoring. I found that the animals, however, weren't my focus during a game, they instead became a supplement to my other scoring. They also work as a great starting objective for players new ro the game. If you enjoy games that allow for numerous avenues of scoring, great themes, and ease of play. I highly recommend Harmonies and it has earned a Go-To Golden Seal.
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