Gnome Hollow
Since the beginning of time, gnomes have been the humble caretakers of nature. In secret they emerge from their underground homes to maintain meticulous rings of mushrooms known to the humanfolk as "fairy rings". But the work must be done quickly because as soon as a mushroom path is finished, the mushrooms are ready for picking. Who will be the cleverest gnome and harvest the most mushrooms by the end of the season?
Gnome Hollow is a spatial, tile-placement, worker-placement game in which you grow a tabletop garden of mushrooms and flowers. Every piece is a hand-painted watercolor that captures the whimsical feel of gnomes and nature. Turns are deceptively simple: Players place tiles into the garden, and move a gnome to take a single action on their turn.
But placing a tile and taking an action can create play combinations that are intensely satisfying. Players strategically place tiles and develop rings of valuable mushrooms. Once a ring is completed, they harvest each mushroom and eventually carry them to market to sell for the shiniest treasures available in the hollow.
Small mushroom rings offer small rewards. Larger mushroom rings offer richer rewards! Completing a new circle automatically increases your score. The player board automatically calculates your growing score every time you move a ring marker to unlock your latest reward. This means that every completed mushroom ring offers new strategic choices and important bonuses for individual players.
As you grow the garden, some rewards give players access to rare signposts. Once placed in completed rings, signposts become unique worker placement spots for any of the gnomes in the Hollow.
Wildflowers are literally wilds and can complete any ring, or solve complicated problems during play. Planting them grants players a wildflower token. Other players can move to a flower as an action to collect that same wildflower token. When these tokens are placed into the individual player boards, these become a valuable set-collection strategy, while simultaneously building toward the end of the game.
Gnomes visit the Pinwheel Market to fulfill mushroom orders to gain treasure in the form of bottle caps, buttons, feathers, crystals, and skeleton keys. Each card offers two options. You can choose to fulfill the top portion to grab a bit of treasure, or fulfill the bottom to gain the most. The white part of the card gives players a mushroom trade that can be used in future turns by visiting sign posts.
Clever players will plan their strategy carefully, balancing the building of mushroom rings with trips to the market, as well as expanding their personal collection of wildflowers that grow across the garden. As the game progresses, it is as much about playing a beautiful game as it is a wonderful journey to strategically outplay your opponents.
Come to Gnome Hollow and experience a peaceful garden, the thrill of competing to harvest buckets of mushrooms, and the reward of gathering in all your shiny treasures!
Number of players: 2 - 4
Game duration: 57 mn
Complexity: 2 / 5
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Play Gnome Hollow and 949 other games online.
No download necessary - play directly from your web browser.
With your friends and thousands of players from the whole world.
Free.
Rules summary
Overview
Collect unique Flowers and build the most Mushroom Rings of various sizes, whilst selling any Mushrooms you collect along the way
Turn
Your turn has 4 steps: Place tiles, resolve tiles, move a Gnome, resolve the Gnome
Tile Placement
First, pick two of the 8 available tiles and decide if you also wish to use up to 2 tiles from your personal storage
Each tile must be adjacent to either the stump or another tile already placed
White paths & green edges must match up to other paths/edges if they touch another tile
If your tile would extend another player's ring, you must gain their permission
If two paths are unfinished and each have gnomes on them, they CANNOT be connected
Each tile has a mirror version of itself on both sides, so feel free to flip a tile to get the desired orientation
Once you've placed your two mandatory tiles (& two bonus tiles if desired) check to see if a Ring has been created
A Ring is a connected sequence of white Mushroom Paths with no breaks
Whoever owns the Ring collects all mushrooms on it
If no one owns the Ring, all mushrooms that should have been collected are placed in the middle of the ring for a potential later collection
Whoever owns the Ring, or it is unclaimed the player who completed the ring does the following, takes the leftmost ring Marker from their player board and places it in a slot matching the number of tiles in the Ring. Some of these have multiple spaces, you can choose which to fill and gain the corresponding bonus, if any. If you have already claimed all the spaces for that size, you do NOT get to place a marker. Note: The Stump tile counts as a tile for the quantity in your Ring.
Resolutions and Bonuses
Signpost - This lets you either place a new signpost into the Ring you just completed and immediately use its effect, or you can pick a Signpost already out and use its effect without moving it
Tile - Pick a Tile from the market and put it in your Personal Storage, which can hold at most 2, so you will have to discard a stored tile if you now hold 3
Flower - Take a flower as long as you do not posses it and add it to your leftmost open slot for one, you score points for the most unique flowers
Mushroom - The number tells you how many mushrooms you can repick from your Ring, you cannot repick the same mushroom more than once, but can repick the same type if there are multiple in your Ring
Ring Marker - This lets you place two markers instead of the normal 1
Wildflower - This bonus is not depicted on the destination of the Marker but rather based on where it originated from e.g. your 2nd Marker of the game. First, you gain a flower, remember you want unique flowers for your collection. Second, you gain a Wildflower tile to your storage, remembering the limit of 2. Wildflowers have a Mushroom Path all around the perimeter, this makes them ideal for closing Rings, they also have no placement restrictions. When the supply of Wildflower tiles runs out, you still gain the Flower bonus from this. You can only hold a single Wildflower at a time in your storage.
Gnome Movement
Moving a Gnome is optional, but you may only activate a Gnome if it has been moved this turn
Claim a Mushroom Path - You can move a Gnome to an unclaimed Mushroom Path, this prevents any other players from claiming it, and when it is finished you gain the rewards as outlined before for completing a Ring. You can also claim a finished Ring that had not already been claimed, this is shown by there being Mushrooms in the middle awaiting collection. Your gnome is NOT stuck on a path, and you may move it off at a later point if you do not want to keep your claim on that path
Flower Market - Any number of Gnomes may reside here from any player, when visited you can take a single unique Flower and add it to your collection
Visit a Signpost- Your Gnome can visit a resolved Ring to take the bonus provided by its Signpost
Pinwheel Market - Moving to the Stump allows you to make up to two sales, if you make two sales in a single visit then each must be of a different Mushroom. For each sale, sell as many mushrooms of a single type as you wish, then place a blocker to block that type and quantity for the rest of the game, e.g. only one player can sell exactly 5 blue mushrooms once. The Pair space NEVER gets a blocker, so two of a mushroom are always available to be sold. Note: Unsold Mushrooms are worthless at game's end
Game End
The game can end in 3 ways: A player gets their 8th Flower, a player uses their 8th Ring Marker, the bag of tiles is empty
When this is triggered, finished the current round, then each player gets a bonus Gnome Activation
Flowers - The rightmost flower scores each player that depicted points, the more unique flowers a player holds the more they are worth
Ring Markers - The rightmost empty ring marker space scores for each player, the more ring markers used the more points gained
Mushroom Sales - Total all the treasure gained from mushroom sales (Mushrooms themselves do NOT score)
The player with the most points, wins!
If tied, the player with the most Unsold Mushrooms remaining, wins!
