Harmonies is a pattern-building and tile-placement game for 1 to 4 players. In this game, players draft three tokens on their turn and place them on their boards, which represent evolving ecosystems. At the end of the game, victory points are rewarded for certain patterns and animal cubes placed on habitats depicted on animal cards.

Gameplay

Harmonies is an easy-to-learn game centered around creating patterns on your board by placing tiles. These patterns score points in two ways: some are pre-defined and award points to all players in the same way, while others fulfill requirements on animal cards. On their turn, players can acquire one animal card from a display, adding it to their player area which holds a maximum of four cards. Each of these cards introduces a new pattern, and when a player completes that pattern on their board, they remove a cube from the card and place it on the habitat they just created. The more cubes removed, the more victory points the card scores. Once all cubes are placed, the card is set aside, freeing up space for a new animal card.

Animal cards offer an opportunity to create powerful combos. Completing cards that share similar patterns requires less effort, which can be a significant advantage in the race for victory points. However, it’s important to consider the requirements for the placement of animal tokens. Since each terrain token can only hold one animal cube, the best strategy is to pick cards that share similar patterns but require the animal cubes to be placed on different terrain tokens.

While the rules are simple, paying attention to the terrain tokens you pick and planning ahead is important. Sometimes none of the available options are great for your strategy, but you can pick one aiming for future scoring opportunities. This is one of the things that make the game enjoyable.

We played the game with two and three players. The game is a lot of fun at both player counts. However, in some of our two-player games, the main board got clogged by tokens that weren’t useful for either of us. We had cases where we constantly picked the new tokens coming out of the pouch every round. To a lesser extent, something similar could happen to the display of animal cards which we experienced in both two and three-player games. Maybe coming up with a way to discard tokens or cards if they are not claimed for a number of turns could resolve this issue. For example, if no card is taken from the market for a full round, discard the display or remove the card that has been on display the longest and replace it with a new card.

The game ends when either the pouch is emptied or a player fills most of their board. In our two-player games, the pouch never emptied, and games always ended with one player filling their board. However, both conditions happened in our three-player games.

Variants

The rulebook includes a few variants. The first one is the double-sided player boards where each side has different rules for scoring water tokens, offering a touch of variety to the gameplay without significantly changing the core experience.

The second one, “Nature’s Spirit”, introduces a touch of extra complexity to the game. Here, players receive two cards from a separate deck during setup and keep one. These unique cards score points for patterns exclusive to each player, but only if the lone white cube on them is placed on the player’s board. While the rulebook suggests playing the base game a few times before introducing this variant, we enjoyed it from our second playthrough. There’s no reason not to include this variant in every game.

There’s also a beat-you-score type of solo mode in the rulebook that we have not played.

Artwork and Components

Harmonies has a stunning table presence. From the beautiful illustrations on the cards and vibrant colors of the tokens to the 3D player boards, the game delivers a visually captivating experience. The screen-printed tokens add another layer of visual appeal. It’s worth noting that some players have raised concerns about warped cards and boards (check the comments here, for example). While warping is a common issue for us due to our dry climate, our usual mitigation techniques (placing boards on the table and flipping them occasionally after unboxing, and sleeving cards) proved effective with Harmonies as well. We also had a few cracked tokens, but they didn’t impact gameplay in any way.

Final Thoughts

Harmonies has quickly become one of favorite filler games, rivaling titles like Azul and Patchwork. The combination of simple rules, stunning visuals, and engaging gameplay makes it a joy to play. We have been enjoying this game and highly recommend it.

Disclosure: We received a review copy of this game. Also, there may be an affiliate link in the links included at the end of this article.