Harmonies is one of those rare games that lives up to the phrase "deceptively simple." Placing tiles on your board to match the patterns shown on your cards sounds simple enough, but this game uses its theme, the idea that an ecosystem is a balance of interlocking pieces, to give players a bit more to think about when they're selecting and placing their tiles.
A game of Harmonies starts with five sets of three random tiles in the center of the table. Each player has their own small board, a grid made up of hexagonal spaces in either a 5x5 or a 4x7 pattern. There is a spread of four cards with absolutely stunning artwork by Maëva da Silva, depicting a range of animals from penguins to meerkats. Each card shows a specific pattern of tiles needed in order to place a cube representing that animal. The patterns will usually involve placing two or more tiles of different colors (representing terrain such as mountains, grasslands or water), but the cube only occupies one of those tile spaces -- there can only be one cube placed on a tile, but patterns that use the same colors can intersect, neatly demonstrating how different animals share the ecosystem they live in.
Players take turns, first choosing a set of three tiles to place, and then choosing a card from the spread. Each player can only hold a maximum of 4 cards at a time, so you have to be careful to pick cards with patterns that complement what you already have in play. Each card comes with between two and five cubes, to be placed each time the player manages to form that card’s pattern on their board. The more times a player is able to create the card’s tile pattern, the more points the card is worth, and when all the card’s cubes are placed, the card is moved to a separate victory pile, making room for a new card.
There is a lot to think about over the course of the game. You want to choose complimentary animal cards, but that doesn’t necessarily mean cards that use the same types of tiles – you also have to look at which tile in the card’s pattern the animal cube needs to occupy, so you can try to place the most cubes using the fewest tiles.
When choosing tiles, there are five sets of three random tiles to choose from. The catch is that a player must place all three tiles on their board right away, so there is a lot of anticipating where to place the tiles that you don’t need right now so that they’ll be useful on a future turn.
At the end of the game, players score based not only on their animal cards, but also on the type, quantity and patterns of the tiles they’ve played. Mountains score more if they’re connected in a range, and also if the tiles have been stacked to form higher mountains. Trees score based on their height, and rivers based on their length. Players have a lot of options for how they want to play: go for long rivers or high mountains, and seek out animals that will fit in those environments, or look for combinations of animals that can be placed as densely as possible.
Harmonies is very similar to Habitats in theme, look, and game play (although the artwork in Harmonies is definitely nicer), but I think they’re different enough that I won’t mind hanging on to both games. Habitats makes more of a game out of how the tiles are selected, where Harmonies is more about planning for how you play the tiles in order to maximize their position on the board. On balance I find Habitats to be a little more mechanically interesting, but Harmonies is just more delightful in terms of the artwork and overall attractiveness of the components.
