Harmonies as a board game has the perfect name – everything harmonizes beautifully to create a gorgeous game, and one you’ll want to play again and again. The game is nothing to do with the harmony of music (a common misconception), yet it beautifully weaves together different game notes into one final masterpiece: becoming a board game that you’ll keep on your playlist for years to come. Instead of music, you’re creating beautiful habitats for different creatures, by building different environments where they can flourish in one cohesive map. Harmonies is a game you won’t want to miss.
Game Overview
Harmonies is a board game designed by Johan Benvenuto and published by Libellud. This game is a perfect fit for a relaxing day at home, especially on a rainy day. Harmonies features a simple yet charming theme of creating habitats for cute cartoony animals. Players take turns grabbing one of five groups of three terrain tokens from the central display and placing them on their player board to create diverse and unique landscapes. The game’s design allows players to focus on relaxing and enjoying the pattern-matching experience, making it an ideal choice for those looking to unwind with a delightful board game.
What is Harmonies Board Game?
Harmonies is a relatively new game from Libellud, a publishing company who have a track record of creating easy to learn and play games with beautiful imagery to enhance the experience. You may be familiar with the likes of Mysterium or Dixit, two very different games (to each other, and to Harmonies too), which are games that have made a real impact on the hobby gaming landscape as modern classics, and Harmonies has a great opportunity to do the same.
Full of tactile components and vibrant artwork of different animals in vivid colors, players will draft tiles and place them onto their player map. They’ll be trying to build the very best habitats that will allow animals to live in harmony with each other, and placing animals on their creations to earn points. Each player has their own objectives, dictated by the animal cards they chose to use, but share some placement opportunities that gain points at the end of the game. And whilst you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, nor a game by its components, it feels like a lot of love has been poured into this game, to fantastic results. It’s a fun, gently competitive game that is immensely satisfying to complete.
How to Play Harmonies
Harmonies has just a few components, but they work incredibly well together. Setting up is just a case of laying out animal cards and placing three random tiles from the pouch onto each of the circles on the central board. With your own player board in front of you, you can begin!
The goal of the game is to build the best habitats for creatures, and in it, you have control over which creatures you’re going to try to build a home for. In the center of the game area are some animal cards that you can take up to four of over your turns. These are beautifully illustrated, making them a joy to have on the table, but importantly, they’ll have a diagram of what habitat you would need to create on your player board in order for them to move in. It’s up to you to figure out if this suits you – if you’ve been collecting a lot of water, picking a few that need water is a good idea, or perhaps you want a super simple, quick to create habitat that you can do easily.
On each card is a set of numbers, with a small square next to it. These house the animal cubes, which are representative of the animal on that card. When you build a habitat, you can place the lowest animal cube onto the habitat. If you build another, you unlock higher points.
Now, the bigger animals with more complex habitats are worth more points, but you’ve often got a push-and-pull in trying to work out whether it’s best to aim for lots of tiny habitats that are easier to guarantee you’ll get the pieces for, but for smaller points, or risk it on the higher points animals in the hope you’ll create a great chain and the most points.
Whilst that’s what you’ll be doing, how you do it is just as simple. Each turn, you must take all the tiles on the circle of your choice from the central board, and place these onto your habitat. That means that sometimes you’ll get the perfect combination of tiles you need, but more often you’ll get curveball pieces you need to carefully manage to make sure they don’t waste space you need for future habitats!
The space gets replenished after you take the tiles, and once you’ve placed the tiles down, you have the option to take an animal card. You can have up to four animal cards above your player board to score from. If you’ve completed a habitat, you can also place an animal token down.
The last aspect to consider in standard game is that there are points not only for the animal cards but also for how long the river is, for example, or other placements. That means that even if you’re not managing to get the tiles you need for the habitats you’ve selected, you can still be collecting points.
Gameplay Mechanics
The gameplay in Harmonies revolves around placing different terrain tokens on a player board to create habitats for animals. Players can choose to grab an animal card, which provides them with patterns to complete using their terrain tokens. Successfully completing a pattern earns players an animal cube, which they can place on their board for victory points. The game ends when one player has less than three spaces left on their player board, and the player with the most points wins. One of the unique mechanics of the game is how one pattern intertwines with another, requiring players to think creatively and strategically to maximize their points.
Harmonies Tile Placement Game Options
Harmonies doesn’t stop there – although, it easily could. If you want to, you can flip over the player boards to uncover a new layout to try, which comes with its own changes. For example, the points that you would have gotten previously for the longest river sequence, are now scored instead by how many islands you create, namely, how many segments of the board you can isolate using your water token. You can make decent points by doing this, but be careful, as you’ll be using up precious space to build other habitats!
That’s one example of the changes it brings, but the biggest one is Spirit Cards. The game recommends you play Harmonies a few times before utilizing these cards, but they’re a randomized way to score points differently. Essentially, they’re like animal cards, even taking up one of the slots on your player board reserved for them, but instead of creating an anima habitat, they’ll be specifically about the landscape you’re creating – so you might score for every mountain you have, with extra points for taller ones, for example, which you wouldn’t in the normal game. Although these are face up, so opponents can see them, you’re each dealt two cards and pick only one, so you are likely to be seeking different goals, and have some control over what those games are.
Components and Quality
Harmonies boasts high-quality components that are both satisfying and visually appealing. The terrain tokens and the bag they come in are of excellent quality, adding a tactile pleasure to the game. However, the cards and player boards are somewhat flimsy and prone to bending, which is a minor drawback. Despite this, the game’s art is beautiful and vibrant, featuring cute cartoony animals and colorful landscapes. The design allows players to create diverse and unique landscapes, making each game a new and visually delightful experience.
Replayability and Variability
Harmonies is a game with a lot of replayability, thanks to its unique gameplay mechanics and high-quality components. The game is suitable for two players, and its design allows players to create different landscapes each time they play, ensuring that it never gets boring. The replayability is further enhanced by the variety of animal cards and terrain tokens, which introduce new challenges and strategies in every game. This variability ensures that Harmonies remains engaging and fresh, making it a game you’ll want to return to time and time again.
Harmonies Vs Azul
Harmonies is compared frequently to Azul, but the two are very different. The commonality lies in the fact that both are easy to learn tile laying games, where you pick tiles from a central area and put them into your own. However, that’s mostly where it ends. If you had to pick between Harmonies and Azul, although both are fantastic and Azul is a modern classic, Harmonies is a hidden gem.
Harmonies Review
Overall, Harmonies is a brilliantly clever, stunningly made game, that suits a wide range of audiences. It’s quick to learn but has real strategic depth, and completing a successful landscape of a multitude of habitats is genuinely satisfying. It’s reasonably priced, making it hard to justify not adding it to your gaming collection. But if you need more, we’ve outlined some of the main reasons we recommend this game:
It’s a Cozy Board Game
Harmonies leans into a fantastic genre of board gaming that has become known as “cozy gaming”. These games tend to have gentle themes, often centered around animals, and offering minimal conflict. These often have simple premises and manage to feel relaxing, sometimes as far as mindful. Harmonies is a gem of a cozy board game, offering a simple premise, stunning art, and every reason to play again.
Harmonies Has Beautiful Art
The art is consistent, vibrant, and beautiful to look at. The vibrant artwork of the tiles is well made, pleasing in size, and contributes to a pretty pattern by the end of your game. How a game looks absolutely isn’t everything, if the gameplay is terrible, no amount of art will rescue it. However, Harmonies is a game that has both – great mechanics, and art that you’ll want to keep on your wall.
A Game for New Gamers to Earn Victory Points
Many call this a gateway game, which is simply a board game that’s captivating enough that the person playing it will want to play it again, hopefully being the gateway into the wider hobby. In short, it’s the game that makes you a board gamer. But whether that person is just a casual gamer, never a gamer, or even just family members on game night and you’re trying to catch their interest. Harmonies is a perfect way to do it. The rules are not complex, and the instructions are easy to follow.
The game components are well designed to make the actions intuitive, and the spirit cards add additional depth when players confidence has increased enough to warrant it. You can learn the basics in a single turn and play confidently thereafter. With an entirely inoffensive theme, you can play it with anyone old enough to understand the concept, and they’ll thank you for it afterwards. We listed it as a fantastic board game for 13-year-olds too!
Play Harmonies Online
A fantastic bonus to the game is that you can play the full version of Harmonies online on Board Game Arena. Board Game Arena is a fantastic way to play board games digitally within your browser, and whilst we definitely prefer to be able to experience the tactile nature of Harmonies’ components, it offers a way to play when your friends are far away, or to just try the game out before you buy it.
Where to Buy Harmonies
You can pick up Harmonies at your friendly local game store or find a copy of it on Amazon.
FAQ:
What is Harmonies board game about?
Harmonies is a board game where players create beautiful habitats for different creatures by building environments on their player map. Players draft tiles, place them strategically, and try to build the best habitats to score points.
How many players can play Harmonies?
The article doesn’t specify the exact player count. However, based on the description of gameplay, it appears to be a multiplayer game suitable for at least 2 players.
Is Harmonies difficult to learn?
No, Harmonies is described as easy to learn and play. The rules are not complex, and the instructions are easy to follow. Players can learn the basics in a single turn and play confidently thereafter.
How does Harmonies compare to Azul?
While both are tile-laying games where players pick tiles from a central area, they are quite different. Harmonies is considered a “hidden gem” with more strategic depth and a focus on creating animal habitats.
Can I play Harmonies online?
Yes, you can play the full version of Harmonies online on Board Game Arena, which allows you to try the game before buying or play with friends who are far away.