- We're building parks and zoning for commercial property.
That's right, it's Bloom Town from Sidekick Games.
(trumpet music)
This multi-player municipal match-up pits
two to four city planners against one another
in a competition to see who's town can
best flourish.
(drums)
Flowers, get it?
Set up begins with the separation of the
building tiles of which there are 65.
13 copies of five different types.
Offices, subways, parks, homes, and shops.
Depending on the number of players in the game
remove a number of sets of these tiles.
Six of each type in a two player game
and two of each type in a three player game.
If you've got four players, keep 'em all.
One note, when removing shop tiles,
never remove duplicates of the same shop.
It's very important.
Shuffle the remaining building tiles together.
Each player now takes a town board, a bonus token
and is dealt two random face down building tiles.
Take the ten community tiles,
consisting of two of each type of tile
and shuffle them into the remaining building tile pool.
Place the town square board in the center of the
table and create five stacks of tiles,
based on the number of players in the game.
Five stacks of eight tiles for two players,
five stacks of eleven tiles for three players,
and five stacks of thirteen tiles for four players.
Reveal the top tile from each stack and
place them below the board.
This area is known as "The Market".
During this step if a community tile is revealed
place it above the board and draw another tile to
replace it.
This area above the board is known as the
"Community Area".
Any leftover tiles at this point are revealed.
Move any community tiles revealed this way
to the community area.
All other tiles are removed from the game.
Next, create a supply of Bloom point tokens.
Randomly select a first player and give them the
start player marker.
Game play occurs in turns starting with the
first player and proceeding clock-wise.
Turns are divided into three steps,
build, score, and take a tile.
In the build step, the active player places
one of their two building tiles from their hand
into an empty space in their town.
Next, in the score step, they gain Bloom points for
the building tile they just placed.
Depending on its placement and neighboring tiles,
the points can really add up.
Offices score one point, plus one point per
other office tile in the same row or column.
Subways score one point plus one point per
connected subway tile diagonally.
Tiles are considered connected if they create a
line of the same type of tile.
Homes score one point plus points based on
orthogonally adjacent tiles that are unique.
For example, this home tile would score one point
plus one for the shop, one for the other home and
one for the office.
The additional shop does not score points.
Shops score one point plus one point for each
orthogonally adjacent tile that matches the
color type of the shop.
Each shop tile has two color types that
correspond to tiles.
Parks score points based on other park tiles
connected to it.
One point for a single park, three points for
the second, and four points for the third.
Additional park tiles in the same group score
zero points.
After the active player has scored their points,
they move to the take a tile step.
Each time a building is placed,
it covers a floral icon on the town board.
The player then takes the tile from the matching section
in the market and adds it to their hand.
They then reveal the top most building tile
from the stack, which ends their turn.
If a community tile is revealed in this way
place it up in the community area.
Any time this second community tile of the
same type is revealed, rescoring occurs.
During rescoring, all players score all tiles
of that type already placed on their boards.
When rescoring, offices, subways or parks
score two points per tile of that type
on the board instead of one.
Homes and shops score the same as regular scoring.
After a players turn ends, gameplay continues clockwise.
During their turn, when a player places a
tile on an empty square that is blooming
they may choose to take one of two possible
bonus actions.
Either, score double bloom points for the tile placed
this turn or, take an additional turn immediately.
The active player does not refill the market in
their first turn but does so in their second turn.
Additionally any time on their turn,
a player may discard their bonus token to
take one of these bonus actions or
a third bonus action, trigger community scoring,
for one type of building.
This can only occur if only one community tile
of that type is in the community area
and causes the second tile to be ignored when
it's drawn.
One caveat, the active player may never use
the same bonus action twice on a single turn.
Gameplay continues with players laying tiles,
scoring points and taking buildings from the market.
The ends game is triggered when two of
the five stacks are depleted or
three of the five stacks in a two player game.
Finish the current round by ensuring each
player has taken an equal amount of turns.
Then each player selects one of the two
building tiles in their hand,
they get to rescore all buildings
of that type on their board.
The other tile in their hand is worth no points.
The player with the highest score wins.
And that's Bloom Town, I'm Becca Scott,
and I'm running for zoning commissioner.
Go to Becca33030 to donate to my campaign.
You can watch me and my friends play this
game and other awesome games on
game to game, right here on Geek and Sundry.
We'll see you there.
(electronic music)