Shifting Stones

Players: 2-5 | Age: 8+ | Minutes: 20

Leave no stone unturned! Nine tiles lie before you in a grid of rocky ruins. Rearrange the tiles to match one or more of the patterns in your hand. The catch is that you must sacrifice a card every time you swap or flip a tile.

Carve out the most points, and your victory is set in stone!

How to play:

Place the stone tiles randomly to form a 3×3 grid. Shuffle the deck of pattern cards and deal each player a hand of 4 cards.

Stack the rest of the deck above the tile grid, leaving space for a discard pile.

On your turn you may take as many actions as you’d like, and in any order, as long as you have cards to either discard or score.

You can:

Shift Stones: discard a pattern card from your hand face up to the discard pile, then choose any two adjacent stone tiles and swap their positions.

Flip stones: discard a pattern card from your hand face up to the discard pile, then choose a stone tile and turn it over to its opposite side.

Score a card: reveal a pattern card from your hand that matches the current layout of the stone tiles.

Skip your turn: you can choose to skip your turn and draw two cards from the deck, bringing your hand up to 6 cards.

Once all players finish their final turns, tally the points on your scored cards. The player with the most total points is the winner.