How to play
Each player grows a hollow of hex tiles. There are five habitats: Heath, Wood, Meadow, Reedbed and Brook. There are five animals: Badger, Deer, Trout, Owl and Magpie. Every tile and every token lies face up. Only the order of the stack and of the bag is secret.
- Take a pair. The market has four places. Each place holds one land tile and one animal token. On your turn, take the tile and the token of one place.
- Lay the tile. Put the tile next to your hollow. The habitats on its edges do not need to match.
- Place the animal. Put the token on a tile of your hollow that shows that animal and has no token. Or put the token back in the bag.
- Acorns. When you put a token on a glade tile, you get an acorn. Spend an acorn to swap market tokens, or to take any tile with any token.
- Crowding. If three market tokens are the same animal, you may swap them once on your turn. If all four are the same, they are swapped at once.
- The end. The game ends when the stack cannot refill the market. Each player has then had 20 turns.
How you score
| Habit cards | Each animal has its own habit card. The card gives points for how you place that animal. |
|---|---|
| Reaches | Each habitat scores for its largest reach of joined tiles. |
| Widest reach | The player with the widest reach of a habitat gets a bonus. |
| Acorns | Each acorn that you keep scores 1 point. |
Why it is fair
Every shuffle comes from a secret seed. You see its fingerprint at the start of the game. You see the seed itself at the end. So you can check every tile and token. Verify a game.
Playing online for the first time?
Our guide compares the ways to play online, with steps for each. Read the guide to playing online.