The garden gnomes are competing to harvest mushrooms—the winner gets to head to the forest!
What Is Gnaughty Gnomes?
Gnaughty Gnomes is a trick-taking game for 4 players (two teams), ages and up, and takes about 30 to 60 minutes to play. While the box doesn’t have an age recommendation, BoardGameGeek has it listed as 12 and up; it is more complex than most of the trick-taking games I’ve played lately (and incorporates several other types of game mechanics). Gnaughty Gnomes is currently available for pre-order from New Mill Industries for $20; the pre-order will run until the end of February, and is expected to ship in early May.
Gnaughty Gnomes was designed by Daniel Kenel and published by New Mill Industries, with graphic design by Daniel Newman.
Gnaughty Gnomes Components
Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, but the finished version should be very close to what you see here.
Here’s what comes in the box:
- 13 Mushroom hexagon cards (3 each of 4 types, plus 1 white card)
- Suit Strength card
- 4 Suit Strength discs
- 32 Mushroom cards
- 4 X cards
- 4 Turn Order cards
- 32 Gnome discs (16 each in blue and grey)
You’ll need to provide your own means of keeping score.
The mushroom hexes are small, just a little wider than the cards, and they’re the same cardstock as well. Since they’re not tiles, they can be a little harder to line up just right—they overlap and slide a little. However, given that you sometimes place discs on the outside edges of the map, tiles would also present other issues. Each of the four colors also has its own mushroom illustration, so they’re easily distinguished. The hexes have faint circles along the edges that line up with other tiles, creating the spaces where you will place the wooden discs.
The mushroom cards are pretty simple: a colored background with a large mushroom illustration, and the value in all four corners. The cards range from 1 to 8, and there is also an X card in each suit.
The strength card has four spaces for the mushroom discs—these track the relative value of the mushrooms, which changes throughout the course of the game. The small numbers below are used for moving the discs around, but we’ll get to that later.
The gnomes are simple wooden discs in blue and grey. As I mentioned in my review of The Six of VIII, New Mill Industries does small print runs of their games and uses simple components to keep the costs down. Gnaughty Gnomes comes in a simple small box with a lid—I do wish the box had the thumb cut-outs to make it easier to open, but it’s a nice compact size.
How to Play Gnaughty Gnomes
There’s a Google Doc of the rulesheet (though it does not have updated graphics). Although Gnaughty Gnomes is a trick-taking game—each player plays one card to the trick, and the highest card “takes” the trick—it resolves tricks a bit differently from most games in the genre.
The Goal
The goal of the game is to score the most points by gaining control of the most valuable mushrooms, over the course of 8 tricks.
Setup
Set up the map by laying out the hexes randomly around the white hex in the center. (The white hex is basically a hole and counts as an outside border.) Make sure there aren’t three of the same color in one contiguous group. Place the strength card nearby and randomly place the four mushroom discs on it. Set the turn order cards nearby.
Players should sit across from their partners, and each team gets a set of gnome discs. Give each player one of the X cards at random, and then shuffle the deck and deal out all the cards. Every player will have 8 cards plus an X card. Choose a starting player.
Gameplay
From the starting player and going clockwise, each player will play one card from their hand. Unlike some trick-taking games, you may play any card from your hand, regardless of suit. If you play your X card, declare its value from 1 to 8, and also say whether it is “high” or “low”—that way, if another player plays the card with that printed value and suit, you know whether your X is higher or lower than it.
Once everyone has played a card, you will pass out the turn order cards based on the ranking of the cards. Refer to the strength card—that shows the relative values of the four suits, and then within a suit the higher cards win. In the photo above, the black mushroom is the strongest, so the black 8 is first, followed by the black 6. Nobody played red mushrooms, so then the purple 7 is third, and the orange 8 is last. The team that won the trick (who played the black 8) immediately scores 1 point.
Then, in the turn order indicated by the cards, each player will place 1 gnome onto the map. First, you must choose one of the four cards played and turn it face-down—this determines what color hex you may play on. (You may touch other colors as well, but your gnome must touch at least one hex of the color you flipped.) Your turn order card also indicates where you may place your gnome: 1st place may only place on an outside edge (touching only one hex); 2nd and 3rd place may place so their gnome touches up to two hexes; 4th place may place a gnome so it is touching up to 3 hexes.
Each time a gnome is placed, it has an opportunity to score: if you created a tie for control of the hex, you score half (rounded down) of that color’s VP based on the strength card. If you took control of a hex, you score full value. One important note: you only score if there is at least one gnome from the opposing team on the hex, so placing the first gnome on a hex doesn’t count as “taking control.” You also do not score for adding gnomes to a hex where you are already in control.
After everyone has placed a gnome, the four cards played in the trick are discarded. Whoever was 4th place becomes starting player for the next trick.
Game End
The game ends after 8 tricks. Everyone will have 1 card left in hand.
The team with the higher score wins; ties go to the player with the highest card left in hand (based on the strength card).
I think it’s worth noting here the actual text of the rulebook describing what happens for the winning team: “Their gnomes are emancipated from the garden to dance and celebrate in the forest. The loser’s gnomes stare at them, utterly sober, blinking.”
However, if the game ends with the tie-breaker: “Their gnomes are still emancipated, but first gather at the loser’s garden fence to jeer at them before dancing away to celebrate in the forest, freely but much less profoundly.”
Why You Should Play Gnaughty Gnomes
The first thing you should know about Gnaughty Gnomes is that it’s very weird. I mean, just go back to the last two paragraphs and re-read those descriptions of the gnomes celebrating their victory. Utterly sober, blinking, indeed.
But it’s not just the bit of flavor text (which livens up an otherwise fairly abstract game)—the way that Gnaughty Gnomes makes use of trick-taking can be hard to wrap your brain around, perhaps especially if you think you already know how to play trick-taking games. That’s in part because it throws some of the usual conventions out the window: you don’t have to follow suit, the rank of all the cards in the trick matter, and the loser is the one who gets to start the next trick. And while “winning” the trick scores your team 1 point, it’s often not the primary consideration in which card to play: you stand to score far more points from the area control aspect than from winning tricks.
Here are just some of the things to think about when you play a card. What’s the current board state and which color is the most valuable right now? Ideally, you want to set things up so that your team can score for the strongest color, because that’s worth 5 points if you gain control. In the photo above, both teams are currently tied for the purple mushroom, so the next player to play a gnome on the hex will score full points. So should you go big, trying to be the first player to claim those points? Not so fast: if you get first and the other team takes 2nd and 3rd place, they can then tie (for half points) and then claim it for full points. On the other hand, if your partner comes in 2nd, you could both play there—the first player scores full points, and the second player wouldn’t score anything but plays defensively to make it harder for the other team to take over. The best they’d be able to do this turn is tie it back up.
Of course, all of that assumes that there are even the right colors played. In order for the first player to jump in on the purple mushroom, there must be at least one purple card played, because the first player can only touch one colored hex. (Remember, the white hex doesn’t count.) Other players may be able to add gnomes to the purple mushroom using the other colors that border it, but the number of spaces is limited. You can control the available placements by the colors you choose to play.
And then there’s the strength card. Whichever card wins the trick can alter the strength. The higher the value of the winning card, the more that particular color will drop in value. If the other team is amassing their gnome armies on red mushrooms because it’s currently at the top of the chart, maybe it’s time to play your high red cards to tank the value. The hard part is that the value doesn’t change until the end of this trick, after the gnomes have been placed, so you do still need to hold them off long enough for the value to drop.
Once the cards have been played, there is still some strategy to be had in deciding where to place your gnomes, which depends a lot on which colors are available to you and the actual turn order. Having both of your team’s plays back-to-back can give you a nice advantage to be able to tie and take control of the same mushroom, but if you’re split up then you’ll probably need to respond to whatever the other team is doing. Unlike many area control games I’ve played, there really isn’t any first mover advantage in Gnaughty Gnomes: the first person to step onto a mushroom scores nothing, and is just setting up a scoring opportunity for their opponents. Playing defensively by putting lots of gnomes onto a valuable mushroom is also not as useful—it may prevent the other team from taking over and scoring points, but it doesn’t score you anything at all either.
Gnaughty Gnomes is definitely the sort of game that can make your brain hurt when you’re first getting started. It’s a wacky puzzle with so many interlocking pieces despite having such seemingly simple components. To call it just a “trick-taking game” really doesn’t convey the magnitude of what you’re doing each time you play a single card. I’ve only played it a couple times so far, but each time I’ve found it really fascinating and I want to get better at it.
For more information, visit the New Mill Industries site. Just a reminder: this is currently on pre-order until the end of February, and is expected to ship in early May, with very limited availability beyond that, so don’t wait too long to decide!
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
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