Umbra Via (Board Game)

Just beyond the towering vines lies an ancient pathway into the unknown. Pushback the thorn-riddled stocks to discover a clandestine garden, blooming withmysterious vigor. Vivid colors mark the way to intricate tiles zigging andzagging through the green. Within the flowers lies the key to greater meaning.An explanation for all things unknown…

In Umbra Via, players compete to control and complete the most cunning paths.Reach into your bag to select wooden flowers, then place them on your secretboard in the order of the paths you want most. But when players reveal theirchoices, things get delightfully tricky. Experience the magic of Umbra Via andfind out why this award-winning design belongs on any table.

In more detail, at the start of each round four tiles are revealed from thedeck, with each tile showing part of a path, e.g., a straight line, a curve, ora T. Players secretly draw three cubes from their bag and place them on spaceson their personal board corresponding to these tiles. They all reveal theirchoices, move their cubes to the chosen tiles, then secretly place three morecubes, then move those cubes to the tiles. Whichever tile ends up with thefewest cubes on it is placed in the 4×4 grid first, maintaining the sameorientation, by the player who bid the most cubes on that tile. (Some cubes inyour bag are worth two cubes during the bidding phase, but are then removed fromthe tile and returned to your bag prior to placement.) Then the next tile isplaced on the grid, and so on.

When you place a tile, if all the “open” ends of that path are cutoff — whether by the edge of the board or other tiles — you count how manycubes each player has on the path. The player with the most placed cubesretrieves “double-bidding” cubes from the reserve equal to the number oftiles in the path, adding these cubes and all other cubes to their bag. Theplayer with the secondmost cubes on the path retrieves half this many“double-bidding” cubes, and so on. After removing and returning all thecubes on this path, remove the tiles from the grid, placing them in adiscard pile.

As soon as a player has retrieved all of their “double-bidding” cubesfrom the reserve, they win!

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