Review: Harmonies

Introduction & Overview

Create a miniature world where animals live in complete harmony with nature! A strategy game where every decision you make will be crucial!

This is how Harmonies is presented to us, a design by Johan Benvenuto (Lost Seas, Secret Identity, Braintopia). First published in 2024 in a multi-language edition by Libellud. The illustrations are handled by Maëva da Silva (Deus, When I Dream, Dragomino).

It is published in Spanish by Asmodee (although the game is completely language-independent except for the rulebook). It allows for games of 1 to 4 players, with a suggested minimum age of 10 years and an approximate duration of between 30 and 45 minutes. The MSRP is €34.99. For this review, a copy of the Spanish version from Asmodee was used, which the publisher itself has kindly provided as a review copy.

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Go to Personal Opinion

Components

Inside a two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom), measuring 21.3×21.3×6.7 cm (a medium square box similar to The Vale of Eternity), we find the following elements:

• Central Board (cardboard)
• 4 Player Boards (cardboard)
• 46 Cards (70×120 mm.):
  • 32 Animal Cards
  • 10 Spirit of Nature Cards
  • 4 Reference Cards
• 120 Tokens (wooden)
• 66 Amber Animal Cubes (plastic)
• 4 Transparent Spirit of Nature Cubes (plastic)
• Scorepad (paper)
• Cloth Bag
• Rulebook

How to Play

Harmonies is a game with main mechanics of drafting, tile placement (tokens in this case), and pattern building. Each player will have a personal player board where, on each turn, they will have to place three tokens, to be chosen from five possible trios on a supply board. Each token can be placed on an empty space, although some of them can be stacked on top of others following certain rules. Additionally, the player can add an animal card to their play area, which shows a certain pattern to complete and a series of spaces where cubes will be placed to mark how many times it has been completed. Finally, if the player fulfills one or more patterns of their animals, they will place the cube located in the lowest-value position onto the token indicated in the pattern (if the last cube is removed, the card is set aside, freeing up the space, since each player can only have four uncompleted animal cards). The final round is triggered when a player has 2 or fewer empty spaces left on their player board or when the supply board cannot be refilled, proceeding to a final scoring where players score points for their tokens according to the scoring criteria of each one, as well as for the maximum value released on each animal card.

Key Concepts

Let’s start with the main element of the game, the Tokens. We find tokens in six colors: brown (represents wood), green (represents vegetation), red (represents buildings), gray (represents stone), blue (represents water), and yellow (represents fields). Each type of token has a specific scoring criterion that will be evaluated at the end of the game. Some types of tokens can be stacked on top of others.

On each turn, the active player will take a set of three tokens from a Supply Board that shows five bowls where five trios of tokens will be randomly placed. This board shows an arrow in its central area that serves to point to the starting player, something that will be taken into account when triggering the final round.

These tokens will be placed on the individual Player Boards that the players will have. These boards show a set of hexagonal spaces and two sides that mark the difficulty level, since depending on the chosen side, some scoring criteria for the tokens will change. In the upper band of the boards, we find spaces to place up to four animal cards.

These Animal Cards show, in addition to a large illustration, a pattern on the lower band and the number of times the pattern can be reproduced on the player board in the upper-left corner through small squares with a point value to their right that increases from bottom to top. There will be some special cards that function exactly the same as animal cards but can only be completed once and show a scoring criterion.

To indicate the presence of these animals on the player board, amber-colored Cubes are used, which are placed on the grid spaces of the animal cards. Each time a card’s pattern is completed, the cube occupying the lowest score value will be taken and placed on the token indicated in the pattern, so that this token can no longer contain more cubes from other animals. When a card runs out of animals, it will free up its space on the player board. The transparent cubes will be used for the spirit cards.

That is enough to get started.

Setup

1. All tokens are placed into the bag.
2. The supply board is placed between the players.
3. Five sets of three tokens are drawn from the bag and placed on each supply space.
4. The deck of animal cards is shuffled and placed to one side. After this, the first five cards of the deck are revealed to form a common supply.
5. The amber cubes are set aside in a common pool.
6. Each player receives a player board (players decide which side to play on, but everyone must play on the same side).
7. The deck of spirit cards is shuffled, and two are dealt to each player along with a transparent cube. Each player chooses which spirit card to play with and places the cube on the corresponding space. The other card is returned to the box.
8. Finally, a starting player is randomly chosen, and the central board is rotated so that the arrow points to them.

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of Harmonies takes place over an indeterminate number of rounds in which each player will enjoy a turn, starting with the initial player and continuing clockwise.

On each turn, the active player will execute the following actions in the order they see fit:

• Take Tokens (mandatory). The player will choose one of the five trios of tokens and place them on their player board following the placement rules for each type of token:
  • Blue and Yellow Tokens: can only be placed on empty spaces.
  • Brown Tokens: can only be placed on empty spaces or stacked on top of a single brown token.
  • Gray Tokens: can be placed on empty spaces or on top of one or two gray tokens in a space (up to a maximum height of three).
  • Green Tokens: can be placed on empty spaces or on top of one or two brown tokens in a space (completing a maximum height of three).
  • Red Tokens: can be placed on empty spaces or on top of a single red, brown, or gray token.
• Choose Animal (optional). If the player has at least one empty space at the top of their player board, they may choose, if they wish, one of the five available animal cards. They will place it in an empty space and put an amber cube on each square of the card.
• Deploy Animals (optional). If the player at this moment fulfills one or more patterns (it can be the same pattern multiple times), they will place the corresponding animal cubes on the indicated tokens. If a card runs out of cubes, it is set aside, freeing up the space on the player board.

Finally, the supply board is replenished by drawing three new tokens to place them in the empty space, and a new animal card is revealed if the player chose one. After this, the turn passes to the player on the left.

Game End

The final round is triggered when, at the end of a player’s turn, one of these two situations occurs:

• The player has 2 or fewer empty spaces left on their player board.
• It is not possible to refill the supply because there are no tokens left in the bag.

The round would be completed, and the final scoring would proceed. Each player will score points for:

• Tokens:
  • Mountains: each space with only mountain tokens adjacent to at least one other space with only mountain tokens will provide 1/3/7 points if there are 1/2/3 tokens in the space.
  • Trees: each space with a green token will provide 1/3/7 points if the green token is on top of 0/1/2 brown tokens.
  • Fields: each group of interconnected spaces with at least two yellow tokens will provide 5 points.
  • Water:
    • Side A: 0/2/5/8/11/15/+4 for each water token that is part of the uninterrupted path of tokens.
    • Side B: 5 points for each island isolated by spaces occupied by water.
  • Buildings: 5 points for each building (red token on top of a red/brown/gray token) if the spaces surrounding it have at least three different colors on the top tokens of each stack.
• The highest value without a cube on each animal card.
• The points from the spirit card if it is completed.

The player with the most points will be the winner. In case of a tie, the player who has placed the most animals will be the winner. If the tie persists, victory is shared.

Variants

Without Spirits. Simply leave the spirit cards in the box.

Solo Mode. The opposite side of the supply board is used, and only 3 animal cards are revealed. At the end of each turn, the 6 tokens not chosen by the player are returned to the box. If the player has not taken an animal card, they may discard one of the available ones. The goal is to try to get the highest score possible.

Personal Opinion

Back in 2019, one of the first products from the publisher Sylex called Dreamscape was published. A game that captivated me with its beautiful watercolor illustrations, although it was still just another design that resorted to the well-worn combination of drafting, tile placement, and pattern building.

But, even with a premise that is quite recurrent nowadays, it also tried to go a step further in terms of complexity, with a drafting system where getting the desired pieces wasn’t so simple, along with rather convoluted patterns. The problem is that they went a bit overboard, and the game was tremendously frustrating (even though the landscapes looked gorgeous).

The thing is, in 2024 another title arrived that seemed to rescue the core idea of Dreamscape. This game is Harmonies, catching eyes from the very first moment with a tremendous visual appeal (I’ll talk about it later) and the same idea of accumulating cards with patterns that we will complete with tokens stacked on a main board. Let’s see if Johan Benvenuto’s design triumphs where Dreamscape failed, but not before thanking Asmodee for providing the review copy that makes this write-up possible, which has already begun.

And I can already tell you that it manages to emerge triumphant by not falling into the mistakes of the aforementioned title. The main and fundamental reason is that the designer didn’t want to reinvent the wheel and stuck to a drafting system that is quite common among titles in this almost-subgenre, that is, a series of spaces available to the player, and they choose the one that suits them best.

These spaces will contain three tokens, and the player will always have five options (unless we are in a four-player game and find ourselves in the final turns where, occasionally, there may be fewer tokens available). The player will have to place these tokens on a personal board of hexagonal spaces, trying, first of all, to maximize the scoring criteria associated with the tokens themselves.

In parallel, we have the Animal Cards (which correspond to the dreamscape landscape cards in Dreamscape) that specify a certain pattern of tokens that the player has to reproduce on their board and that can be completed multiple times (providing a greater amount of points each time). Once again, the designer simplifies the way to obtain these cards to the maximum, offering an open supply of five cards, and if the player does not have the maximum allowed number of uncompleted animal cards, they can add one to their collection.

Finally, if the player has managed to complete one or more of these patterns (even repeatedly), they will mark the tokens indicated in the patterns with small cubes representing the animals within the landscape, so that at the end of the game, players will score the points indicated on the released spaces of these animal cards.

And that’s all there is to it. We are looking at a game that competes directly with the likes of Azul (here is my tocho-review), Cascadia (here is my tocho-review), Calico (here is my tocho-review), Reef (here is my tocho-review), and a long etcetera. A fierce competition to be the king of abstract-style games with attractive production.

The key question is, what does Harmonies have to offer compared to the aforementioned games? Well, honestly, nothing. If anyone expects any hint of originality or innovative mechanisms, don’t look for them in this game because you won’t find them. The flow of the games will strongly remind you of several of the previously mentioned titles or similar ones.

So, why is everyone talking about it? Well, because without offering anything particularly attractive mechanically, the final package turned out relatively well-rounded and has convinced a large mass of players. Let’s try to list its main virtues.

Perhaps the most important one is that, in terms of difficulty, it is a step ahead of most, competing with designs like the aforementioned Reef or my beloved Miyabi (here is my tocho-review); that is, mechanically the game couldn’t be simpler (taking three pieces and placing them on a personal board trying to maximize patterns in two ways, both by the type of pieces and by sets trying to complete animals).

Precisely in having to attend to two fronts lies the key to Harmonies‘ success, with it being fundamental that there is no penalty for not completing animal cards. This leads players to load up on cards and thus have many options for scoring on a turn, but all of them difficult to combine, as we need the right trio of tokens to be in the supply at any given moment, and this is usually not the case. Thus, one gets the feeling that choosing the trio of stones and placing each of them are heavily weighted decisions in the development of the game.

Let’s just say that Harmonies is tremendously effective at what it sets out to do. It keeps players in suspense, trying to accumulate the most points, with luck being their main enemy. And this might be the biggest negative point of Harmonies, which mechanically distances it from the one I consider the best (Miyabi).

Having a good turn depends on the supply containing the trio of tokens that best fits what we want to try. And of course, if an opponent comes across that trio several more times than we do, we will surely feel at the end of the game that we didn’t really have much to do to avoid defeat.

On top of this, we have the issue of scalability. The length of the game in Harmonies will depend on the players’ decisions, so if a player expands across their personal board, they can trigger the end of the game in quite a few turns. True, this might not be the most recommended approach, but if one or more of their opponents are trying to complete more convoluted patterns, they might find themselves facing an early end that catches them off guard.

Of course, at four players, all the tokens will come out into the supply if the game end isn’t triggered sooner, so statistically everything will be more evenly distributed, and, generally speaking, players will end up with a board that is more or less equally populated in terms of empty spaces. But at two players, it is very likely that a certain equilibrium is reached where several supply spaces become “blocked” because the tokens in them don’t suit either player.

And of course, if in practice you are playing with fewer supply spaces, the impact of luck increases. And if one player takes more water and field pieces than their opponent, it might lead to what I mentioned above about players ending up with more disparate boards if one of them focused on stacking tokens. I would have added the rules that already apply to the solo mode, so that at the end of each turn, the active player, besides taking their tokens, can discard tokens from another bowl. The same goes for the animal cards. I feel it lacks dynamism when it comes to the supplies.

But, as I said, the game is tremendously effective. Its pacing is very well measured, and it leaves you with a great aftertaste, so it can hit the table with tremendous ease. Add to this a good deck of cards and the spirit cards, which already set a long-term strategy for you in the game, allowing players to diverge in terms of interests.

Let’s move on to the production, which is where the game shines. We find cardboard elements of good thickness and core density, cards with a splendid weight, smooth texture, and great snap (sleeving isn’t necessary because the cards are barely shuffled and not held in hand), and wooden tokens that, while simple as components go, allow for the creation of quite attractive landscapes. The translucent cubes are the icing on the cake (pun intended, as they are placed as crowning elements on top of the token towers). The rulebook is well structured and leaves no room for doubt. Mind you, though, there is a misprint on the Stork card, with a point reward that isn’t what it should be. Asmodee is sending out replacements, so contact them to request your corrected card if you own the game.

The ultimate finishing touch is the game’s visual presentation. Maëva da Silva’s work is superb, with cards that play with layers and very sharp outlines, resulting in a simply spectacular look. Each card is a miniature work of art, and you feel like blowing a few of them up to hang as pictures. Wonderful.

And let’s wrap this up. Harmonies is a game that resorts to the now-famous combination of drafting, tile placement, and pattern building that works so effectively for medium-light weight games aimed at a general audience. And it does so without overcomplicating things, attempting to simplify the game flow to the maximum, which results in great dynamism and leaves you with the feeling of making many decisions on every turn, as each token carries its own weight when scoring. It is true that the impact of luck is high, the level of player interaction is low, and it lacks some sort of system to make the supplies more dynamic, which sometimes feel too static. These are flaws that prevent it from ranking among the very best designs in its category, but the reality is that it is tremendously effective. If we add to this that the production quality is more than adequate and that it is visually highly appealing, we can conclude that it is a highly recommendable product. For all these reasons, I give it a…