California
This is not a game I would normally have ordered from a website, but Tanga graciously put it up several times and I finally caved in and got it. Having 2 pre-teen girls had a little something to do with that, and it is said to be fairly simple and easy. Right up my alley.
This is a photo of the contents of the game. The rule book is a whopping 4 pages long with plenty of diagrams and very clear explanations.
You start with a plain board, depicting the house you inherited and that you must now update and decorate.There are 16 squares on your board, and you are given one free floor tile already. There are 6 different floor tiles, and this one shows a free maroon tile. Also some squares show one, two or no silver coins. That indicates how much it costs to place your purchased floor tile there.
In the center of your game area you will put the store board, which shows 2 stores that hold 4 tiles each.and the bank, which holds 4 gold coins..
From the store you will buy one of the 8 available tiles, either a plain floor tile, which must be put down first on your board, or a furniture tile, which has to be placed on top of the same color floor tile. Such as the green dog is placed on the plain green tile. You can not put a furniture tile on the board unless a floor tile is there first.and
A board in the process of being filled is shown here
You'll see that the grey tiles are next to each other and that is how you have to build. You couldn't stick another grey tile on the bottom left corner of the board. It would have to be placed next to one of the previously placed grey tiles. There are also people figures standing on the board, that indicates you furnished a room by adding furniture to a matching colored tile. The guests come in the same 6 colors as the tiles, such as a grey guest only visits when a grey room is furnished. The first visiting guest brings you nothing, but if a second guest comes over they bring you a gift token, and that is worth 1 point at the end of the game. The visiting guests seem to constantly be moving between players, and if the green visitor happens to be at your place and you furnish another green room, too bad, no new presents, so you have to plan your furnishing wisely to get the points. Your potential guests.
Turns are very simple with 2 choices. You either buy a tile from one of the two stores, or take a gold coin from the bank. 84
The cost of the tiles is in silver coins, 5 silver coins = 1 gold coin. The tile cost is determined by how many gold coins are in the bank. If there are 2 gold coins, then the floor tile or furniture tile costs 2 silver coins. To place a floor tile on your board, you check your floor board and you will see that there is a cost of 1 or 2 silver coins to build that floor tile, already printed on your board. A furniture tile costs nothing to place as it goes directly on a previously paid for floor tile.
An attic space allows you to store furniture if you don't have its matching floor tile.
There are bonus tilessuch that if you add the same tiles on your board as depicted on the bonus tile, you get that tile and at the end of the game you get the points printed on the tile. For the bonus tiles of the 3 same colors, those tiles must be furnished. No furnishings on them, NO BONUS TILE!! Once you get a bonus tile, no one can take it from you.
There are 12 rounds in the game. Each round ends when either one of the stores has no tiles, or the bank has no coins. The store board is actually two stores with 4 tiles each. So each round will last a minimum of 4 turns up to a maximum of 10 turns. I don't like it when the round ends right before my turn, as 4 gold coins are put back in the bank and the store is filled with 8 random new floor and furniture tiles. That means each tile costs 4 silver coins, and I often don't have money after a round. Thus I take a gold coin from the bank, lowering the price of the store tiles for the next players.
After the 12th round, you add up your points. Each gift you received from a visiting guest counts as one point. Your bonus tiles are added to that, and then you count up how many squares you managed to cover on your floor board. The squares do not have to be furnished in order to count as one point. It seems like the scores are often around the 20 range and tie scores are not too uncommon.
I have played 3P and 4P games only and they are quite different. As you would expect, the 4P game is tighter than 2/3P games as you end up with fewer tiles. 349