BoardGameArchiveHarmonies
Learn Harmonies landscape building, animal habitats, spatial scoring, solo support and beginner planning, with Libellud sources.
Learn Harmonies landscape building, animal habitats, spatial scoring, solo support and beginner planning, with Libellud sources.
Draft groups of colored tokens and place them on a personal board to form forests, mountains, fields, water and buildings.
Animal cards score when the required habitat pattern appears in your landscape, so terrain construction and wildlife planning compete for the same limited spaces.
Why We Love It
Harmonies turns simple token drafting into a layered 3D landscape puzzle. Terrain patterns score on their own while animal cards ask you to reserve exactly the right spaces inside that same landscape.
What to know before you play
The base box is a competitive puzzle for one to four players, with a solo variant. Its two board sides score water differently: Side A rewards your best river, while Side B scores islands created by water. Libellud recommends Side A for the first few games.
Nature’s Spirit cards are already in the base box, but the rulebook recommends waiting several games before adding them. Pulse and Crescendo are separate expansions; neither is needed to learn the original game.
Game at a Glance
Draft Tokens
Choose one available group of landscape pieces.
Build in 3D
Stack and arrange tokens into terrain features with different scoring rules.
Create Habitats
Match animal-card patterns inside the landscape you are already building.
Layer the Scoring
Use one placement to support terrain points and animal goals together.
What is Harmonies?
Harmonies combines a shared draft with a personal landscape board. You take three colored tokens from one display space, then arrange them to form trees, mountains, buildings, fields and water. Animal cards reward exact habitat patterns within that landscape, so each token can contribute both terrain points and space for an animal.
There is no shared map to fight over. Interaction comes from choosing a token group or Animal card before another player can take it. The main pressure is fitting several scoring plans on a board that steadily fills.
A complete turn and the animal limit
Taking and placing three tokens from one display space is mandatory once per turn. Taking one Animal card is optional, as is placing any number of Animal cubes for habitats you have completed. You may interleave those optional actions with token placements. You can have no more than four unfinished Animal cards above your board; finishing a card frees a slot.
An Animal’s pattern can be rotated, but its required tree and mountain heights must match exactly. The cube’s destination must be vacant. One terrain token can contribute to several habitats, and a previously placed animal remains even if later stacking changes the terrain pattern. This makes order of placement a real decision.
A placement example and the scoring tradeoff
Suppose a green token could become a small tree that completes an Animal pattern today, or the base of a taller tree for a different card later. Completing the first habitat immediately places a cube and advances that Animal card’s points; reserving the space can keep a higher-ceiling plan alive. Check the exact height and cube location before stacking over that spot.
Landscape points can pull against animal plans. A field scores once for a connected group of at least two yellow tokens, so making one huge field is not automatically better than two separated groups. Mountains score only when adjacent to another mountain; buildings need neighboring tokens of different colors. Side A rewards one best river, while Side B changes water scoring to islands. These examples are editorial strategy based on the publisher’s scoring rules.
Who is it for?
Choose Harmonies for a short, visually clear spatial puzzle with little direct conflict, and for a solo mode that uses a smaller shared display. The exact-placement requirements make it more tactical than its gentle theme might suggest. For hex-tile habitat corridors instead of token stacking, compare Cascadia.
When the game ends and which box to buy
The end is triggered when the token pouch cannot refill the display or a player finishes a turn with two or fewer empty board spaces. Finish the round so everyone has had equal turns; then score landscapes and Animal cards, including partly completed cards at their current point level.
The base game includes two board sides and the optional Nature’s Spirit cards. Pulse adds ten Animal cards with three-color and mirrored patterns; Crescendo adds modular sanctuaries, whispers and new boards. Both require the base game.
Learn Harmonies in depth
Compare Harmonies
Publisher sources and scope
- Libellud: base game and variants
- Libellud: English base-game rulebook
- Libellud: Pulse expansion and Crescendo expansion
Base-game rules and product distinctions checked October 2, 2026. Examples explain choices rather than claiming measured win rates.