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Gonks, Gnomes, faceless folks……whatever you like to call them, I love them. Not the weird garden goblins with suspected gout and trousers predisposed to dropping. No, I mean those cute conical chaps. The pointy hats, wee round noses, and fluffy beards make me smile. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter – we decorate our house for the season and always have Gonks to suit. So when I saw GNOME HOLLOW, my eyes and arms were instantly drawn to the box! And I’m glad I hugged that box tight. It’s a super fun game that incorporates some of my favourite mechanisms and, of course, a group of glorious Gnomes!
Field Guide!
GNOME HOLLOW is a tile drafting, networking, set collection, worker placement game. Don’t let the sweet theme fool you though. Underneath all the pretty flowers and fairy rings, there’s a bunch of sneakily strategic mushrooms to be picked and played to your advantage!
Everything about the production of this game screams “lovely”. From the wee wooden Gonk-eeples (aka the “humble caretakers of nature”) to the petite potted plants that reward you with end game scoring bonuses, it’s adorable. Even the rule book has been penned as a “field guide” with handwritten notes and water-colour illustrations framing the various actions in the game.
It also has a really innovative touch which I was going to wait to reveal, but I can’t hold it in. The wooden scoring markers and player boards are magnetic! Yes, I said it. Magnetic! You can (and I did - I take my reviewing responsibilities very seriously! Haha) literally hold the board over your head and they will not fall off! And this is a godsend for me as someone who is so clumsy and dropsy we had to Scotch-guarded our entire house! No more repositioning tumbled pegs! Such a simple solution and even more stable than dual-layered player boards. Bravo, Ammon Anderson and Levity Game Studio – you have come up with a great solution to a board game blight!
,Okay so back to the game play. This is super straightforward…..or so it seems. Each turn you will draw two garden tiles from the board and place them down. You can connect them to the stump board or to an adjacent tile. Any path lines on the tiles must, however, connect, if butted up to another line as they cannot simply dead-end into another tile (think roads in Carcassonne style).
Then, if by placing your tiles you complete a ring, you can resolve by collecting any mushrooms on that ring (if your gnome is on it), and moving your scoring markers from their starting spots to those which correspond with the size of ring you have just completed. Some of these will trigger other bonuses whilst others will not.
Finally, you can do one of the following: (a) move one of your gonks to an unoccupied path or a completed fairy ring to collect mushrooms, (b) collect a flower token which will give you end game points (plus a wild tile which also unlocks 2 tile storage spots if you are first to claim that specific flower), (c) visit as signpost, or sell sets of mushrooms (up to two different types) at the market. The game end is triggered in various ways – the garden tiles run out, a player collects their 8th flower token, or places their 8th scoring peg. At that point, you total up points from selling mushrooms (treasure tokens), the position of your right most vacant scoring marker, and the value of your last collected flower token. The winner is the pair of Gonks with the most VPs!
Final Thoughts!
We love Gnome Hollow! Having played at full capacity (4P) and 2P, it’s sweetly themed but sneakily strategic. With limited actions per turn, you really have to think about the order in which you are going to do things on your current turn as well as your next few turns. Likewise, with other players able to snatch unoccupied paths, as well as complete yours (which granted will give you benefits!), this isn’t multiplayer solitaire – you need to raise the brim of your colour co-ordinated hat and keep your eyes peeled! Once you know how a turn works (and there’s a handy player aid to assist you), you’ll rarely need to rules check.
Knowing what is going to score you the most points when is key. It might be tempting to move your gonk to a ring to complete it and gain mushrooms. But if you already have a bunch to sell, you might want to hit the market first – after all, there’s a meta race going on over there. With only 1 spot for selling sets of each type/colour greater than 2 mushrooms, you need to gain those treasure tokens before anyone else can. Likewise, adding a signpost which could help everyone over the course of the game may sound silly. But if you know that you need just a few more mushrooms of a given colour in order to sell the most and secure the top spot, it might be worth taking the hit later to score big now.
Flower tokens are a subtle but really effective way to add points to your score – if you can get enough varieties. It is tempting to go hard or go home on fairy ring claiming, but I was ultimately destroyed by an opponent who did not ignore the benefits of botanicals!
Similarly, being able to use wild tiles to complete multiple rings at once can be a great boost to your mushroom collecting capabilities. But you might have to cope with the fact you are completing an opponent’s claimed ring at the same time.
Ultimately, turns in GNOME HOLLOW come down to deciding between options that could do something now or set you up for something bigger later on. And whether any benefit5s to you are worth the benefits you could be rewarding other players. Having a pair of gnomes sounds generous, but you always going to wish you could do more each turn. After all, you can only move one. Balancing them therefore sounds simple, but as time and tiles run out, playing the long game at the price of accumulating shorter hits could be a costly mistake to make!
As mentioned above, the game is super pretty. With each tile having a combination of paths and mushrooms, the player space can feel a little visually crowded at times. But we found a quick turn of the head to look at the played tiles from a different angle avoided all but one misplacement.
This game has been a big hit in our house, and not just because I am gonk-obsessed. It’s colourful, it’s clever, and it’s coming to the table again tonight!
