Trellis - Strategic Board Game | Perfect for Game Nights, Parties, and Casual Hangouts Components | Easy to Learn, Fun to Master | Ideal for 2-4 Players

Bought as a gift, it is a fun quick game that is relatively easy to learn.

5 stars for handsome box. I cannot speak for it being fun or not. I bought it as a Christmas gift.

Starting with 15 flowers and three hexagonal tiles with intertwined colored vines, be the first player to bloom all your flowers on matched vines with clever tile placement. After your tile placement and flowers bloom, restock your hand to three tiles. Then play proceeds clockwise until a winner results. When placing your tile the vines don’t have to match, but it’s best if two do and better if those extend to similarly colored vines on adjacent tiles as you’ll be able to bloom additional flowers. An individual tile can have a maximum of three flowers so ridding your supply of more than two flowers per turn is challenging, four virtually ensures victory especially if your opponent(s) cannot immediately do the same. Flowers bloom on every empty length of similarly colored vine you match even if the flowers belong to another player. Why might you want to bloom an opponent’s vine? Well, every flower bloomed for another player gives the active player another bloom of their own. This bonus bloom must be to placed on the current tile unless it already has three flowers in which case the active player can place it on any open vine in play. With knowledge of your tiles in hand one can thereby set up a lucrative play on the subsequent turn... assuming your opponents don’t meddle with it beforehand. And therein lies the strategy of Trellis. Trellis portends to be a zen experience, but it is far from a laid back game. There’s a fair amount of strategy involved and winning virtually requires cunning if not cutthroat play. When is the precise time to gift an opponent in order to set up your next move? Should you string together vines of the same color to bloom your own flowers or block opponents vines with different colors to cut off their blooming efforts or perhaps a turn that does a little of each? Timing of your gift blooms is vital because the win condition is last flower placed. This means it is possible for someone to be gifted the win before your final flower placement blooms. Breaking Games has a reputation for stellar production values (i.e. Rise of Tribes, Expancity, Dwellings of Eldervale and Beasts & Bronze). Trellis is no exception with thick tiles, nice flower meeples, a very pleasing overall aesthetic and even a great box insert. The rules are quick and clear, though it’ll take a few plays to understand the decision space for optimal play as you’re apparently at the mercy of blind tile draws. I don’t mind this randomness. Figuring how to place from just three tiles to get your flowers out fastest while not setting up an opponent takes experience. Of course if randomness dissuades you, house rule a draw two/choose one tile to put you more in control of your ultimate destiny. Where Trellis is purported to suffer most is in actuality a fallacy. Trellis has been extensively criticized for poor game design particularly at 2P resulting in a substantial first player bias. I won’t go into it here, you can read more about it in the forums. While I understand the tendency to assume initiative determines the victor more often than not (particularly for inexperienced players), I can tell you for certain after more than 80 plays this bias does not exist and I can beat most any novice player going second. That said, if you want to remove any tendency toward first player advantage as you’re learning the game a simple variant solves this matter. Simply use the 15th flower placement as an end game trigger instead of immediate victory. Then your opponent(s) will get a final turn to attempt to exceed your flower total. Of course you’ll need a few extra flowers to play this variant. Those could be the unused player colors if you’re playing a two player match. Or you could do as we have and purchase a second copy of this affordably priced game so everyone has sufficient flowers in their color. If they reach 18 while you only achieve 17 in the same number of turns even though you reached 15 first they get the win. In the case of a tie simply place one more tile each until a winner is determined. Though I don’t believe this variant is required to fix a broken game, we still enjoy playing it this way to mix up the end game win condition and the strategies you’ll employ to achieve victory. In my opinion Trellis is woefully under appreciated. A trellis is a framework that provides structure for climbing plants to reach toward the light. That’s an apt name for a board game whose ruleset might require a small tweak or two to rightfully achieve its rightful place in the sun.

Fun easy game with some strategy. Nicely made. Play with 2 to 4 players.

This is a sweet game and my young friends really like to play it because of the colors. I would highly recommend for good game time

Not much skilled required and therefore boring to play, but exceptionally beautiful artwork in my opinion!

The game itself is a little too simple for avid boardgamer like myself, but still fun to play as a quick and relaxing game. Would be great for children or people new to board games. The pieces are made of quality material and the aesthetic is very pretty and pleasing.

This game is beautiful to look at, but the gameplay is very limited. I played it several times with different numbers of players, and it was the same- no real strategy or reason and the “goal” is not well explained.

Game arrived in good order and as described however it was only packaged in a bag, easily could have arrived damaged and this would be a different review. Happy with my purchase and experience although they need to look at more protective packaging, I probably wouldn’t risk it again for this reason.