GobbleStones (2015)

About this game

GobbleStones is a tile-laying game in which players are hungry little goblins who love to eat stones. During play, you gobble up the most valuable stones across the board, and in the end the fattest goblin wins. It's CRUNCH time!!! In more detail, players set up the game board by laying nine game boards in a 3x3 square; each game board features 25 spaces on it in a 5x5 array, and each space has both a color (one of five) and a number (one of six). Thus, you'll have a game board that measures 15 spaces on each side. Players start with several 1x1 tiles, with each tile being one of the five colors. On a turn, you take exactly five actions, first playing 0-5 tiles, then drawing 5-0 tiles, e.g., playing three tiles, then drawing two. You play tiles onto the game board akin to playing words in Scrabble, with you covering the appropriate colors with your tiles as a single word and scoring the numbers that you cover. One tile-laying restriction: You can't place tiles so that a 2x2 area of the game board is covered.

Does it fit your group?

• Group size. Works with 2 to 4.
• Rules load. At 1.6/5 this is a light game — explain it in a few minutes, good for a table that has not played much.
• Age. The publisher suggests 10 and up. That rates the rules rather than the artwork, so judge the box yourself for younger players.