Trellis

Love it ,the game eaasy direction 💪🏻

This is a very nice and relaxing game. It is not difficult at all, but it is nice to play with another person. I would highly recommend it. Other games I like that. Remind me of this are fairy trails and a gentle rain.

Beautiful tiles, nice little storage setup. Not too complicated. Fun for up to 4 people.

What drew me to this game was how pretty it was. It had good reviews, so I bought it for a good price. My friends and I thought it was a little too simple. We played with three people and thought maybe a fourth player would make it a little more challenging. I agree with another reviewer who said an expansion pack would be nice or to play with your own improvised pieces, because there seemed to be plenty of extra tiles to do that.

This is a fun fast filler. It has a unique theme and the instructions are very good and easy to learn. It has some elements of some classic modern board games but done in a way that is much easier to understand. The game looks more complicated than it is. Bottom line the unique theme of vines makes this different enough than many other games out there. It does not outstay its welcome and is even fast at higher player counts. Its filler and actually a pretty good one for in between bigger games.

Very cute, simple game. It's a great low key game to play thats very easy to learn. If you like board games but dont want to go hard with a long game this is a good, relaxing game. Plan out your vines and make cute little flowers grow!

I bought this as a gift for my son in law. He wanted it after playing it with some friends. He was very happy to have it.

Beautiful and simple.

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.

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.

The game has wonderful and fun mechanics, but it needs at least 3 players to add enough of a twist in situations to be possible for all players to have a chance at victory. The first player basically always wins in a 2 player game. Tested it and it literally always happened that way. Even with a more experienced abstract gamer playing as the second player, it is not really possible to overcome being second unless you get a particularly lucky placement situation to occur, and even when that opportunity comes, the other player might place there and all hope is gone...

Really unfortunate, because I absolutely loved playing it until we noticed that and tested it a ton. Great with more, but just 2 is unfortunately unbalanced.

Pretty simple but fun game!

This is a relaxing tile placement game. There is however a gotya aspect. It's simplicity is very family friendly. The pieces and artwork are great.

I have combined 2 copies to make this 8 players and it works well. Place a dot on the middle of each tile and blossom for one set to distinguish which set pieces originated. Use both center pieces with one randomly selected tile to create the game start location.
This game comes out to play regularly.

The game is simple and easy to learn. But, it's a little less than would be awesome. There's 15 blossoms included but enough cards to play the game much longer. Twice as many blossoms would be better with instructions for how many to use if you wanted a faster game. One of our blossoms was also broken but contacting the manufacturer was simple and straightforward so hopefully a replacement for the broken piece shows up soon. I'd also really love to see an expansion pack that allowed at least 2 additional players. Again, plenty of game tiles for it. We may just add pennies or flat glass marbles to make it work, but I'd rather get an expansion.

It's more complicated than you'd think. And one of the flowers was badly damaged, such a hassle to return just for that so replaced it with a bead. Given it's such an aesthetic game, it's a shame.

Beautiful relaxing game. Strategic yet simple to learn and fast play.

A simple tile-laying game that is elevated by the wonderful artwork. I enjoy leaving this out on the table because it looks so good. Great game to play to relax and unwind.

With rules as elegant as it's appearance, this game is a hit with both family and multiple gaming groups.