Tsuro

The game is played on a square board that is divided into a six-by-six grid of squares. There are eight player markers, thirty-five standard path tiles, and one Dragon tile. Before the game begins, the Dragon tile is set aside. To start, each player chooses a different colored playing piece and places their marker on any of the white notches that surround the edge of the board; each edge has twelve notches. The path tiles are shuffled and each player is dealt three path tiles; the remainder are left as a draw pile. Each turn includes a tile-laying phase and then a marker movement phase. The turn ends with the active player drawing another path tile. In each turn, the active player must place a tile in the square adjacent to their piece. In the table below, tiles are named according to the connected points. Points are numbered sequentially anti-clockwise from the left point on the bottom edge, so the bottom edge contains points 1 (left) and 2 (right), the right edge contains points 3 (lower) and 4 (upper), the top edge contains points 5 (right) and 6 (left), and the left edge contains points 7 (upper) and 8 (lower). The nomenclature AB-CD-EF-GH indicates that points A and B are connected, C and D are connected, E and F are connected, and G and H are connected. A single 90° rotation anti-clockwise will increment each number by 2 (modulo 8) to determine path connections when rotated. == Alternate Editions and Expansions ==

History McMurchie received a patent for the "Squiggle game" in 1979. The 1979 patent described two different implementations; the first, commercialized largely intact as Tsuro, used the square tiles with two entry points per side and four paths, while the second used square tiles similarly with eight entry points and four paths per tile, but the entry points were changed to the middle of each side and at each corner instead. In both cases, the preferred board size was a 6×6 grid and what became the Dragon tile was initially called the NEXT card. Dawne and Jordan Weisman, the owners of Games and Gizmos in Redmond, Washington watched McMurchie playing Squiggles and asked him if he would be interested in publishing the game. The Weismans had founded the games publishing company WizKids and reworked Squiggles into Tsuro, switching the original 1950s theme to one that was Japanese-inspired. The game was released in 2005. WizKids was later acquired by Topps and then NECA, and the rights for the game reverted back to Tom McMurchie. causing sales to spike. The game also has been published in multiple languages including a German, a Greek and a multilingual version. The German version of Tsuro was published in 2007 by KOSMOS. In addition to the language translation, the game's individual player pieces were little tree figures instead of the dragon stones, and the board was made two-sided, with the other side being a 7×7 grid. The 35 unique tiles were expanded to a set of 64, with some duplication of paths, and players would randomly choose 35 (plus the Dragon/Next tile) for play on the 6×6 side of the board. exclusively in France. after receiving funding from Kickstarter. The game's creators included the original creator of Tsuro, Tom McMurchie, and Jordan Weisman. Tsuro of the Seas later received an expansion called Veterans of the Seas, published in 2013 by Calliope Games. This expansion includes four new types of tiles that all do different things. There is the mystical portal tile that moves ships and daikaiju tiles to new paths on the board. The tsunami tile moves steadily across the board, giving players a new obstacle they must overcome by rolling a die. If the player does not roll high enough they are eliminated from the game. The whirlpool tile destroys all ships and daikaiju tiles it comes in contact with. The cannon tiles are a defensive card players can use to defend themselves from daikaiju. Like the original game, Phoenix Rising is played on a 6×6 board with 36 square tiles, each with four paths. However, the tiles in Phoenix are classified as either "center" tiles (total of 16 "center" tiles) or "edge" tiles (20 "edge" tiles). These tiles have additional entry points at the corners and the center tiles are pre-placed in the center of the board prior to starting play. Tiles are flipped or rotated during play, and the goal of the game is to create and collect seven stars by traversing paths. In 2022, Calliope Games announced that a "Luxury Limited Edition" of the original Tsuro would be released later that year; changes included upgraded materials, including carved stone tiles, satin tile storage bag, bamboo rules scroll, and wooden box, individually numbered. The limited edition set was priced at . ==Reviews==