Umbrella

• Designers: Flavien Dauphin and Benoit Turpin
• Publisher: Pandasaurus / Lumberjacks studio
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Pandasaurus

A crowd of umbrellas throngs the streets of New York, and seen from the sky, the colors dance…

In Umbrella, each player orchestrates a “dance” of umbrellas in a street crossing. You start with a 4×4 square of umbrellas, with four each of four colors. One umbrella of each color starts in a “waiting zone” to your left and right (with these being shared with the players sitting in those directions), a “waiting zone” in the center of play (shared by all players), and a “waiting zone” below your personal game board (shared by no one else). Start with two stacks of two figure tiles on your game board. Each figure tile shows you an arrangement of umbrellas in a single color that you want to create on your board.

On a turn, take an umbrella from an adjacent waiting zone, then slide it onto your game board from the direction of that area, pushing out an umbrella into the waiting zone on the opposite side. If you’ve created a unicolor umbrella arrangement that matches a visible figure tile on your board, place a scoring token on an empty space of the matching color on your scoreboard, then pass the figure tile to the player on your left; they place this tile on their board in the first empty figure space, rotating the tile to match the depicted orientation.

Continue taking turns in clockwise order until a player has no figure tiles in front of them, a player has ten scoring tokens on their scoreboard, or a player empties the pool of scoring tokens by taking the final one. Each other player takes one turn, then everyone scores their points: 2 points per scoring token, a variable number of points for groups of tokens (which differs per scoreboard), and points based on the number of umbrellas in their personal waiting zone.

To start, each player takes a personal board and places umbrella tokens on it per the colored dots printed on it.  Then one token of each color is put in the waiting zone at the bottom of the board.  Players place two stacks of 2 Figure tiles on their board above the Stage area.  Orientation of these tiles is determined by the asterisk on the tile; place the tile so that it matches the asterisk on the space it is placed on.  A side Waiting Zone is then placed between each pair of players and a Central Waiting Zone is placed in the middle of the table.  One umbrella token of each color is placed on each of these boards.  Finally, each player takes a Scoreboard (everyone should have the same difficulty level) and places it on the appropriate place on their player board.

On a turn, the active player chooses an Umbrella token from one of the four accessible Waiting zones (the personal one at the bottom of their board, the central one on the table, and the ones between the player and their adjacent neighbors).  They slide it onto their board from the direction in which they took it, pushing the umbrella off the opposite side – and this Umbrella then moves into the corresponding Waiting zone. 

After sliding, the player checks to see if their board matches a pattern on one of their Figure tiles – that is, they have umbrella tokens of all one color in a pattern matching the Figure tile.  If so, the player then marks a matching colored space on their scoreboard.  You must be able to mark a scoreboard space in order to make a pattern in that color.  The completed Figure tile is then passed to the player on their left.  It goes into the leftmost available space, and is oriented per the asterisk.  Note that you can only complete one Figure tile per turn.

The next player clockwise then takes their turn.  The game end is signaled when one of three things happens: the last scoring token is used, a player has no Figure tiles left on their board, a player has 10 Scoring Markers on their Scoreboard. When the game end is triggered, each player gets one more turn, and then scoring happens

• 2 points per scoring token placed on their Scoreboard
• -1 point per Umbrella token in their personal waiting zone
• +2 points if their personal Waiting Zone is empty
• Bonus points for filling up areas on the Scoreboard with markers

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the fewest Umbrellas in their personal Waiting zone.

My thoughts on the game

Umbrella is a pleasant relaxed puzzle game – yes, you’re playing it with other players at the same table – but you’ll mostly be concentrating on your own board, trying to work out plays in your head that help you make the patterns on your tiles.  The board and components are beautiful to look at, and you’ll likely be staring at your board for the majority of the game.

The challenging part of the puzzle (for me at least) is figuring out the right sequence of moves to get the colors in the right places.  If you push something unexpectedly, it can take awhile to recover your position!  Also, depending on what is available in the different waiting areas, you might have to figure out the timing of things so that you are able to use the colors you want from the directions you want them to come from.

Given that there is a scoring penalty for umbrellas in your own waiting area (and a bonus if it is clear), players often like to push those umbrellas out first – however, I would warn against doing this too aggressively because there will definitely be times where you want to slide something into your board from the bottom – and you need to have umbrellas in your waiting area to give yourself that opportunity!  The key here is figuring out how to get it empty by the end of the game – but still being able to use those umbrellas until then.

You’re mostly on your own in the game, though you will rely on the plays of your opponents – they might take the colors you need from the directions you need them in… or they may not supply the area with the colors you want.  Likewise, if you can figure out what they are trying to do, you might likewise deny them the particular color they need.  Other than that, you’ll be just working out how to slide the umbrellas into just the right position on your board. No one else can manipulate your board, so you’re free to work on your own puzzle.

The pattern tiles move around the board, and the rules explicitly say that in a 3p/4p game they do not flip over.  I honestly can’t figure out why this isn’t the case.  As it stands, I can watch what my RHO is working on, and if I can predict what tile is coming my way (and where it will be oriented), lacking anything else, I can actually start working in advance on this tile.  Not knowing what is coming would prevent this potential slowdown and add some variety.  

The different scoreboards give a bit of variety to the game, as you may be motivated to score the colors differently, and I like the way that you are limited to the number of times you are able to score a certain color – this prevents a player from simply getting as many red umbrellas as possible, and then being more likely to be able to form a given pattern with that color because they have so many of them.  Once you have marked off all the possibilities of a color on your scoreboard, you’ll never be able to make a pattern with that color again.

Umbrella is a great laid back puzzle game, and I have really liked my plays so far.  It’s mostly a quiet affair as everyone seems to be engrossed in their own board.  Many individual plays are quick because a plan has already been formulated and it’s now just a matter of sliding the right umbrellas into your board to form the required pattern.  I’m partial to puzzle games, so it’s no surprise that I enjoyed this one and I look forward to playing it more.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, Steph
• Neutral. John P
• Not for me…