I have never met anyone who doesn’t enjoy a beautiful garden of flowers, so this might be the first game ever with universal appeal. Everyone loves flowers!
The theme of Umbra Via is an ancient pathway hidden within climbing vines leading to a mysterious location. Find your way through this secret garden and find the kind of enlightenment that can only be found in the arms of Mother Nature.
The main board goes in the center of the playing area with each player’s individual screen shielding their bidding board. Each player places 6 soul and 32 energy flowers in their colored bag and their Soul Tile with 11 additional soul flowers nearby.
Bidding for path tiles is the main mechanism of the game and it happens in 2 rounds. Bids are kept secret. Players draw three flowers from their bag and place them behind the screen on the Roman Numeral(s) that corresponds to the position of the tile they want to bid on. Energy flowers are worth 1 bid and soul flowers are worth 2 bids. After all players have placed their bids, all players reveal them simultaneously and place their flowers on the alter board.
Repeat the entire bidding process a second time.
Tiles that didn’t get any bids get discarded. Use the placement order counters to indicate total bid numbers from fewest to most. The player with the most flowers on the tile marked with the 1st placement position gets to place the tile on the main board in any empty space. Only energy flowers are placed on the board, soul flowers are removed from the game and put in the box.
Tiles can’t be rotated when placed, new tiles don’t have to connect to previously placed tiles, and new tiles can close off previously placed paths.
Once a tile is placed that completes a path, a Summoning event occurs. The player with the most energy flowers on the entire path gets 1 soul flower per tile, taken from their soul tile and placed in their bag. The second player gets half that number, the third player gets half of that, and finally the fourth player would get half of what the third player got. The path is then cleared of energy flowers, which are placed back in their bags, and the tiles are discarded.
Begin a new round once all the tiles on the alter have been placed and any completed paths have been summoned.
The first player to claim the Soul Tile, which can only be claimed after all the soul flowers from the soul tile have been earned, wins the game!
Umbra Via is a great game to add to any unit study about plants and flowers and is a great opportunity to learn the handful of flowers picture in the game by name. Studying plants and flowers is a great hands-on science unit with so many different game options and real-life gardening opportunities!
Learn spatial awareness/reasoning, strategic thinking, planning, and decision making in this beautiful flower garden board game!
Thanks to the one and only Pandasaurus Games for sharing another beautiful educational game with us!
