The quick version
On your turn take all three tokens from one central space and place them on your board, one at a time. You must take this action once. During the same turn you may take one face-up animal card and may place any number of animal cubes, including between token placements.
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Prepare the table
All players choose the same personal-board side; use A for a first game. Put the central board on its multiplayer face. Bag all 120 landscape tokens and draw three onto each of its five spaces. Shuffle the animal deck and display five cards. Put animal cubes and matching reference cards within reach. Choose a first player and point the central arrow at them. Leave Nature's Spirits in the box for the base game.
Play a turn
On your turn take all three tokens from one central space and place them on your board, one at a time. You must take this action once. During the same turn you may take one face-up animal card and may place any number of animal cubes, including between token placements. Refill the selected central space and animal market only at turn end.
Any color may occupy an empty hex. Stack only gray on gray to a maximum height of three; brown trunks up to two with an optional green token on top; or one red on one red, brown or gray. Green alone is a short tree. Water and yellow fields remain one token high. Never insert beneath a token, move a placed token, or stack on a space with an animal cube.
Keep at most four unfinished animal cards. Cover a new card's scoring spaces with cubes. To place one, reproduce its exact habitat, including tree and mountain heights. Rotate the pattern but do not reflect it in the base game. Put the bottommost cube from the card onto the designated habitat space, which must have no cube already. Habitats may share landscape tokens. Later changes to other parts of a habitat do not remove an already placed animal. Move a completed card aside to free a card slot.
Finish and score
Trigger the end when the bag cannot refill the central board or someone ends their turn with at most two empty personal hexes. Finish the round for equal turns. Trees score one, three or seven for heights one, two or three; bare brown trunks score zero. Gray mountains score those same values only if adjacent to another gray mountain. Each connected yellow group of at least two scores five. A two-token building with red on top scores five if neighboring top tokens include at least three different colors.
On side A, score the best river's length using the shortest blue path between its chosen endpoints, counting both ends: lengths one through six score zero, two, five, eight, eleven and fifteen; each further token adds four. Add each animal card's highest uncovered score, or zero if no cube moved. Highest total wins, then most placed animal cubes; share any further tie.
Host the first game
Build one red-over-gray house and one green-over-brown tree during the teach. In Reddit's Harmonies discussion, a player missed that red could sit on brown or gray; others overlooked landscape points while chasing animals. Keep both scoring routes visible and show how a shared token can support several habitats.
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Ideas & Twists
Choose a variation together before you start.
Harmonies · See main rules
Published board-side optionIsland landscapes
Everyone uses side B. Replace river scoring with five points per separate land island: each connected group of non-water spaces, including empty spaces, is an island. With no separating water there is still one island.
Harmonies · See main rules
Published base-box optionNature's Spirits
Deal each player two Spirit cards. On their first turn choose one and return the other to the box. Cover it with its Spirit cube; it uses one of the four unfinished-card slots until its habitat is completed. Place that cube by the animal rules and add the card's printed landscape-based points at game end.
Harmonies · See main rules
Original STUDplay house twistOne animal refresh
Give each player one paper token. Once before selecting an animal on their own turn, discard the token to discard one face-up animal card and immediately replace it. Then continue their normal turn; the token is worth no points.
Harmonies · See main rules
Original STUDplay house twistThree unfinished habitats
Limit each player to three unfinished animal cards instead of four. Completed cards still leave the active area and score normally.
Harmonies · See main rules
Original STUDplay house twistOne tile rescue
Give each player one paper token. Once, before their mandatory token action, discard it to remove one exposed landscape token without an animal cube from their board to the box. Do not disturb any supporting token or move animals. This trades a built feature for room; the usual end trigger is checked at turn end.
About this guide
Requires the named physical game and its supplied components. Rules are paraphrased teaching guidance; keep the box's cards and reference diagrams beside the table. Original STUDplay house twists are optional, untested suggestions rather than publisher rules. Agree one before setup; unchanged rules still apply.
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