Harmonies crescendo has been announced looks like sometime this fall, it comes out.

[loungelizard24]

Harmonies crescendo has been announced this new expansion does not seem to add new animals but new placement rules.

For example one such card pictures a windmill in a field and a clay token on top of a wood token on top of a wood token on top of a yellow field token.

[tbhp]

At first glance, this seems less interesting than the other expansion. While the other adds more synergies to the game, this one looks like it'll just give players additional points for completing those constructions.

Granted, this can add some versatility to the game, but I'm not a fan of when players focus on terrain points (you see that a lot with water, and buildings to a lower extent).

It seems that different players have different ways of thinking about the score in the game. Some players like me seem to focus on finding synergies and completing their animal points, adding additional terrain points only as a last resort, whereas some players seem to think of the two separately, and may compensate depending on how the game goes. For example they may start out aiming for 50 animals points and 50 terrain points, but then seeing they aren't getting good cards, may go for a 40/60 split instead. Or maybe they saw a lot of blues or reds coming and decided to exploit that.

It seems that this new expansion caters more to those who like to work on terrain points independently, while the other expansion is all about animal cards and synergies.

[lenaalethea]

I recently received my copy of the Crescendo expansion, and played it once so far. I do think it adds more options for gameplay and scoring for players who want to switch it up. The challenge really is how to fit everything on the board.

The Sanctuaries and Whisper cards are completely new elements in the game. They provide more ways to earn you points depending on the tile placements. They also give you new boards (side C and D) with different terrain rules (eg. side C requires buildings to be surrounded by 4 different colors instead of just 3, BUT gives you 8 points instead of just the usual 5).

I'd have to play it a bit more to fully appreciate its benefits, I think. Still, I enjoyed my first run with it. I believe it's a good interesting expansion, and is worth a try.

[LeLion92]

I have just bought Crescendo today.

It is a very rich extension which adds many new rules.

(1) Sanctuaries: they are specific 4-chips vertical builds, that you can take instead of an animal in your 4 personal spots. If you manage to build one, it scores 3 points per adjacent chip of the right colors and it automatically completes any last cube of your animal cards of these colors. Huge impact on the game!

(2) Face C board: large board (26 hex) with a hole in the middle. Buildings now score 8 pts but need 4 colors around.

(3) Face D board: large board (25 hex) with a dry/wet theme. Fields and forests can score higher points but need to be adjacent to rivers.

(4) "Murmure" animals (sorry I only have the rules in French, I don't know how they will call them in English): they are mini-animals who are drawn and played the same way as classic animals BUT they can co-exist on the same tile as them. A murmure cube is 2 points alone and 5 points if on the same tile as a classic animal.

So much to explore!