Out On A Limb Rules


As a clan of fairies who tend fruit orchards, you are hoping to yield the perfect harvest. Each clan will attempt to nurture clusters of five fruit branches. Tread carefully as your clan cultivates the woodlands, for if you repeatedly go out on a limb you’ll find yourself with fewer fruits to collect. Each clan’s goal is to collect the coveted “Fruity-Forty-Five” in order to attain the queen’s blessing!


Overview

On a turn, a player either expands a fruit vine by laying a tile that matches a vine on the table or places a meeple on a tile to claim vines. The longer the vine, the more fruits, which means more points to claim at the end of the game. However, vines can be shared with other players, so the trick is figuring out how to claim the largest vines that your competitors can't! The player with the most points after all tiles & meeples have been placed wins the game.

Setup

  1. Shuffle the 60 tiles and put them face down in piles to the side.

  2. Each player takes 4 meeples, placing 1 of them on the scoreboard at the zero position.

  3. The player who most recently ate a fruit goes first!

[IMAGE] A photo of a pile of drawing tiles, a scoreboard, and two player's starting hands.

Gameplay

  1. Each player draws 6 random tiles.

  2. Each player takes their turn, with turns passing to the left.

  3. On a turn, a player must take one of two actions:

    • The player may place a tile from their hand onto the table. Every placed tile must connect one of its fruit vines to at least one matching type of fruit vine already on the table, except for the very first tile of the game. On rare occasions, a player may not have any matching tiles in their hand and thus must discard and redraw any number of tiles in their hand and repeat until a playable tile is drawn. Note that the fruit displayed in the center of tiles cannot be used to connect with adjacent tiles, although it might score points.

    • The player may place a meeple onto any unoccupied placed tile.

  4. The game ends when all players have placed all of their meeples and tiles.

  5. Players tally scores to determine the winner!

Scoring

A player's score is determined by totaling the points earned by each tile that is occupied by one of their meeples. The player with the most points wins!

Fairy Fruits

Scoring a Tile

For each fruit vine on the tile being scored that connects to a matching vine on an adjacent tile, count the number of fruits along the connected vine, up to a maximum of 5 points per fruit vine (max 15 points per scored tile). Note that the fruit in the center of the tile connects in any direction to any adjacent tiles with the same fruit in the center. Fruit vines on the scored tile that do not connect to another tile score zero points. Once a fruit vine is counted, it cannot be scored again by the same player, even by their other meeples. Total the fruit counts of each vine to determine the score for the tile. A perfect game score is 45 (3 meeples x 15 max points).

Ties

The player who scored the least number of fruit vines wins a tie (scored fewer but longer vines), otherwise it’s just a tie!


Note: a “connected vine” means a vine that connects to the same type of fruit vine. Two different fruit vines that lead to each other are not considered connected.

Special Thanks

We want to recognize the love and support of our playtesters who so graciously played countless variations of a game that we just made up, all without (much) complaint or compensation. Thank you. We couldn’t have done this without you!



Eitan Adler

Theresa Bort

Dave Fine

Jonathan Golles

Kimberlee Golles

Felix González

Nick Hansman

Ethan Kennerly

Christine Ledeker

Sara Pickering

Cassie Rumbaugh

Austin Sheeley

Justin Sumner

Aline Xayasouk