In Trellis, players create an ever-growing tangle of vines, trying to be the first to play all their 15 flower tokens.

The game ends as soon as a player has played their 15 flowers, even if it's not their turn to play.

Rules

In each turn, players will perform the following action in that order:

• Plant a Tile (Check for Blooms)
• Claim a Vine (Check for Blooms)
• Claim Gifts (Check for Blooms)
• Draw Back to 3 Tiles (automatic)

Plant a tile

Plant a tile from your hand face-up onto the board. The tile placed must be connected to a preexisting tile by matching the vine color, the other vines on the tile don’t need to match.

Planting tiles may cause newly connected vines to bloom (see corresponding chapter)

Claim a vine

Claim a new vine by placing your flower on an empty vine on the newly planted tile. Your claimed vine may also BLOOM flowers, if connected to any empty, unclaimed vines of the same color. On later turns, all connected vines of the same color automatically bloom during Step 1, more on this in the Blooming section below. If a placed tile causes all vines on that tile to bloom, the player may select an unclaimed vine on any other tile, if there are no other unclaimed vines, the rest of their turn is forfeit.

Claim gifts

Helping others helps yourself. If any other players have bloomed flowers on your turn, you get gifts (bonus vines to claim/additional flower placement, one per opposing player helped)! Claim more vines on the planted tile; one per flower that other players bloomed on your turn. If you run out of empty vines to claim on the tile being planted, you may then claim any vine on the board, if available.

Blooming

In Trellis, every time a tile is planted, the board changes and flowers may bloom on to newly connected vines. Here’s how blooming works: If a vine is already claimed with a flower AND it is connected to an empty vine of the same color, automatically bloom a new flower to the new vine.

This is repeated until all connected vines with a flower on it have bloomed.

Any player’s flowers can bloom on any turn, but the active player benefits the most, receiving gift flowers per flower that opponents bloom. If several players could bloom into the same vine, the active player decides who adds the flower.

Game End

When a player places their final flower, on their turn, or during the bloom phase of an opposing player's turn, they immediately win!