How to play Mosaic

Take one glaze, and give away the rest

Five factories, four tiles on each. On your turn you take every tile of a single glaze from a single factory — all three carmine, or the one basalt — and everything left on that factory slides into the middle of the table. Or you reach into the middle instead and take every tile of one glaze out of it, however many that has grown to.

The first person to reach into the middle each round picks up the starting marker with them. It costs a point and it decides who goes first next round, which is worth more than a point about as often as it is not.

A row only pays when it is full

What you take goes into one of five pattern rows on your own board, and a row holds as many tiles as its number: one at the top, five at the bottom. A row only ever holds one glaze at a time, and it pays nothing at all until it is completely full.

Anything that does not fit falls on your floor and costs you — one point, then two, then three, the further it goes. Tipping a stack you cannot use straight onto the floor is a real move rather than a mistake, and there are positions where it is the only one there is.

The wall, and where the points actually are

When the table is bare, every full row moves one tile onto your wall. A tile on its own is worth one. A tile that touches others scores the whole run it lands in, across and down, counted through itself — so a tile joining two runs is counted twice, which is the entire reason to build outwards from what you already have rather than filling whichever row is cheapest.

The wall is a fixed pattern: each glaze sits in a different column on every row, so a row you fill early quietly decides where that glaze can go for the rest of the game. Somebody completes a horizontal row and the game ends after that round — then the bonuses land, and they are big enough to decide it on their own: two a row, seven a column, ten for laying all five of a glaze.

Questions people ask

Can I play it on my own?

Yes, and it is the same game rather than a practice mode — the chair opposite is always filled. Wren only ever builds her own wall and never takes a tile purely to keep it from you. Corvid weighs what a draft costs you as heavily as what it gains her, and will take four tiles she cannot use rather than leave them where you were reaching. Meander fills the bottom rows first and eats early penalties for a last-round score you will not see coming.

Is anything hidden from me?

Only which tiles come out of the bag next. Both walls, both sets of pattern rows, both floors, both scores, every factory and the middle of the table are public, because at a real table they are all face up in front of you. Anybody who wants to count what is left in the bag can, and good players do.

Is there a clock on my turn?

No, and that is deliberate. A move made on somebody's behalf in this game can cost fifteen points, so there is nothing that will play a turn for you. The only thing timed is the pause after a round while the scores are added up, and letting that run costs nobody a move.

Can a third person join halfway through?

Not into a game — it seats exactly two, and the wall somebody would be handed is empty while the one opposite is half full. Whoever left, though, gets their own chair back, wall and score and all, for as long as the room is open.

Does anybody have to install anything to play Mosaic?

No. It runs in the browser everyone already has open. One person opens a room, reads out the six-character code or pastes the link into the channel, and everyone else is at the table in a couple of seconds.

Do we need accounts?

No. There is no sign-up, no password and no email address anywhere in the flow. You pick a name when you sit down, and that is the whole of it.

How many people can play Mosaic?

1 to 2 — best with two. A room seats up to 12.

How long does a game of Mosaic take?

About 20 minutes, which is the length of a coffee break rather than the length of a games night. Nobody is the host in the sense of holding the controls, so a round finishes whether or not everyone is still looking at it.

Does it work over a video call?

That is what it is for. The game is on the screen and the talking is on the call — nobody has to describe a board to anybody, and the parts that must stay private stay on the server rather than being read out.