Gnome Hollow – Mushroom Mischief

Sometimes they’re adorable chubby little people with tall red hats. Other times they’re mischievous, maybe even malicious, tearing up your gardens and causing all sorts of issues.

But no matter what, gnomes always seem to be one with nature; cultivating plants, flowers, and mushrooms, and coaxing growth from the nature around them. Often, they do this with a bit of whimsy. To this end, enter Gnome Hollow, the 2024 Gen Con darling from The Op Games.

Gnome Hollow was created and illustrated by Ammon Anderson. 2-4 people can play Gnome Hollow and a game usually takes 60-90 minutes. It’s best for ages ten and up, but we think a precocious eight-year-old could play too.

Setup

In Gnome Hollow, you’ll take on the roles of gnomes as they make mushroom circles to celebrate the Hollow Harvest.

Give each player a player aid, their board, eight Ring Markers, and two gnome meeples, all in their chosen color. Set the stump somewhere in the middle of the table. Place the Garden Tile and Pinwheel Market boards nearby.

Put eight randomly drawn Garden Tiles on the Garden Tile board. Stack the Market Tokens next to the corresponding mushroom on the Pinwheel Market board. You’ll also set aside a few Garden Tiles under the “Sunset” token for the end of the game.

Collect the mushrooms, signposts, flowers, and treasures in like piles and keep them near the play area.

Finally, give the Red Cap (first player) Token to whoever you want to be the first player.

Gameplay

Gnome Hollow is a point salad game; there are a few different ways to gather points to win.

On each player’s turn they:

1. Place Tiles – Choose and place two Garden Tiles (plus any stored Tiles).
2. Resolve – Resolve any gained mushrooms, ring marker bonuses, and cascading effects.
3. (Optionally) Move a Gnome – Move a gnome to take one of four actions.
   • Reserve a Path
   • Collect a Flower
   • Access a Signpost
   • Sell at the Market

Place Tiles

Choose two Garden Tiles from the central board and place them in the garden. Replace them immediately. These tiles must be adjacent to the stump or another token. After placing them, they cannot have any blocked paths or block a path.

If the tile would extend a ring already claimed by another player, they must ask for permission from that player to place it. Players cannot combine two unfinished paths that are already claimed by gnomes.

If placing a tile completes a ring, if any player has a gnome in that ring, they collect the mushrooms from that ring. Otherwise, stack those mushrooms in a pile in the middle of the ring.

Then, the player that completed the ring takes the next marker from left-to-right at the top of their player board and puts it in a space from the reward column matching the ring size.

Resolve

When a player moves a Ring Marker to an empty space, they take a reward associated with that space. This could be a signpost, a free tile, a flower pot, some mushrooms, or some combination. Players cannot take a bonus from a different column if the column for that ring size is full.

If this is the second, fourth, or fifth ring the player completes, they also get a Wildflower Tile. Take a Flower Token of one type and corresponding wild Ring Token from the Wildflower Tokens. Place the remaining Wildflower Tokens of that type in the Flower Market above the Pinwheel market for others to take later. Flower Tokens provide set bonuses at the end of the game.

Move a Gnome

Finally, the active player may move one of their gnomes to another space and take the corresponding action. The gnome MUST move to a new space in order to take an action.

Claim a Mushroom Path

In order to gain the benefits of a mushroom path, a gnome must claim the ring. Move a gnome to an unfinished ring and stay there until it’s finished to claim it, and nobody can add to it without that player’s permission. Collect the mushrooms when the ring is completed. Or, claim a completed ring that nobody claimed previously, and take the stack of mushrooms from the middle.

Visit the Flower Market

Move a Gnome token to the Flower Market above the Pinwheel Market. The player may claim one of the Flower Tiles they don’t already own and add it to their player board.

Visit a Signpost

Once players put Signposts on the board, players may visit them with a gnome to gain the reward on the sign.

Visit the Pinwheel Market

What are you doing with all those mushrooms you’ve collected? Move a gnome to the Pinwheel Market to sell up to two sets of mushrooms for bonus treasure tokens. Mushrooms differ in rarity and some are worth more than others.

End of the Game

The endgame is triggered once a player has gathered their 8th Flower Token or moved their 8th Ring Marker, or if the bag runs out of tiles to refill the Garden Tile board. Then, take the Garden Tiles under the Sunset token and put them in the bag. Finish the round, then every player gets one last gnome action.

Calculate final score by adding Flower and Ring scores. Use the numbers below the last Flower Token on the player board, and above the last empty Ring Marker space. Then, add the total value of all treasures gained from selling mushrooms on the Pinwheel Market. The highest score wins!

(Above: Blue scores 25 for flowers, 20 for rings, and 28 for treasures, totaling 73 points. Yellow scores 14 for flowers, 20 for rings, and 43 for treasures, totaling 77 points.)

Impressions

Gnome Hollow is a beautiful game with charming art and great graphic design. The Op hit the styling out of the park with beautiful watercolor-influenced art pieces. As usual for a game from The Op, the graphic design is smart and self-explanatory. The player boards are magnetic for the Ring Marker tokens as well, another small but excellent touch to bring the user experience up a notch.

Gnome Hollow is a table hog, with all of the boards and the space necessary to build the flower rings. But its organic growth over the course of the game creates a beautiful vista as mushroom rings dot the landscape of the meadow.

There is a lot to Gnome Hollow, and many different ways to score points. This helps with replayability, but hurts players who struggle to hold many different strategy options in their heads at once. However, players who enjoy the min-max process of many point salad games will feel right at home in this one.

Given the relatively simple gameplay, though, it felt like a lot to explain the rules to players new to the game. We played with non-gamers who had little trouble once the game got going, but there were so many specific rules, it was daunting for the first few turns. With all of the rules and a fairly lengthy setup, it’s important to note that Gnome Hollow doesn’t introduce any particularly novel mechanics that might make this feel “worth it”. But everything in this box is well executed and it is a delight to play.

Finally, one of the marvelous things about euro style games, which Gnome Hollow offers in spades, is the absence of player elimination. Our daughter willingly chose more “beautiful” arrangements for her paths over the highest scoring ones, eschewing victory for the sake of creating a visually pleasing arrangement with her gnomes. Games like this afford those opportunities, and for our mission of playing games together as a family, this is something that can’t be overstated.

It’s worth it in a game like Gnome Hollow to play in a way that is pleasing because companies like The Op elevate the visual experience beyond dry themes and simple wooden tokens.

You can pick up a copy of Gnome Hollow directly from The Op, on Amazon, or at your friendly local game store.

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The Op provided The Family Gamers with a promotional copy of Gnome Hollow for this review.

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