How to Play Tulikko Board Game and Review

Setting Up the Forest

Setting up the game is super straightforward, so you will be ready to play in no time.

1. Grab Your Gear: Each player takes a wilderness map, their 12 matching animal tokens, and 6 river tokens.
2. Prep Your Deck: Gather your 12 personal forest tiles, shuffle them up, and stack them face-down next to your map.
3. Set the Wilds: Place the central board in the middle of the table. Randomly slide five neutral forest tiles into the board from the sides to form a cross. The very middle tile will be hidden out of sight.
4. Pick the Objectives: Shuffle the three types of landscape cards separately. Draw exactly one River, one Color, and one Shape card, placing them face-up where everyone can see them. Put the 4 symbol cards and the 8 colored Aurora tiles nearby.
5. Seed Your Map: Every player randomly draws one leftover neutral forest tile and places it anywhere on their own wilderness map. Hand the first-player token to the youngest player, and you are ready to roll!

Goal of Tulikko

The core concept is simple: be the first person to get all of your animal and river tokens out of your supply and onto the board. Alternatively, if the 12-turn timer runs out, the player with the lowest score from their leftover tokens wins.

How to Play: The 3-Step Turn

Starting with the first player and moving clockwise, your turn consists of three casual, quick steps.

Step 1: Eject a Tile from the Central Board

First things first, flip over the top forest tile from your personal face-down stack. Next, choose one of the four sides of the central board and slide your tile right into the grid. Push it in far enough until a tile on the exact opposite side pops entirely out of the board. Catch that tile—this is the piece you get to build with.

Step 2: Place It on Your Wilderness Map

Now, look at the side of the central board where your new tile just popped out. That side features a specific symbol. You must place your newly acquired tile onto an empty space on your personal map that matches that exact symbol.

⚠️ Watch Out: If your map has no empty spaces left matching that specific symbol, you are forced to discard the tile completely.

Once your tile is placed on your board, check its neighbors to see if you can place a token:

• Place 1 River Token if your new tile touches a tile of a different color.
• Place 1 Animal Token if your new tile touches a tile of the same color.

You can easily drop multiple tokens in a single turn if your tile touches several neighbors.

Step 3: Claim Your Objectives

After placing your tile, see if your gorgeous new layout triggers any of the shared bonuses on the table.

• Landscape Cards: If your tiles match the specific shape, color, or river pattern shown on one of the three face-up cards, you immediately place two of your animal tokens onto that card. Everyone can score each landscape card once per game.
• Symbol Cards: If you are the very first person to completely cover all five matching symbol spaces on your map, you claim that symbol card and dump two animal tokens onto it. Once a symbol card is claimed, it is locked out for everyone else!
• Aurora Tiles: The moment you manage to get three tiles of a single color on your map, you snatch the “3” Aurora tile of that color. If someone else gets four of that color first, they grab the “4” tile. These give you incredible one-time superpowers, like ignoring placement symbols or moving tiles around later in the game!

Tulikko Game End

The game instantly triggers the final round the moment a player successfully places every single one of their tokens, or when everyone runs out of tiles after 12 rounds. Finish the round so everyone gets an equal number of turns.

If nobody managed to clear their token pool entirely, count up your remaining tokens: unplaced animals are worth 2 points each, and unplaced rivers are worth 1 point each. The player with the lowest score takes home the win. If there’s a tie, whoever built the largest connected zone of a single color breaks it.