How to Play Thornwood: Full Rules Guide | Playgridia

2026-08-10

Thornwood is a free area control board game for 2-4 players that you play straight in the browser, and it settles two questions the genre usually leaves fuzzy: who owns this ground, and when does the match end. A clearing here has exactly one owner, shown plainly on the map, so there is never a "count everybody's pieces and compare" step. And the finish line is a calendar rather than a score target: four seasons, a harvest at the end of each one, and the highest score after the winter harvest wins.

Everybody also plays by the same rulebook. You pick a clan, but a clan is one signature power and one harvest bonus, not a separate set of rules to learn. This guide covers setup, every action, how a fight resolves, how scoring works and what the room settings change - enough to sit down and play a full match with nobody teaching you.

What is on the board when you sit down

Every board is twelve clearings joined by paths and cut out of a painted wood. Beside each clearing stands a carved sign with one number on it: that clearing's bounty. The number does two jobs, and it is the only figure you really have to track.

• It is what the clearing pays you at every harvest.
• It is how many Roots the clearing can hold - so a bounty-3 glade can be developed until it pays 6.

You start on one home clearing with three warriors. Your home is a sanctuary: it can never be raided and never changes hands, which is why nobody is ever knocked out of a match. It is also bounty 1 on every board, so it is a place to come back to rather than a place worth sitting on.

Every other clearing starts wild, guarded by a number of warriors equal to its own bounty - a bounty-3 glade is defended by three. The richest ground is never a free first move, and those wild guards are what your opening turns are for: you get to learn the raid against an opponent that cannot punish a mistake.

Nothing is hidden. There are no cards in your hand and no fog of war. Every clearing's owner, garrison, bounty and Roots are public to the whole table, and so is what is left in the thorn deck.

A turn is three actions from four verbs

On your turn you get three actions, and you spend them on any mix of these four:

Your clan has a supply of 18 warriors, and casualties are not gone forever - they go back to the barracks and can be mustered again. March never walks into somebody else's clearing; walking into a rival is a Raid. Keeping those two verbs apart is what makes "will this start a fight?" answerable before you tap anything.

On the board you can work either way round. Tap one of your clearings and the dock shows what you can do there, or tap a verb and every clearing it can act from lights up. Both paths land in the same confirm row, and nothing happens on the first tap - you always see the consequence before you commit. Press End Turn when you are done, or when your three actions are spent.

The Root is the piece the whole game runs on

ROOT looks like the boring verb and it is the most important one, because a single Root does three jobs at once:

• +1 bounty, permanently - that clearing pays one more at every remaining harvest.
• +1 defence - developed ground is genuinely expensive to take.
• A muster point - you can place new warriors there instead of walking them out from home.

Planting one also scores you a point on the spot. A clearing holds as many Roots as its printed bounty, so a bounty-2 clearing takes two Roots and tops out paying 4. And the question a Root asks is the real question of the match: a capture scores once, a Root scores at every harvest that is still to come, so an early Root is worth far more than a late one.

The raid: two numbers and one comparison

Combat is deliberately one line of arithmetic, and it is the same line for both sides:

• Power = warriors committed + season bonus + clan bonus + one thorn card
• Losses = half the other side's power, rounded up (never more warriors than you actually have there)
• Whoever still has warriors standing holds the clearing

There is no separate rule for who won: the defender is either still standing or is not. The only figure you do not know in advance is the thorn, and even that is bounded. The thorn deck is twelve cards - four each of +1, 0 and -1 - drawn without replacement. Both cards are dealt face up, and what is left in the deck is printed on screen next to the raid, so a player who has been paying attention knows when the good cards are gone. Luck here is countable, not something you pray at.

Before you confirm, the board shows both sides' exact power, the losses each side takes, and whether the ground changes hands - for the likely draw and for the best and the worst thorn you could pull. You also choose how many warriors to send, which is the real decision of the turn: commit too few and you simply feed the defence, commit everything and the ground behind you is empty.

If you clear the defenders and still have survivors, those survivors walk in, you score two points, and - this is the single most important rule in Thornwood - the Roots stay in the ground and become yours. Taking a developed clearing takes the whole farm with it, which makes whoever is leading the most attractive target on the board. The catch-up mechanism here is the map itself, not a rubber-band rule nobody believes.

If the raid fails, it was a sortie: the survivors walk back to the clearing they came from. Misreading a fight costs you soldiers, never your position.

The harvest, and what each season changes

Everybody scores the same way at the same moment, at the end of every season:

Harvest = (the bounty of every clearing you hold + your clan bonus) x the season multiplier

Each season moves exactly one dial, which is why a season can be a chip in the banner instead of a rules panel:

A season is three rounds at a three or four player table and four rounds in a two player duel, and the banner always tells you how many turns are left until the harvest. Because autumn pays double, an empire that peaks a turn too late has thrown its best scoring moment away. After the winter harvest the match is over and the highest score wins; if second place can no longer catch the leader arithmetically, the match is called there instead of played out.

The four clans

All four clans play the same four verbs. A clan is two sentences: a signature power that bends a verb while you play, and a harvest bonus that pays for a different shape of empire. The bonus is capped at 3, so no clan can run away with a match on it alone.

They are four different questions rather than four different amounts - how tall, how varied, how exposed, how fast - and a free action is the same mechanism for everyone: the named verb costs no action point, once a turn.

Three boards, and how long a match runs

The room offers two settings, and both are picked before the match starts.

• Fernvale (the default) - a 3x4 lattice, the readable one. The two rich glades sit on opposite flanks with no path between them, so an army has to commit to one instead of sitting in the middle threatening both.
• Winterhold - eight outer clearings around four inner ones, laced with twenty-four paths. The whole inner ring is bounty 3, so there is no quiet corner to farm and every point on the board is contested. Short and bloody.
• Lakeland - a ring around an impassable lake with only two fords, and the ford-heads are the bounty-3 clearings. One stack can cork a flank, and an army that marches the wrong way round the water loses several turns finding out.

The second setting is match length: Classic, or Quick, which takes one round off every season for a shorter sitting with the same rules. All three boards are portrait and fit a phone screen whole, so there is no camera to get lost in and no part of the map you cannot see.

Five things to do in your first match

1. Take the wild ground near your home first. Its guards do not fight back on their own turn, and every clearing you hold is bounty at the next harvest.
2. Plant Roots early. A Root planted in spring pays at four harvests; one planted in winter pays at one.
3. Read the thorn deck before a close raid. If the +1 cards are gone, a fight you were calling even is not even.
4. Watch the turns-to-harvest counter, not just the map. Ground you take the turn after the bell scores nothing until the next one.
5. Do not fear a failed raid. Survivors walk home, so a misjudged attack costs warriors that you can muster again - never a clearing.

That is the entire rulebook. Pick a clan and open a board: play Thornwood free on Playgridia, against bots at any difficulty or with 2-4 friends, with no download and no account needed to start.

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