Burrows

About this board game

Burrows is a tile-placement game for 2–5 players, with games lasting about 45 minutes. Set in sunny Gopher Gulch, it casts players as ranchers building warrens designed to attract the town’s remarkable red, purple, and orange gophers.

Each player places tiles to form burrows in their own warren. Every tile counts as you try to create burrows in all three colors, while carefully balancing their lengths. When you complete a burrow of a particular color that is longer than the current shortest burrow in that color, the gopher living there moves into your new burrow.

That gopher stays with you until another rancher builds an even bigger burrow and lures it away. Competition is especially tight because there is one fewer gopher of each color than there are players, so no rancher can host all three types at the same time.

• Place tiles to build your own colorful gopher warren.
• Compete for three types of gophers: red, purple, and orange.
• Use longer burrows to attract gophers away from other ranchers.
• Manage tourist expectations during the visiting season.

Every so often, a tour bus arrives with a schedule showing which gophers the tourists hope to see. If your ranch is missing the promised types, the visitors leave complaints. At the end of the tourist season, the rancher with the fewest complaints wins.

Released in 2010, Burrows combines spatial tile placement, contested residents, and changing tourist demands into a colorful contest for the most successful gopher ranch.