We’re not entirely sure how much fun it will be to play the Grid. What we do know is, those darn game pieces are downright beautiful.
Designed by Victor Aleman, it’s a variation on good, old dominoes. Instead of rectangular tiles with pips, however, it uses a set of hexagon-shaped tiles that you connect to other tiles on a game table, with the height and color on the sides of a tile determining a match. And those tiles are gorgeous, looking more like pieces to a decorative puzzle than mere tokens for a tabletop game.
Each hexagonal tile in Grid is made from three finishes of wood, with two sides each covered in one color, making them easy to identify when matching tiles on the board. There are seven types of finishes in the set, with the tiles made from either ash, maple, or oak. To play, you put down a chip from your deck with a side that matches the shade and height on one side of a chip currently in the table, passing when you don’t have a viable tile. Tiles with black ebony sides serve as a trump card of sorts, blocking off a specific path for other players.
A total of 88 tiles comes with each game – one tile each for every possible combination of the seven different finishes. You can, of course, combine multiple sets to play an even larger game, putting together a network of tiles that look like a tabletop décor.
Slated to ship in October, the Grid is priced at $400.