Tsuro

Tsuro is a tile based board game designed by Tom McMurchie, originally published by WizKids and now published by Calliope Games. Tsuro is a board game for two to eight players. To play, players compete to have the last playing piece remaining on the board. Player turns consist of placing tiles on the board from the player's hand. Then they move their respective pieces along these paths. Players are eliminated by following a path that ends at the board edge. There have also been a number of differently themed Tsuro editions and expansions released, beginning with Tsuro of the Seas. Although core gameplay remains the same, some versions feature expanded rules or larger boards. The name of the game is taken from the Japanese word tsūro (wikt:通路) meaning "route". The word, written in kanji, appears in the art on the game board.

McMurchie received a patent for the "Squiggle game" in 1979. The 1979 patent described two different implementations; the first, commercialized largely intact as Tsuro, used the square tiles with two entry points per side and four paths, while the second used square tiles similarly with eight entry points and four paths per tile, but the entry points were changed to the middle of each side and at each corner instead. In both cases, the preferred board size was a 6×6 grid and what became the Dragon tile was initially called the NEXT card. Dawne and Jordan Weisman, the owners of Games and Gizmos in Redmond, Washington watched McMurchie playing Squiggles and asked him if he would be interested in publishing the game. The Weismans had founded the games publishing company WizKids and reworked Squiggles into Tsuro, switching the original 1950s theme to one that was Japanese inspired. The game was released in 2005. WizKids was later acquired by Topps and then NECA, and the rights for the game reverted back to Tom McMurchie. causing sales to spike. The game also has been published in multiple languages including a German, a Greek and a multilingual version. The German version of Tsuro was published in 2007 by KOSMOS. In addition to the language translation, the game's individual player pieces were little tree figures instead of the dragon stones, and the board was made two sided, with the other side being a 7×7 grid. The 35 unique tiles were expanded to a set of 64, with some duplication of paths, and players would randomly choose 35 (plus the Dragon/Next tile) for play on the 6×6 side of the board. exclusively in France. after receiving funding from Kickstarter. The game's creators included the original creator of Tsuro, Tom McMurchie, and Jordan Weisman. Tsuro of the Seas later received an expansion called Veterans of the Seas, published in 2013 by Calliope Games. This expansion includes four new types of tiles that all do different things. There is the mystical portal tile that moves ships and daikaiju tiles to new paths on the board. The tsunami tile moves steadily across the board, giving players a new obstacle they must overcome by rolling a die. If the player does not roll high enough they are eliminated from the game. The whirlpool tile destroys all ships and daikaiju tiles it comes in contact with. The cannon tiles are a defensive card players can use to defend themselves from daikaiju. Like the original game, Phoenix Rising is played on a 6×6 board with 36 square tiles, each with four paths. However, the tiles in Phoenix are classified as either "center" tiles (total of 16 "center" tiles) or "edge" tiles (20 "edge" tiles). These tiles have additional entry points at the corners and the center tiles are pre placed in the center of the board prior to starting play. Tiles are flipped or rotated during play, and the goal of the game is to create and collect seven stars by traversing paths. In 2022, Calliope Games announced that a "Luxury Limited Edition" of the original Tsuro would be released later that year; changes included upgraded materials, including carved stone tiles, satin tile storage bag, bamboo rules scroll, and wooden box, individually numbered. The limited edition set was priced at $350.