HARMONY

A Game of Balance

Rules

A meditative two-player game of nature, balance, and change. Gather the land into harmony — a full direction or a full terrain — seal each with the turning of the four seasons, and find the way before your opponent does.

The Goal

Be the first to complete and lock four Harmony Sets. A set is locked when it has been capped with the four seasons; a locked set is yours forever. The moment you hold four locked sets, you have found Harmony and the game is won.

The Cards — 109 in all

Family	What it is	Count
Terrain	Every terrain card carries a terrain — Forest, Field, River, or Road — and a direction: North East South West. Four terrains × four directions, three copies each.	48
Season	Spring Summer Autumn Winter — ten of each. Seasons don't build sets; they seal them.	40
Celestial (Solstice & Equinox)	Spring Equinox Summer Solstice Autumn Equinox Winter Solstice — one of each. Season-wilds that play as one of two seasons (see below).	4
⛰️ Mountain	The terrain wild. Stands in for any single terrain card a set is missing.	6
🌫️ Fog / 🍃 Wind	Sky cards you hold and play from your hand at the right moment.	4 / 4
⚡ Storm · ☀️ Sun · 🌙 Moon	Sky events. You never hold these — they resolve for everyone the instant they are drawn.	1 each

Setup

Shuffle the deck. Deal seven cards to each player.
Turn one ordinary card face-up to start the discard pile. (Sky events dealt into a hand or turned up here resolve first — see The Sky.)
You take the first turn.

The law of seven. Your hand is always exactly seven cards at rest — never more, never less, between turns. Every turn you gain one and shed one, so you end where you began: at seven.

A Turn — One Action

A turn is a single action. You do one of the following, and then it's your opponent's turn:

Draw & build. Draw one card — the top of the face-down draw pile, or the face-up top of the discard pile if it's an ordinary card — then either lay one set, cap a set, play a Fog or Wind, or simply release one card. You end at seven.
Steal a Mountain instead of drawing (see below). The swap is your whole turn.

You take one build action per turn — lay a set, cap a set, or play a special. Capping is its own action (Cap Set), separate from laying: a set goes down open, and you lock it later, when you choose.

What ends a turn. Releasing a card ends it; so does laying a set (you refill back to seven), playing a Fog or Wind (the played card is itself your discard), and stealing a Mountain (the swap is your draw and discard in one).

Harmony Sets — the Heart of the Game

A Harmony Set is four terrain cards that agree in one of two ways:

Kind of set	What it means	Example
A Direction	One shared direction, all four different terrains.	East Forest · Field · River · Road "East — all terrains"
A Terrain	One shared terrain, all four different directions.	Forest N E S W "Forest — all directions"

Each set has a unique identity — you can't lay the same direction twice or the same terrain twice — and you build toward at most four sets in all.

All your sets must be the same kind. Every set you build is either a direction (a row) or a terrain (a column) — and they must all be the same one. Picture the deck as a 4×4 grid, directions down the side, terrains across the top: a direction-set is a full row, a terrain-set is a full column, and a row and a column always cross at one shared card (a "Road, all directions" set and an "East, all terrains" set both need East Road). So you commit to one kind and build four of it. A finished board is sixteen distinct cards — the four directions, or the four terrains, never a mix. (A set keeps its kind for life: completing a Mountain never turns a row into a column.)

The Mountain fills a gap. A ⛰️ Mountain substitutes for any one terrain card a set is missing, so you can lay a set before you've drawn every piece — even more than one Mountain in a set, so long as at least one real terrain card is present to give the set its identity.

Locking a Set — the Four Seasons

An unlocked set counts for nothing yet, and any Mountain inside it is exposed. To make a set permanent, cap it with the four seasons — one Spring, one Summer, one Autumn, one Winter (a celestial card may stand in for one of them). A capped set is locked: safe from theft forever, and one of the four you need to win.

Capping is always your choice — never automatic. Laying a set only ever puts it down open. Locking is a separate, deliberate step you take when you decide to, with the Cap Set action.

Lay a terrain set — open. It sits unlocked; its Mountain (if any) is still stealable until you cap.
Cap Set. When you have an open set and the four seasons — either selected in your hand, or waiting as a laid-down season set — choose Cap Set to lay the seasons onto a set and lock it. If more than one set is open, you pick which to seal.
Hold seasons in play. You can lay four seasons down on their own as a waiting season set (a reserve), then cap with it later — handy when you want to hold a Mountain set open a while before sealing it. You may bank several — a season set for each set you still have to lock, up to four total (your already-locked sets have used theirs). Season sets aren't unique the way terrain sets are.

Why hold off? Locking a set with a Mountain seals that Mountain away for good — safe from theft, but you can never reuse it. Sometimes you'd rather leave the set open and cap it only when you're ready. The choice is always yours.

Solstice & Equinox — the Celestial Wilds

Four special season cards mark the turning points of the year. Each is a season-wild, but either/or: unlike a Mountain, which can be any terrain, a celestial card may be played as one of two adjacent seasons — never both at once. There is one of each in the deck.

Card	Plays as…	The turning it marks
Spring Equinox	Winter or Spring	winter giving way to spring
Summer Solstice	Spring or Summer	spring giving way to summer
Autumn Equinox	Summer or Autumn	summer giving way to autumn
Winter Solstice	Autumn or Winter	autumn giving way to winter

Using one in a cap. When you seal a set, a celestial card counts as whichever of its two seasons you still need — so a Summer Solstice can be the Spring or the Summer of your four-season cap, but it fills only one of the four slots. It's a flexible bridge when you're one season short, not a second wildcard for every slot.

The Mountain — Steal & Reclaim

A Mountain is powerful but exposed. While it sits in an unlocked, unfogged set, whoever holds the exact real terrain card it stands in for can play that card into the slot and take the Mountain into their own hand.

Steal. Complete the opponent's set with your real card and carry off their Mountain.
Reclaim. Complete your own set with the real card and take your Mountain back to reuse elsewhere.

A swap is a whole turn. Stealing or reclaiming is taken instead of drawing: the Mountain you take is your draw, the terrain card you leave in its slot is your discard, and your turn ends there. You don't also draw from the pile, and you don't also lay a set. Two defenses keep a Mountain safe: locking the set with the seasons (permanent), or fogging it (temporary).

Cards You Play — Fog & Wind

🌫️ Fog

Play Fog onto any unlocked, unfogged Mountain — your opponent's or your own — to freeze it. A frozen Mountain's set cannot be stolen from, and cannot be capped or locked, until the fog is cleared. Laying the Fog is your discard — the Fog rests on the Mountain (not on the discard pile, not buried in the deck) and your turn ends. Fogging your own Mountain is a legal defensive play: it shields the Mountain from theft, at the cost of not being able to cap that set until you clear the fog yourself.

🍃 Wind

Play Wind to blow the fog off one of your own frozen Mountains, freeing that set to be capped or completed again. The cleared Fog then goes to the discard pile, spent. Like Fog, playing the Wind is your discard — the turn ends and you are back to seven.

The Sky — Storm, Sun & Moon

These three are never held or played, and when one is drawn it resolves for everyone — it is the same sky over both players. The instant it is drawn (even into an opening hand) it takes effect and cannot be kept.

⚡ Storm

The sky breaks. Every player throws their whole hand into the discard and draws seven fresh. Laid sets are untouched. Drawing the Storm is your turn.

☀️ Sun

The Sun shines on all. Each player replaces one card — draw one from the deck, release one of your choice — so every hand stays at seven. Drawing the Sun is your turn.

🌙 Moon

A quiet renewal. Each player may release up to three cards and draw that many anew. Drawing the Moon is your turn.

When the sky is crowded. If more than one event lands in the same moment, they resolve in order of brightness: Storm first — its clouds blot out any Sun or Moon caught with it — then Sun, then Moon. Spent sky cards drift to the bottom of the deck and may come round again on a later pass.

Running Out of Cards

When the draw pile is spent, the discards (all but the top card) are shuffled into a fresh draw pile, and play continues.

Winning

The first player to hold four locked sets — all of the same kind, sixteen distinct cards in all — has found Harmony and wins.

Quick Reference

Thing	In short
Hand size	Always seven at rest. Gain one, shed one, every turn.
A turn	One action: draw & build, or steal a Mountain.
A set	Four terrains: one direction + all terrains, or one terrain + all directions. All your sets must be the same kind.
Mountain ⛰️	Terrain wild; fills a missing terrain (more than one allowed, with ≥1 real card).
Seasons	All four (a celestial may be one) lock a set via Cap Set — your deliberate choice, never automatic. Or lay them as a waiting reserve.
Celestial	Season-wild for one of two adjacent seasons; fills one cap slot.
Steal / reclaim	Instead of drawing: swap your terrain for a Mountain. That's your whole turn.
Fog 🌫️	Freeze a Mountain (rests on it). Your discard; turn ends.
Wind 🍃	Clear fog off your own Mountain. Your discard; turn ends.
Storm / Sun / Moon	Sky events for everyone, fired on draw: redraw seven / replace one / cycle up to three.
Win	Four locked sets.