Pitter Pattern

by Jonathan Leistiko

Object

Place tokens on a board to match patterns on your card or (even better) on your opponent’s card.

You Need

• A set of double-six dominos, or the Pitter Pattern board.
• A six-sided die.
• A deck of pattern cards (found in the board file, linked above).
• A set of homogeneous tokens for each player. (28 pieces per player for 2 players. 19 pieces per player for 3 players. 14 pieces per player for 4 players.)

Setting Up

Lay out the dominos in an 8×7 rectangle.

Give each player one pattern card. You may look at your pattern card, but keep it secret.

Choose a player to go first.

Play

On your turn, you get to roll and fill.

Roll: (This step is optional, except that you must roll if the previous player filled a blank space.) Roll the die.

Fill: Put a piece in a vacant space that shows the same number as the die. If there are no available moves, you may put a piece in a vacant blank space. If there is no vacant blank space to fill, then roll again.

Play passes to the left. The game ends when all spaces are filled. When the game ends, you must reveal your pattern card.

Winning

Starting with the last player, each player takes turns “lifting” (removing) one sequence of his or her tokens that matches one of the following conditions:

• If you lift your pattern, you get 4 points.
• If you lift a straight line of 4, you get 5 points.
• If you lift the pattern of the player to your left or right, you get 6 points.

Once all available patterns have been lifted, the player with the most points wins.

Variants

Pay It Forward: You may not choose to roll—just use the die as it lies—unless there are no available moves.

Origin and Credits

I thought of this game on 2/19/04 as I fell asleep. I didn’t write it down, but I remembered it anyway. I think it was in my head because I’d been working on another game that uses dominos, but had recently set it aside because the idea had stalled out a bit.

I played this for the first time with Ben on 02/22/04. The name was confirmed that day and the rule about 4-in-a-row making 5 points was created. Pitter Pattern was played again on 02/23/04 at the Monday Night Games Night with Chris, Kori, and Leif. The rule for getting points from patterns to your left and right was made that night. That night, I realized that this plays best with 2 players, but more still works; you just score a lot lower.