Harmony

And now for the most important rules: The ones about harmony. In context of harmony used in Pai sho, there are two central questions: Firstly, what is it exactly, and as soon as you know that you'll want to see how harmonies are produced.

What is harmony?
It's the core idea of Pai Sho: When certain conditions are met, flower tiles form a special connection called harmony. The player able to form most harmonies will win the game.

How do you do it?
There are several things that you have to keep in mind when going for harmonies.
Take a look at this example:

These two tiles form a valid harmony. I reckon you can guess some of the requirements by now; here is a list:

• Both tiles must belong to the same player
• They must be on the same horizontal or vertical line
• No other tile is between them (= they have direct eye-to-eye contact, so to speak)
• Both tiles are in their respective garden (red flowers in red gardens, white flowers in white gardens)

All of these conditions are met in the above example, so the black player now has one harmony in total.

Of course that is not everything. What makes harmony a rather complex thing are restrictions as to which flowers can be in harmony with which other flowers. There is a simple way to explain those restrictions, though: the circle of harmonies in Pai Sho:

This overview shows the constellations that form harmony: Flowers that are next to each other on this circle can form harmonies. For example, a Rose-Jade harmony (as we had in the above example) is possible. On the other hand, a Rhododendron-Rose harmony is not possible; these tiles are neutral to each other.

With this information, let's take a look at another example:

How many harmonies are there? Right, there are three. The Rose-Jade one from before is still there, then there is a Jade-Lily harmony in the upper half, and a Rose-Chrys harmony in the lower half of the board. However, the Lily and Chrysanthemum are not harmonious to each other, so that is not a fourth harmony.

As soon as one gets an idea of which tiles harmonize, the whole concept harmony is easy to understand and to use in-game.

And as the end of this chapter, here's a little quiz for you:

How many harmonies does Black own? How many does White own?







Solution:

Valid harmonies are marked in blue, illegal ones in red. Black only has one harmony, while White has three. Please note the connections between tiles of different players: These do not give harmony in Pai Sho, even if the right flowers are used.

<Previous                                                                                      Next>