Leaves is a great two player game

Leaves is a tile-laying board game about growing a tree and having more of your leaves attached to the tree than your opponent. It’s a quick 2-player game with 3D printable tiles that fits into a pocket and is a good fun in a pub, a train or while waiting for the rest of the gang to show up for a game night.

Each player starts with 10 leaf tiles of their own color with 5 branch tiles in a straight line in the middle of the table. Players (let’s call them A and B) then place their tiles into the tree following a pattern of A, BB, AA, BB, AA, and so on until all tiles are placed.

There are two rules for placing tiles:

1. A tile must be pushed into the tree from one of the four cardinal directions and it must push the other tiles one spot forward
2. When player is placing their second tile of the turn, it must be pushed in from a direction that’s next in clockwise rotation: if you push from in front of you, the second tile must be pushed from the left.

My mom took me to school with this one when we had my birthday dinner earlier this week and I taught the game to her.

For my first print, I printed the tiles as designed and switched the color for a couple of layers near the top to make the color show through. The tiles feel a tiny bit light to play with and some people have put in metal nuts inside during the print to make them heftier. I still need to do some testing on that myself to see if I’m okay with the added weight as I plan to keep this game in my bag as I travel.

Alternative, I’m experimenting to print them in slightly smaller size so they would better fit into a photo caddy with a custom insert (like people do with board games). With the default size, the tiles fit into such container laying on their back but that makes them rattle around and making noise. That’s why I’d like to make them smaller on the following print. If you’re looking to print one for yourself and don’t have such restriction, the default size is great for playing.