How To Play

Berrymandering is a 2 player strategy game where you Gerrymander berries on a cake.

You can download rules or the print & play version of the game.
Its very quick to learn the rules. In fact, we can teach you the essentials in less than a minute!

Berrymandering tutorial video

Overview:

The strawberries and blueberries are always competing to rule Cakeland. Players will choose a team and alternate between making groups of cake and selecting a group to eat. If a group has more of your team’s berry, you can eat all those pieces and you get a candle! Once all the case is gone, the player with the most candles becomes the new ruler of Cakeland.

Setup:

The player who ate cake (in real life) most recently gets to choose their team: blueberry or strawberry.
Place you team card in front of you.
Shuffle the circular Mystery titles and place them face down near the candles.
Shuffle all the square cake pieces and place them face up in a 6×6 grid with a small amount of space between each piece.

Play:

The game is played over nine rounds. During each round players will Cut the cake into groups of four pieces, Choose a group to eat and award a candle, Reset the board to its initial position, and Switch roles. Once all the cake is eaten, the game ends!

Cut:

The first player must cut all the cake into groups of four pieces (valid shapes are shown in purple below) Do this by shifting pieces slightly left, right, up, and down.

valid shapes to cut pieces into on a berrymandering board — these are the only 7 valid shapes you can cut cake pieces into on a Berrymandering board.

You must keep cutting until all the cake tiles are in groups of four. No orphans are allowed.

example of disallowed orphans when cutting the cake — The orphans (groups with less than 4 tiles) in the top and bottom left are not allowed. You must adjust your cuts to eliminate them.

You cannot pick up pieces or slide pieces outside the cake perimeter.

keep pieces inside the perimeter when cutting — Keep your pieces inside the perimeter when cutting the cake. This makes it easier to reset the board between turns

During the game you will be eating pieces of cake and flipping the tiles from that piece over. You cannot cut pieces of cake that have been flipped over because they have already been eaten.

Choose:

The second player will choose a group to eat. For every Random square tile in this group, reveal a Mystery circle tile and place it on top of the square tile. Now count the berries in this group (including the ones from the Mystery tile). The player with the most berries in the group gets one candle. In the case of a tie, no candles are awarded.

Set aside any revealed Mystery tiles. They cannon be used again and remain face up for the rest of the game.

Flip the cake tile in the chosen group over. They cannot be cut or chose again (they have been eaten).

one player chooses a piece of cake to score — The cake has been cut into groups by the 1st player. The 2nd player chooses to eat the green highlighted group which contains a Random tile. Reveal a Mystery tile. Two more blueberries have been uncovered! Team blueberry wins by two points (6 vs. 4). Give a single candle to team blueberry.

Reset:

Slide the remaining cake pieces back into their original locations. Make sure all eaten pieces are face down.

Switch:

The round is over and players switch roles. The player who chose a piece in the last round will now cut the remaining cake into new groups. The player that cut last round gets to choose which group to eat.

End of the Game:

When there are no more cake pieces to eat, the game ends. The new ruler of Cakeland is the player with the most candles!