How to Play Downtown Farmers Market Board Game (Rules and Instructions)

Released this year (2022) Downtown Farmers Market is one of the newest games in Blue Orange Games library. In the game you take on the role of a shopper traveling to a local farmer’s market to purchase some ingredients that you need. The game is a combination of a tile placement game mixed with elements of puzzle and strategy games. Ultimately you are trying to acquire and place tiles inside your own grid in order to complete various objectives to score points.

Year: 2022 | Publisher: Blue Orange Games | Designer: Johan Benvenuto, Alexandre Droit | Artist: NA

Genres: Family, Puzzle, Strategy, Tile Placement

Ages: 7+ | Number of Players: 2-4 | Length of Game: 20-30 minutes

Difficulty: Light-Moderate | Strategy: Light-Moderate | Luck: Moderate

Components: 65 Food tiles, 44 Challenge tiles, first play

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Objective in Downtown Farmers Market

The objective of Downtown Farmers Market is to score the most points by placing Food tiles in your grid to meet certain challenges.

Setup for Downtown Farmers Market

Shuffle all of the Challenge tiles together.
Deal four tiles to each player.
You will decide which side you will use for each tile (one side is easier than the other). You will then place the tiles in a vertical line to create rows for a grid. The order in which you place the tiles is your choice.

First Column in Downtown Farmers Market — This player was dealt four Challenge tiles. They have chosen to use the pictured sides, and placed them in the following order to start their grid.

All of the players are then dealt four more Challenge tiles. You will once again choose which side you want to use. These tiles will be placed in a horizontal line in order to create columns for your grid. You can choose the order in which you want to place the tiles.

Placed Challenge Tiles in Downtown Farmers Market — The player was dealt their other four Challenge tiles. They have chosen which sides they wanted to use. After placing the tiles in their preferred order, the player has set up their grid for the game.

Shuffle the Food tiles and place them in a face down pile in the center of the table.
Turn over the top five Food tiles and place them face up in the middle of the table.
The player who last went to a Farmer’s Market will be the first player in the first round. They will take the First Player token.

Playing Downtown Farmers Market

Downtown Farmers Market is played in rounds. In each round the players will take turns taking one of the face up Food tiles to add to their own grid. How players will choose Food tiles is detailed in the Choosing Food Tiles section below.

Available Tiles in Downtown Farmers Market — These are the five tiles available for this turn. The current player will get to choose one of the tiles to add to their grid.

After choosing a tile, each player will choose where they want to place it in their grid at the intersection of two of the Challenge tiles. Each position in the grid can only have one Food tile. Once a Food tile is placed into a player’s grid, it cannot be moved.

Placing Tile in Downtown Farmers Market — This player chose to take the Food tile that featured two bread and a cheese. They decided to place it in this position as it will help them with two of their Challenge tiles.

When placing tiles, players are trying to place them in a way that helps complete the Challenges pictured on their Challenge tiles.

Choosing Food Tiles

Players will take turns choosing one of the face up Food tiles in the middle of the table. How tiles are chosen depends on the number of players.

4 Players – In four player games the first player will choose one of the face up Food tiles to take for themselves. The players will then take turns in clockwise order choosing a Food tile.

3 Players – In a three player game the first player chooses a Food tile to keep. They will then choose one tile to discard. The other players will then take turns in clockwise order choosing a Food tile.

2 Players – In a two player game the first player chooses one Food tile for themselves and one Food tile to discard. The other player then does the same.

Setup for Next Round

After everyone has chosen a Food tile and placed it in their grid, the round ends. Before the next round begins, new Food tiles are revealed. The last Food tile that no one chose stays on the table. Four new Food tiles are then revealed and placed in the middle of the table. There should be a total of five face up Food tiles in the middle of the table.

The player who was last to take a Food tile in the previous round will be the first to take a tile in the next round. They will take the First Player token to note that they are the first player in the next round.

End of Game

The game ends after the sixteenth round (all of the players have filled in their grid).

Final Grid in Downtown Farmers Market — This player has finished their grid which means the game has ended. They will now figure out how many points they scored.

At this time the players will tally up how many points that they scored during the game. If a player completes the conditions on a Challenge tile, they will score points equal to the number printed on the box at the bottom of the tile. If a player doesn’t complete the conditions of a Challenge tile, they will discard the tile. For details of each type of Challenge tile, see the Challenge Tiles section below.

After all of the player’s have tallied their score, they will compare their scores. The player who scores the most points wins the game. If two or more players tie for the most points, the tied player who completed the most Challenge tiles will win. If there is still a tie, the tied player who completed the Challenge tile worth the most points wins the game. Finally if the tie still hasn’t been broken, the tied players share the victory.

Scoring in Downtown Farmers Market — At the end of the game this player will score points as follows.
For the first row they will score nine points as they have eleven ingredients in the row.
They will score 8 points for the second row as there are eight bread in the row.
The player will score zero points for the third row as they didn’t place four cheese and three bread into the row.
For the fourth row they will score five points since all six ingredient types are in the row.
For the first column the player has five cheese and five bread. As they completed five sets, they will score 10 points.
For the second column they had five different carrots so they will score 7 points.
The player did not complete the third column as there was one carrot in it.
Finally the player will score 4 points for the last column because there are more eggs than any other ingredient in the column.
The player will score a total of 43 points in the game.

Challenge Tiles

There are seven different types of Challenge tiles in Downtown Farmers Market. How you complete each Challenge tile is detailed below.

Challenge Tile in Downtown Farmers Market

For this type of Challenge tile a number of ingredients will be pictured as well as a quantity above them. In order to complete it, the row/column that the Challenge tile is in must have exactly the same number of each pictured ingredient in it. Any other ingredients in the row/column can be ignored.

Scoring Challenge Tile 1 Downtown Farmers Market — To score nine points from this Challenge tile the player needed to place four cheese and three bread in the row/column which they did.

To complete this type of Challenge, any pictured ingredients cannot be in the associated row/column.

Scoring Challenge Tile in Downtown Farmers Market — To score four points from this tile you need to have zero carrots in the row/column.

The number pictured inside the circle indicates exactly how many of one type of ingredient has to be in the row/column. You can choose what type of ingredient that the Challenge is applied to. All other types of ingredients can be ignored.

The number inside the circle indicates the total number of ingredients that have to be present in the row/column. You need to have the exact number (not more or less). The ingredients can be of any type.

Scoring Challenge Tiles in Downtown Farmers Market — This Challenge tile requires the player to have a total of eleven ingredients in the row/column. As the player has exactly eleven ingredients in this row, they will score nine points.

Each of the six types of ingredients need to be present in the row/column.

The pictured ingredient needs to be the majority of the row/column.

You will earn points for each of the pictured ingredient(s) in the row/column. If a set of ingredients are shown, you will score the points for each set of the ingredients that there are in the row/column. The ingredients do not need to be on the same tile in order to count. Each ingredient can only be used for one set.

Younger Children Variant

If you are playing the game with younger children, you should not use the Challenge tiles. Instead each player will create a 4 x 4 grid. The goal of each row and column is to maximize the number of one of the types of ingredients.

Three Food tiles are placed in the middle of the table. After each player’s turn, a new Food tile will be turned over.

At the end of the game, each player will look at each row and column separately. They will identify which ingredient they have the most of in each row and column. They will count up how many they have of each of these ingredients. This is how many points they will score from the row/column.