Quadro rules — how to play
The complete rules of Quadro in one page: drafting from factories and the center, pattern lines, the floor-line penalty, how a round settles, and when the game ends.
Quadro is a game of complete information. Five factories, a center pile, and two player boards — everything you can see is everything there is. There are no hidden hands and no hidden bag order.
The table
Each round begins with five factories holding four tiles each, and an empty center. Tiles come in five colors: blue, yellow, red, black and white. Every tile also carries its initial, so you never have to rely on color alone to read the board.
Your board sits on the left, your opponent's on the right. Each board has three parts:
- Five pattern lines on the left, holding 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 tiles from top to bottom. This is staging — tiles wait here until the round settles.
- The wall on the right, a 5×5 grid. This is where points come from. Every color has a fixed column on every row.
- The floor line underneath, which holds tiles you could not place. It only ever costs you points.
A turn is two clicks
Every turn, without exception:
- Take. Pick one color from one source. You take every tile of that color from that source — never one tile, never a mix. The source can be a factory or the center.
- Place. Send the tiles you just took to one pattern line, or to the floor.
When you take from a factory, every tile you did not take slides into the center. A factory empties completely the moment anyone draws from it, so taking a single tile off a full factory hands the other three to your opponent. That is often the real cost of a move.
The center is a sixth source and it grows all round as both players spill leftovers into it.
The first-player marker
The first player to take from the center in a round also picks up the "1" marker. It costs one slot on your floor line — worth −1 point — and in exchange you lead the next round. That is worth having when a color is running short and you want first claim on it.
Pattern lines
A pattern line can only ever hold one color, and it settles into exactly one square on your wall — the square in that row's column for that color. Two consequences follow:
- A pattern line that already holds red refuses any other color.
- If your wall already has red in that row, that row will not accept red at all.
A partly-filled line is not a penalty. It simply waits, keeping its tiles into the next round, and only that color may be added until it settles. Wide rows take several rounds to fill — and your opponent can see exactly what you are waiting for.
Overflow and the floor line
You must always take every tile of the color you picked, even when the line you want has fewer free slots than you have tiles. The extras drop onto the floor line, and each one costs you points.
This is the trade you make all game: a completed line is worth points, and overflow is worth negative points. Taking two tiles for a one-slot line is often still correct — a completed line that scores 4 easily pays for a −1 floor. The floor line clears at the end of every round, so a penalty never follows you past the round you took it in.
How a round settles
The round ends when the last tile leaves the factories and the center. Then, in order:
- Every completed pattern line moves one tile onto the wall, in its color's column, and scores immediately (see how scoring works). The rest of that line is discarded.
- Incomplete lines stay exactly as they are, into the next round.
- The floor line is charged and cleared.
- New factories are dealt, and whoever holds the "1" marker leads.
How the game ends
The game ends the moment either player completes a full horizontal row on their wall. That round is played out and settled as normal, then the end-game bonuses land:
- +2 for each complete horizontal row
- +7 for each complete vertical column
- +10 for each color you have all five of
A single column is worth more than three completed rows of drafting, which is why the endgame is usually a race to set up bonuses rather than to fill lines quickly. Note that the player who ends the game is not necessarily the player who benefits from ending it.
What to do next
- Learn to play walks through one real round, move by move, in about two minutes.
- How scoring works is the page that changes how you play.
- Practice is untimed and unrecorded, against any opponent.