Lori, Peter, and John just sat down to a game. Lori's the first player, and has dealt out starting tiles for each player. We'll follow their progress for a while to get the hang of things.
Since Lori's the first player, we'll spend a little extra time looking at her first turn in detail. Here, we see her starting tile and, below it, her starting hand of three tiles. The book on the left will come in handy. It has two mist gates, which she'll be able to use to connect to any other gate.
Here, we see Lori's first move -- a good one -- playing the raven from her hand down to make a match and start growing a collection. In both pictures, you'll notice that the tile that just been played is highlighted. We'll use this shorthand with the other players' turns, too.
Here, we see what Lori's drawn: another lyre. Lucky.
This is the state of the table after Lori's turn. Since she played the raven on her own museum, John and Peter's museums haven't changed. Not everyone will be as kind as Lori...
Peter, like Lori, has been lucky enough to have a match in his starting hand. By rotating the tile, he's made a match, then drawn a replacement.
This is the state of the table after Lori and Peter have both played.
John didn't have a match for his starting tile, so he had two options: play something down and hope for next turn, or work on someone else's museum. He took the low road, playing a statue on Peter and blocking his only blue gate for his hats. John's drawn up another non-matching tile, so he'll be faced with the same decision next turn.
Lori starts playing her lyres. She played this lyre first because it gave her more options for connecting later lyres to the collection.
On Peter's turn, he plays down a statue, much to John's disappointment. What he'd intended as an unkind move has turned out to help Peter build his collection.
He's learned his lesson, though: on this turn, John plays down a lyre of his own, hoping to jumpstart his collections. His luck might be changing -- he draws another book.
Lori plays her second lyre, drawing another tile with two mist gates.
Peter's third hat goes into his museum. This is a symbolic point in the game. This match creates the first collection of three tiles in any player's museum -- the first positive scoring collection.
John's museum is starting to come together as he plays his first book. His newly-drawn tile, a lyre, will fit well into his museum as well.
We'll leave our players here, with their game underway, so we can start our own...