In a lot of tile placement games, usually, when you place a tile, it is considered connected by placing the tile adjacent to it. If then the tile is separated, some allow you to connect them by placing a road line between the 2 like in the Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write. In cases like that, the game may become a Route Building game.
This next game, Foxglove Farm takes that idea one step further. Not only this is a city building tile placement game and also a network and route building game but this has the engine building feel you get from something like Oh My Goods! game.
The idea is that, each building tile may produce resources that you place on the tile. Players may spend resources to build more buildings or they transport them into other buildings. On those buildings, those resources might be scored for points or upgraded into other resources for better value with the next building to be transported to.
So, there is production chain between these buildings but they have to be connected by the same network or path. In standard play, you can transport any resources through any kind of buildings as long as there is a path. However, players can choose to play the expert variant where the resources can only go through one building that has to do with that resource.
The challenge is not just spatial and resource conversion. Players also have to manage the capacity of each building. Making room to produce more or for some building you want leave some to generate more like for livestock.
Foxglove Farm is the same game as Minecart Town which was crowdfunded and released earlier. The former was from Japanese publisher with their own art and title. This newer one is more available worldwide. Even before these 2, the designers self-published the game with My Trolley Town as the title.
Title: Foxglove Farm
Year Released: 2026
Designer: Shun Taguchi and Aya Taguchi
Publisher: Alley Cat Games
Artist: Isabelle Overturf and Jorge Tabanera Redondo
Genre: Tile Placement, City Building, Manufacturing, Network and Route Building, Competitive, Official Solo Mode, Solo Achievement Scenarios, 1-4 players
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Overview
In Foxglove Farm, players are competing to build the best Fox Town. To do so, they cannot just build any building. They have to make a plan carefully as where each building will be and how each building is connected to a road network. Buildings while adjacent are not connected unless you have a road connecting both.
By having a good transportation network, you can move and process different types of goods more efficiently. Your manufacturing then has empty room again and you can start producing more, eventually creating even bigger town and production chains. All of that process happens in a round and after four rounds, whoever score the most points wins.
Every player starts with a domino tile that has two spaces, each producing different goods, 5 woods and 3 stones. These are the two main resources for you to build and add the next square tile to your town. The next square tile can be any building or a road path.
These 2 spaces will produce more resources at the start of every round. Assuming, there is an empty space on that space. So, you want to make sure you spend all of them to get the best value before the production phase again.
After the production phase, you can start building by spending those woods and stones. On your turn, you can either build and upgrade multiple road squares or you can build one building. Players keep taking turns until all of them choose to pass and only then they proceed to the next phase of the round.
Anything you add to your town must be adjacent to an existing tile. Remember that placing a building, adjacent to another doesn’t connect them. You want a connecting road in between.
Starting roads are either in straight line or curved road. However, you can upgrade them and flip to the other side and get the T junction road. Not every road needs to be upgraded if you can place the building in smart position.
New buildings might increase your existing production capacity or they can introduce new resources like sheep, wheat or coal. Even if they increase your capacity, remember that it will be in different location and might require a connecting road.
There will be 3 stacks of building you can build from. The Stack C usually have buildings that can convert resources into victory points. For example, a Cafe from Stack C can convert 1 stone and 1 wheat into 6 points with total capacity of 4. The conversion happens at the end of every round.
Before the conversion, the transport happens. Transport phase is when you move resources from one building to another via connecting road and can pass through buildings. So, you want to make sure, you build as many as possible so that the transport and conversion can happen efficiently.
Building from Stack A is how you get more production. Sometimes they also give one-time immediate production right after you build them so you can spend them right away in the same round. Some of them can also generate resources during production but for different goods. Like Fertile Plot, you gain 1 coal and 1 wheat after building but produces 1 sheep afterwards.
Some of them can also give you VP but only if you have resources in that building during production. Barn is an example for that where you can gain 2 sheep if you have 2 sheep during production. With buildings like this, you can then move them during transport for other process.
After the 2nd round, any buildings from stack A on the market will be replaced by those from stack B. Most of them will not generate resource during production but some can give you one-time resource that can help you with existing chain. Stack B also has buildings that gives you VP. For some, you can place anywhere and gain VP every production like the Fountain.
You don’t even need to connect them by road. In fact, there are buildings from Stack B that can give you more points if they are next to other buildings. Like Monastery can give you 1 point per surrounding tile at the end of the game. Workshop increases the value of surrounding buildings that convert goods to VP. So, knowing that these buildings exist later and you prepare the other accordingly can help you score better.
That is the main idea of Foxglove Farm. You produce goods, spend those goods to either build more. Or, you move them to a different building that can convert them into VP. After four rounds, whoever score the most points wins.
The game also comes with expert variant where you can only move goods through the buildings if that building doesn’t have the goods type depicted on them. There is also solo variant along with 5 different achievement scenarios. You can try to score up to 120 for each.
Session Reports
September 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr.
So, first time playing it and I tried the solo mode right away. The only difference is that after you build any building, you also remove the other buildings from the same stack from the market. This means you might have a tough choice if you also want the building that will get removed.
Well, I embarrassingly made a huge error with the rule. Since there was no other player, I thought you can only do 1 building action per round either multiple roads or one building. A reminder that if there is an option for player to pass, usually in that phase, players can keep going taking turns. Because of that, I cannot even score more than 40 while the solo scenarios have at least 60 threshold.
After realizing the error, I did 4 sessions. First one got me to 65, same as 2nd one. Then the 3rd one got me to 76. The last one got me exactly 80 points or the 2nd threshold of the solo scenario. Still far away from the 120.
I can see some improvements with the last play. The not so efficient decision was getting another goods to VP processor for the same type of goods. I had Market that can process any type as long as I have 3 types of goods there.
I had a lot of sheep and coal with the Butcher with Furniture store as alternative to process Sheep and Wood. Maybe I was thinking about how to process stones. The thing is, you can always allocate one of those 2 starting resources just to build road.
It feels like you will always need to rely on one new resource at least. If you immediately focus those 2 starting resources to score points, you will run out of things to build. In that case, you will feel like the game is too short and you don’t do much while in reality, you need to rely on something else. Depending on what is shows up first from Stack C, you want to get either Sheep, Wheat or Coal production right away.
In that last session, I got total 11 new buildings, connected with 6 road tiles. Only one road was not upgraded. Additional Quarry was not really connected by the road but I almost wanted to because of that Market.
There is a chance that your last option to build is just to connect them. But using multiple roads feels inefficient. So, I considered having a building that can give me points instead. Yes, this is not going to work with the expert variant.
It really feels like you want to make a grand plan right from the start. One of the challenging part for me was when I had a building to turn a wood into coal. Usually, I ended up not producing anything since I used all of the woods to build. You definitely can do better if you can calculate your potential production capacity and how you are going to use them.
If you then have some leftover, then your next step to consider is whether you can add more buildings. Knowing what kind of building you might find from each stack and how they can synergize with your overall manufacturing is crucial to win. That is the design signature of these 2 designers.
Playing tactically can help. Mainly because the randomness of the building but maybe it is not going to help much.
A bit comment about the production. I think I will always use the road tiles with the red flowers or trees. For me, they are easier to look at than the green one.
More unboxing pictures of Foxglove Farms on my IG.