Wouter & Ymke 
A picnic blanket has been abandoned with cookies, cupcakes, pies, cherries, and other sweets still sitting on it. For us, that would probably raise a few questions. For the ants in Gingham, it’s simply a good day. Each player controls an ant colony, sending workers across the blanket to connect matching sweets and pile them into increasingly tall stockpiles.
It looks cheerful, and it certainly brings plenty of colour to the table, but this isn’t really a relaxed picnic. You’re trying to build routes while other players use the same spaces, take over the stockpiles you created, and remove ants that are getting in their way. The board also changes whenever someone completes a connection, so a route that looked promising can disappear before your next turn. Apparently, leaving dessert unattended is a serious strategic error.
👥 2-4 players, ages 12+
⌛ Playing time: 20-40 minutes
📝 Designers: Robert Hovakimyan
🎨 Artwork: A. Giroux
🏢 Publisher: Bitewing Games (review copy provided)
Gameplay Overview
Gingham is played over several rounds, with each player taking two turns per round. On your turn, you place one of your queens beside a row of the cloth board, then add one worker ant somewhere within that row. The first queen played each round determines which side of the board everyone will use. All other queens must be placed on that same side, usually in an empty row.
The position of the queens also determines the order for the next round. A queen closer to the star will act before one placed farther away. This means you’re choosing both where you can place an ant now and when you may act later. A useful row might give you an immediate connection, while another could put you first next round when everyone is looking at the same valuable space.
When placing a worker, you can choose an empty space or a space containing an opponent’s ant. In the second case, their ant is bumped off the board. It isn’t removed from the game, though. At the end of your turn, the other player places it on any empty space on the board and resolves the placement normally. Removing an ant can interrupt someone’s route, but it may also give them a useful placement somewhere else.
The main way to score is by connecting two matching sweets with an orthogonal chain of your ants. You score one point for each ant in the shortest path between those sweets. One sweet, or an entire stockpile, is then moved on top of the other. The empty intersection reveals a sugar symbol, and one or two sugar cubes are placed there.
You can also claim sweets and stockpiles. When your newly placed ant completes a full surround, you may use the matching claim token and score one point for each sweet in the stack. A sweet in the centre needs four surrounding ants, while stacks along an edge or in a corner require fewer. Claims aren’t permanent. Another player can surround the same stockpile later, return your marker, score the stack themselves, and place their own marker on top. You must also decide whether to claim immediately when you complete the surround. You can’t return later and claim it without placing another relevant ant.
Stockpiles can continue growing as matching sweets are connected, although two claimed stockpiles can’t be merged. Sugar cubes are collected by placing an ant next to them, and they pay for five special abilities. These let you use an occupied queen row, place across the central stitch, increase the score of a connection, or move an existing ant instead of placing a new one. Each ability becomes more expensive after someone uses it, while the others slide towards cheaper positions.
The game ends at the close of a round when someone has reached at least 40 points in a two or three-player game, or 32 points with four players. Players then score the sweets in their claimed stockpiles, five points for each type where they own the tallest claimed stack, and one point for every unused sugar cube. Whoever has the most points wins.
Artwork & Components
The first thing we noticed was the cloth board. It looks like a red and cream gingham picnic blanket, with printed stitching and a diagonal seam running across it. There are two boards in the box: a smaller eight by eight grid for two players and a ten by ten grid for three or four. The fabric doesn’t lie completely flat every time, but smoothing out a picnic blanket before playing feels appropriate enough.
The wooden sweets are chunky and easy to recognise. The box contains cookies, cherries, cupcakes, pies, and lollipops, although the lollipops are only used in the two-player game. As sweets are connected, they’re placed on top of one another, so the board gradually fills with little wooden towers. The claim markers sit neatly on top, and we never had trouble seeing who controlled which stack.
Each player has 26 cardboard ants and two larger wooden queen pieces. The queen shape is distinct enough that it doesn’t disappear among the workers, and the player colours remain easy to tell apart once the middle of the board becomes crowded. The white wooden sugar cubes are small, but they stand out clearly against the blanket.
The separate ability board holds five sliding tiles, with their position showing the current sugar cost. It has a darker wooden look that doesn’t quite match the brighter board, but it’s readable and moving the tiles takes only a second. The score dials are kept face down, which hides everyone’s current total. Bitewing Games also sells a separate gingham travel case with a zip and carabiner. It matches the picnic theme, but it isn’t included in the standard box.
Our Experience
Our first game was mostly spent making whatever connection we could see. Matching sweets were there, we had ants nearby, and points seemed like points. We also claimed stockpiles whenever the opportunity appeared because leaving one unclaimed felt like wasting it. By the end, we understood what each action did, but our ants had spread across the blanket without much connection between one plan and the next. It all worked, but we were still playing one turn at a time.
That changed when we started looking at what a connection left behind. In our second game, one of us completed a respectable route, scored the points, and created a tall stack near the edge. It felt like a successful turn until the next player surrounded that stack with very little effort and claimed it. There was a brief discussion about whether this was unfortunate or entirely predictable. It was entirely predictable. From then on, we stopped looking only at the points printed on the move and paid more attention to the new stack, the empty space, the sugar that appeared, and which player would benefit next.
We also became more aware that one ant could contribute to several plans at once. A placement might extend a future connection, put pressure on a stockpile, collect sugar, and make another player change direction. Those placements often worked better for us than taking a few quick points. They left us with more sweets and stockpiles we could still reach later. We didn’t always agree on which benefit mattered most, especially when one of us wanted the guaranteed points and the other wanted to prepare something larger. Quite often, the sweet we were aiming for had been stacked elsewhere before our next turn, so waiting for the larger connection was never completely safe.
Bumping took us a while to judge properly. At first, it looked like an obvious way to spoil another player’s route. Then we bumped an ant and its owner placed it on the opposite side of the blanket, collected sugar, and completed a different connection. After that, every proposed bump came with a longer look around the board. Sometimes removing one particular ant was still worth it, but it stopped feeling like a free attack. Bumping happened regularly, but it never felt too harsh. The displaced ant comes straight back and sometimes ends up in a better spot anyway.
Our use of the queens and sugar changed in a similar way. During the first game, we chose rows almost entirely for the worker placement they allowed. Later, turn order became just as important. There were rounds where someone accepted a poor placement near the star, then acted first next round and took the space everyone else needed. I’ll admit that I dismissed one of those queen placements as a waste. A few minutes later, I was the one without the stockpile.
Sugar led to the opposite problem. One of us liked spending it as soon as an ability solved something, while the other preferred waiting for the price to drop. We had turns where patience saved two cubes, followed by turns where patience simply meant the useful opportunity was gone. Neither approach worked every time. We often had to ask whether we really needed the ability, or whether we were only using it because it was sitting there.
By our later games, we were also less interested in creating one enormous network. A large web of ants looks useful, but it tells the whole table where your next connections are likely to happen. It also gives everyone a clear reason to interfere. Several smaller groups gave us more options and made it harder for another player to disrupt everything with one placement.
The board itself kept forcing us to adjust anyway. By the final rounds, sweets had moved, stacks had grown, sugar had appeared in new areas, and our original plans were usually no longer relevant. Eventually, we stopped planning too far ahead from the starting layout. The sweets were going to move anyway, so it made more sense to work with whatever the previous turn had left behind.
Our Thoughts
Despite the cloth blanket and wooden desserts, we were usually thinking about routes and positions rather than ants stealing lunch. The theme gives a clear reason for sweets being stacked, sugar appearing, and ants surrounding valuable areas, but this is still mainly an abstract connection game. Anyone expecting individual ant powers, changing characters, or a story developing across the game won’t find that here.
Explaining a turn takes very little time: place a queen, then place an ant in its row. The slowdown comes when that ant could complete one route, help surround a stockpile, collect sugar, improve your position for next round, or block someone else. With so many possibilities to weigh up, players who like to calculate every option can spend quite a while deciding. This is probably our biggest criticism.
The hidden score dials will also divide groups. We liked not knowing the exact totals because it stopped every move from becoming an attack on the player who happened to be one point ahead. At the same time, the visible board doesn’t always show who is actually winning. Someone with fewer claimed stockpiles may already have scored several long connections, so it can be difficult to judge whether you’re stopping the leader or merely making life difficult for someone who looked threatening.
There’s also very little randomness once the board has been set up. When a route fails, it’s usually possible to point to the queen row you chose, the stockpile you left exposed, or the ant you bumped into a better position. There aren’t many random events that will repair those mistakes later. We liked that we could usually see where things had gone wrong. The downside is that a player who falls behind won’t often get a lucky break that puts them back in the game.
Gingham also needs a table that is willing to interfere. If everyone concentrates only on their own routes, one colony can build an efficient position and become difficult to catch. Bumping ants and taking over claims aren’t side activities for players who happen to enjoy conflict. You need to do these things, otherwise one player can be left alone to build whatever they want. The good part is that these actions rarely remove someone’s entire turn or permanently destroy their pieces. You interfere with a route, not with someone’s ability to keep playing.
For us, the main reason to return is that every completed connection physically rearranges the next set of options. We rarely ended a game feeling that we had simply followed the plan we made at the start. There was usually some stockpile we should have protected, some queen row we underestimated, or some very helpful ant we really shouldn’t have bumped. It looks friendly, plays more sharply than it looks, and ended up being a picnic we were quite happy to return to.
📝 We received a copy of Gingham from Bitewing Games.
