Reef FAQ
20 questions players ask · Updated Nov 12, 2026 · Full rulebook
Setup
Playing the Game
Determining If and How Often a Pattern Appears
- When a card scores each piece adjacent to your highest stack, do you score every such piece?
- Do special cards that score matching stacks around your highest stack need those stacks to be as tall as the highest one?
- Can one block of same-colored pieces score the same L pattern more than once?
- Does a single reef piece count as a stack when scoring?
- Can a scoring pattern be rotated to match the reef?
- Does the order of two colors in a pattern matter, such as red then purple versus purple then red?
- For a card with two wild four-color pieces placed orthogonally, must the two adjacent stacks share a top color?
- Do the height and the pattern on a scoring card both have to match, or does the height only need to be met somewhere?
- Does a height requirement like 2+ mean a minimum height, and is a matching pattern scored once?
- Can matching pieces on different levels of a reef both score for the same card?
- When a card shows a color with no number, must it be a single reef piece, or any stack with that color on top?
End of the Game
- If a card that scores pieces around your highest stack is still in hand at game end, how much does it score?
- Does the game end immediately when the draw deck runs out, even if cards remain in the display?
- When a player takes the last coral of a color, do the other players still take their normal turns before end-game scoring?
- Do you take coral from cards you score during end-game scoring?