Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Easier to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Light strategy
More strategic control
How it plays
How does it play?
Cooperatively patrol an unexplored North Sea, laying tiles around moving ships to connect buoys, lighthouses, waterways, and islands before the weather closes in.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Cooperative Game
Players coordinate their actions toward a shared objective and win or lose together.
Tile Placement
Place tiles to build a shared or personal spatial arrangement.
Grid Movement
Move pieces between adjacent spaces on a regular grid.
Modular Board
Build the play area from interchangeable sections that vary between games.
Read the full game description
Beacon Patrol is a compact cooperative tile-laying game about charting a safe route through the North Sea. Each turn, a player adds sea tiles adjacent to their patrol ship, moves across connected water, and trades a tile with another ship when coordination matters more than individual options. Lighthouses, buoys, piers, and other landmarks score only when the surrounding waters are completely explored, so the group must balance outward movement with finishing the gaps left behind. The same clean system works solo or with up to four players, and a session fits comfortably into half an hour. The puzzle is calm but not trivial: limited hands and movement make every placement a shared navigation decision. Different layouts emerge naturally, making it easy to reset and try for a more complete, higher-scoring patrol.
