How to Play Gingham

About Gingham, from BoardGameGeek:

The race is on! Ants have found an abandoned picnic blanket ripe with sweets, but there aren't enough for every colony... Gingham is a tricky game of confection connection. In this game, players position their queens around the gingham picnic blanket and deploy their ants to connect sweets and claim the stockpiles they create. The lead player determines which edge of the playing area all players must play on each round. Everyone then places their queen next to a row on this edge, then deploys an ant into the row where they place their queen. The catch is that you cannot deploy your ant beyond the stitch in the blanket, and the rows closer to the star at the end of the row offer fewer options. That said, whoever places their queen closest to the star becomes the leader of the next round and places their queen next to a row on any other edge of the playing area; players take turns in order of the queens in the previous row. Do you opt for a better turn order position for next round or more flexibility for ant placement this round? By connecting matching sweet tokens with a line of your ants and by surrounding and claiming stockpiles, players score points. Sweet tokens are stacked atop one another after connecting, with sugar cubes being left behind; place next to a sugar cube to claim it as they can be spent on powerful abilities. Stretch your ants across the blanket, and grab the biggest piles of sweets to prove your pint-sized royalty! Gingham is the second title in Bitewing Games' Travel Line. This line of games is focused on being supremely easy to play with anyone, anywhere. -description from the publisher