An evergreen classic
I always say that my favorite Uwe Rosenberg game is A Feast for Odin but if you asked me what I think his best game is, I’d have to answer 🧵Patchwork. It is just the perfect polyomino game if you are playing as 2 players, the smoothest design from Rosenberg. To celebrate the game there is a new 10 Years Anniversary edition out now which looks amazing! Take a look at all those patterns. 🤩
In case you haven’t played it yet, here is a quick overview of the gameplay: 🧐
The game faces you with a relatively simple decision each turn: pick from the next 3 polyomino shapes from the shared pool and place them on your board - however thanks to the awesome resource management system it is never that simple: there are always multiple things to consider. 🤔 You see, tiles have a button cost and take time to sew into your growing patchwork. Bigger and better shaped tiles cost more buttons, meaning you’ll have to be careful which one you take as you can easily run out of them.
⌛The spent time is tracked on the central board - whenever you place a tile you move forward on that track based on the time cost of the tile. When you cross a button symbol, you get buttons as income for every button shown on your tiles. Some spaces hold a special 1x1 tile that goes to the first person who crosses it. It is quite valuable, as you can fill up holes with them that otherwise would bring you negative points at the end of the game.
An important twist is the player order - ☝️ whoever is behind takes the next turn, meaning it is totally possible to take 2 or 3 turns back to back if your opponent went for a huge time consuming tile in the previous turn. 😁 Finally, there is a race to finish a 7x7 area first for bonus points. Other than that, you want to fill your 9x9 area as best as possible.
Anniversary edition means beautiful new artwork and a gold foiled box. The component quality is the same, but I wish they went for gold foiled tiles too or at least thicker cardboard. The gameplay remains the same too which is no surprise - it’s endless fun after all. 😉 The solo automa 🤖 is included though!
