Tonight I got to play Patchwork with my wife. Our first Uwe Rosenburg game?!?!?!
I'd played the recently released Android phone version and decided to get the real thing. As most of you know I really like Cathedral. This game is sort of similar and totally different at the same time. The premise is to spend cardboard-buttons purchasing awkward shaped bits of cardboard fabric which you must use to build your cardboard-patchwork quilt. Sewing all the bits down takes varying lengths of time, depending on their complexity which moves your counter around the centre track. Some bits of fabric have buttons on them, these earn you income when you pass button markers on the track. The track also includes cardboard-leather patches, which no self-respecting patchwork quilter would ever dream of using; these can be used to fill in those annoying holes. All the awkward cardboard pieces are placed in a ring around the score track. Only the next three pieces can be bought and a marker is moved around the perimeter to indicate which these are available. If you can't afford anything you can pass and move your counter along the track until it is in front of your opponent, you are given a cardboard-button for every space you move. The first player to construct a 7x7 grid earns an extra 7 points too. At the end of the game, the player with the most buttons wins, however each empty square on your quilt earns you -2 points!
I'll be honest, the theme of this game sucks. I knew my wife would hate it too - she's made quite a few quilts and her results are much better than the cardboard monstrosities we made. Having said that though, behind the wafer-thin theme is a very interesting strategic abstract game. Players who send big bucks and storm ahead on the time track leave their opponents open to score big points by making several smaller purchases. You have you sneak carefully up to the extremely valuable leather patches to prevent your opponent from nabbing them from under you.
As well as timing, there's also a micro-economy to run. You want to make sure you get pieces with buttons to bring you future income. But most of them are either expensive or awkwardly shaped. Sometimes you can find yourself with no options because you've invested poorly in your economy and you'll have to spend turns saving up to buy a piece to net you some big-bucks.
And now I come back to Cathedral. There's obviously something in my mentality that likes filling holes. It's pleasing working out the optimal position to place a tile so no spaces are left. This is quite difficult because it's very hard to plan ahead and make sure you have space for those larger more expensive pieces you won't be able to afford until the end of the game. Ultimately, this bit of the game is really hard. My wife went for a fairly higgly-piggly kind of approach, where as I decided to go for the 7x7 bonus, the downside being those larger pieces become impossible to fit at the end of the game.
So all in all, we quite enjoyed playing Patchwork, it only took about 25 minutes to play and the rules were all pretty intuitive. I thought I liked the score track, but actually I found counting quite hard, the back of the track has an alternative we will be using next time.
My wife managed to apply her existing needlework skills and I ended the game with a huge negative score:
On the plus side though: The first player is the player who used a needle last. My wife said that was obviously her....until I pulled out my insulin injection and pointed to the needle on the end
Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=2524.0
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