Charity Challenge Week 2 - Night 1
Welcome to week 2 of the O’Sullivan Charity Challenge. We’re playing board games every day this month raising money and awareness for CAMH, Toronto’s primary mental health institution.
So far we’re 20% to our goal, having raised $100 of our $500 goal. If you would like to donate to support us you can do so here.
To recap week 1 – I won 4 of the 5 games we played giving me the win for week 1. The last time I won Week 1 in the Charity Challenge Rachel went on to dominate the next three weeks and claim the trophy. We will have to see how this year goes…
The Choice
Rachel gets to pick the game tonight as the runner up of Week 1. She’s picking one of the few games that she brought from her family to the household. This is a game we’ve played every year of the Charity Challenge and I’ve never won, although last year was our closest game.
Tonight we’re playing Qwirkle.
The Game
Qwirkle is a game that plays sort of like Scrabble, but with colours and shapes. There are 6 different shapes in 6 different colours and you need to lay out combinations of those shapes and colours. A row can either be made up of the same colour in different shapes or different colours of the same shape. Each tile placed is worth a point (and includes re-scoring if you link into tiles already placed) and if you manage to get six in a row down you get a Qwirkle, giving you 12 points for that completed row.
To learn more about Qwirkle check out this video.
The Result
Last year set the tone for what Qwirkle is for us now – we get pretty quiet and intense. This year’s game played out the same. We were within 10 points of each other for the first thirteen rounds. It was extremely close in fact right until the end.
In the end though Rachel opened it up and finished 262 to 220. Rachel had two more Qwirkles that plus some better efficiency in her late game plays helped push her over the edge.
Rachel has played her week 2 trump card to get us started, we will have to see how the rest of the week develops.