Charity Challenge Week 2 Night 4 - Qwirkle

Welcome back to Rachel and Ryan’s charity board game challenge!  Thank you everyone who has donated to support our campaign so far, we’ve raised $75 of our $500 goal.  We appreciate all the donations, and support on social media as we work to raise awareness and funds for Toronto’s Sick Kids Hospital!  If you’d like to donate or learn more check our campaign page.

Rachel and I have both agree that winning week 2 of the competition is very important to overall success in the competition so I think you’re going to see some of our trump cards coming out in the game selections.

The Choice

Since Rachel lost Istanbul the Dice Game last game night she gets to pick and she’s going right for the jugular – she’s going Qwirkle.  Qwirkle is a game I have so so feelings towards and Rachel knows she can beat me 9/10 times.  I think it’s a good choice – we’ll see.

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

I’ll start by saying – this was the closest game of Qwirkle we’ve ever played.  Last time we played Rachel blew me out by 100 points and I probably should have quit playing board games right then and there.

Rachel opened  strong, managing to get the first Qwirkle.  After that it went back and fourth quite a bit.  We were neck and neck to the very last minute and when I managed to put my final tile down before Rachel, thus ending the game and giving me 6 bonus points, I thought I had it.  She even slowly counted and triple checked her score math, looked up and told me I’d lost 229 to 220.  SO. CLOSE.

Will this be a turning point opening the door for Rachel to take Week 2 and a serious lead in the competition.  I’ll do everything I can to stop that tomorrow night.