Charity Challenge Week 3 Night 1 - Cottage Garden

We’ve reached the start of week 3 of Rachel and my charity challenge.  Every night this month we are playing board games raising money and awareness for Toronto’s sick kids hospital.  So far we’ve raised $75 of our $500 goal.  If you’d like to donate or learn more please visit our  campaign donation page.

Let’s recap where we are in the competition.  The competition is based on weekly wins.  There’s 5 weeks in the competition and each week is a mini best of 5 competition, so to win a week you need to take down 3 wins.  The winner of the competition is the first person to take 3 weeks.  At the moment Rachel won week 1 3-2 and I’ve just won week 2 3-2.  Meaning we are tied a week a piece and tied 5-5 in terms of games overall.  For historical context last year Rachel managed to take down the first two weeks so things are feeling much more competitive and tense around the house this year.  Loving it!

The Choice

Since I won Crokinole last night to end week 2 Rachel gets to pick the game to start us off in week 3.  Tonight Rachel pulled out the stats because she decided to answer my Crokinole trump card with one of her strong picks.  In the end she picked a game where she has a 100% win percentage: Uwe Rosenberg’s Cottage Garden.

The Game

Cottage Garden is a cousin to Patchwork, a game we’ve already played in the competition this year.  In Cottage Garden, like Patchwork, you are placing tetris shapes on a board trying to fill in spaces.  Cottage Garden is more straight forward than its cousin, there’s no currency or engine aspect to the game.  On your turn you simply take a piece and place it one of your two boards, the winner is the person who continually fills in their boards the fastest.  There’s a few other mechanics in the game that help you fill out your board but that’s more or less what it comes down to.  You score points based on the number of pots you leave uncovered on the board, by optimizing the way you place your pieces.

If you’d like to learn more about the game check out this video.

The Result

Rachel got off to a flyer and I struggled to keep up.  There’s bonus point (single point) for the first person to reach a certain milestone and I managed to get that done, but I didn’t feel confident at all.

In the end Rachel counted her score.  64.  I counted my score.  65.  I called for a recount since it was so close and Rachel counted up to 65.  I recounted.  65.  65-65.  We have our first ever tie and we go to the game’s printed tie breaker.  Remember that bonus point I got?  The person who got that bonus point breaks the tie.  That little moment where I pushed my advantage decided it.

Maybe not the most satisfying win, but in a competition you take the wins however they come.

See you tomorrow!