Charity Challenge 2020 - Week 1 Night 2
And we’re back! Apologies for the slight delay getting this update out, we had to take a pause while I dealt with some pulled neck muscles that made it hard to sit and play for a day or two – but we’re back on track now!
Huge thank you to Scott and Sara who donated to us since the last update. Thanks to all of your generosity and support we’re sitting at $185 of our $600 goal going in to night 2 and that’s awesome! If you’d like to donate to help us raising money for CAMH in support of mental health you can do so here.
Let’s get into Night 2 of the challenge!
The Choice
Since I inevitably lost at Qwirkle on Night 1 (one year I’ll manage a Qwirkle win) I get to pick the game tonight, and guys, this will likely result in a moment of hubris but I’m going to pick a game we both haven’t played before in the interest of having some fun. I figure hey, I’m the guy who plays 100s of games a year and reads rule books for fun – surely I can win a game we haven’t played before!
For tonight we’ll be checking out the recently released Mariposas
The Game
Mariposas is the follow up to last year’s hit Wingspan (that we’ll likely be playing in this year’s charity challenge) by Elizabeth Hargrave. What is Mariposas you ask? Here’s the official description:
Every spring, millions of monarch butterflies leave Mexico to spread out across eastern North America. Every fall, millions fly back to Mexico. However, no single butterfly ever makes the round trip.
Mariposas is a game of movement and set collection that lets players be part of this amazing journey.
Mariposas is played in three seasons. In general, your butterflies try to head north in spring, spread out in summer, and return south in fall. The end of each season brings a scoring round, and at the end of fall, the player with the most successful family of butterflies — i.e., the most victory points — wins the game.
BGG
If you’d like to learn more about the game – check out this video!
The Result
Remember that hubris I mentioned? Yeah. I pulled ahead in the mid game but Rachel managed to really catch up. Points in this game can be hard to come by (it’s very open/free form) and Rachel was the only one who managed to get one of her butterflies back down to Mexico at the end of Fall which was enough to put her over the top in a very close 26-25 game.
We’re both really keen to play this game again, it’s clear that our scores were low and in the future we know what we’d want to try to improve them!
So I’ve already fallen behind by two games for week 1, and it’ll be interesting to see if I can pull this back. I have a plan! For that I’ll see you all tomorrow night!