Charity Challenge - Week 2 Night 2

We’re back for Night 2 of the second week of our family Charity Challenge!

If you’d like to donate in support of the Center for Addiction and Mental health you can do so here.

The Choice

Since I took the win in Night 1 Rachel gets to pick the game for today. She’s decided to pick a game she’s really good at it AND really enjoys. She likes to have fun while she kicks my butt.

Tonight we’ll be playing the first game by designer Uwe Rosenberg (I suspect not the last), tonight Rachel has selected 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’s choice paid off here early on. She very quickly managed to fill in her first garden and then it was all playing catch up. There are 5 rounds in a two player game of Cottage Garden and I would say I didn’t really find my feet until the 4th round. I put up a valiant effort trying to catch up and while we were counting up our scores I thought I might have JUST caught up. In the end? 65-56……. for Rachel.

So Week 2 is now 1-1 and off to an interesting start!