Patchwork Doodle First Impressions
Patchwork Doodle lets you sketch out your quilt.
It’s Patchwork with Pencils.
This is a roll-and-write version of Patchwork, with each player having their own 9×9 grid to fill in over the course of the game.
Patchwork Doodle Game Play
So, this is easy:
You have a circle of cards with a meeple on one of them. Then a player will roll the die and move the meeple that many cards clockwise. This will then show which shape the players must draw on their sheet.
Each player has 4 bonus actions that can be used once per game. These are to use a card on either side of the active one, mark off 1 single space on the quilt and cut a tile in half before adding it.
Also, the x2 lets you use one of these 3 actions again.
Scoring occurs after a certain number of cards have been played and happens 3 times in a game.
To score, find a rectangle you have filled in. Score 1 point per space in a square within that rectangle, then 1 point for each row that extends that square out into a rectangle…
Not the easiest thing to explain. Anyway, at the end of the game, you lose a point for each uncovered space, most points win.
Setup
Layout cards and give each player a sheet and a pencil.
Components & Artwork
Basic. Not much is needed here but it’s all decent enough.
Ease of Teach & Accessibility
Teaching is easy… to a point. Everything is REALLY simple but that scoring mechanism is a pain to explain. Players in our game just were not getting it.
It’s accessible but because of that scoring, I wouldn’t want to play this with new gamers. Too many other simple roll & write games around that are easy to play.
Patchwork Doodle Summary
For a more accessible game, I would stick with Qwixx. Honestly, because of this scoring, I would put the difficulty level of the game on par with Welcome To… Maybe if a play it again I might play with players that ‘get it’, but some of this group didn’t.
I like placing Polyominoes. Games like Santa Maria do it to an extent and, well, Patchwork obviously but I found out I prefer to place tiles than draw scribbles.
This is also a bingo-style game one where everyone has the same resource it’s just who uses it better. Karuba wins when looking at games that use this mechanism for me.
So, this game is good… BUT! There are:
- better Roll & Write games.
- more fun Polyomino games.
- better ‘Bingo’ style games
It just falls in that gap.
Jesta Tha Rogue
