I’m playing a board game every day this month and blogging about it (I did a similar challenge last year). Feel free to join me during my Every Night Is Game Night: My Daily Play & Blog Challenge. And tweet me with what you’re playing these days!

Today was Tabletop Tuesday, the day when I volunteer as the facilitator of a local high school’s board games club. As the students reminded me today, it’s almost the end of the year so the club is winding down soon. I was a little sad; the kids are great and it’s been an honor sharing my passion for the hobby with them.

We had three different games going on today: Qwixx Deluxe, Indigo, and Lotus. The students were familiar with the first two, so I focused on teaching Lotus. The kids caught on right away, as they always do, and when one of them had to leave early, I took over for her.

While the other students were finishing their games, I taught Patchwork to one of the regular attendees. He’s one of the sharper students and he had the game figured out after a few turns. He seemed to enjoy it so I’ll bring it to next week’s game day.

Patchwork is also one of my favorite games to play with my wife. We both enjoy the puzzle-like nature of building our quilts as well as the race to build up our stash of buttons. In Patchwork, players have a 9×9 grid they must fill up with pieces of their quilt. The pieces are “bought” with buttons before being placed on the players’ grids.

Each piece has a cost (in buttons) and a movement cost. Movement is tracked on a separate board; as players fill up their quilts, their movement takes them closer to the game’s end. Some pieces have buttons printed on them so when a player crosses certain spaces on the board, they earn the number of buttons embedded on their quilt.

After both players have finished moving around the board they tally up their buttons then subtract the number of empty spaces on their quilt. Each empty space is -2 points so it helps to have a large supply of buttons. Games are typically low-scoring.

I love Patchwork and it’s one title I always seem to have on hand for those times when only one other player is ready to get their game on. It’s always a welcome challenge with whomever I’m playing with.