We're So Board!
We're So Board!
Episode 44 - Patchwork (Short & Sweet)
In this episode, we're sewing together quilts and trying to fill in as much of it as possible! However, the patches don't come in standard shapes so making your quilt quickly starts to feel like a puzzle. This 2-person Tetris-like game offers many different themes, including one for Halloween! So listen to find out why Rachel wants to catch 'em all and how Jake is going to bring competitive shape matching to your favorite sports station!
Game Info:
2 Players
15-30 Minute Playtime
Ages 8+
Board Game Geek Entry
Social Media:
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Instagram
Twitter
Twitch
Hello and welcome. I'm Jake.
Rachel Cutler:I'm Rachel. And we're so bored.
Jake:The Podcast where each episode we take a close look at a tabletop game and discuss our personal experiences with that game to help answer the question. Well, this year of boredom.
Rachel Cutler:That's right, we take a close look at the mechanics complexity and replayability in a game to determine if it's the perfect alternative to I don't know, let's say preparing your lawn for winter by cutting the grass superduper short filling in all the holes that have been recently dug by your new pet pig, then spreading the topsoil and the rye grass seed everywhere. And just hope that your pet pigs slashed the birds don't eat it all before it can take hold and grow.
Jake:I'm actually more concerned about the birds than the pig.
Rachel Cutler:birds are gonna eat a bit of the seed.
Jake:Yeah, they're you're gonna eat some of it, but they're also unmonitored. We can go outside with the pig. Yes, I'd be okay. stop that.
Rachel Cutler:Honestly, my biggest concern is just keeping the holes filled in.
Jake:I mean that that's true. I mean, that's fair. Anyways, before we get started, we have started streaming regularly on Wednesday evenings again.
Rachel Cutler:And if you've been tuning in, we have been dressing up in fun costumes, sometimes for the month of October and we try.
Jake:We try.
Rachel Cutler:We tried to like theme the costume with the board game and it didn't work a lot of times. But whatever we worked with what we had.
Jake:That's true, we did. And if you want to check us out, we are streaming Wednesday evenings starting between five and seven pacific standard time depending on when I'm working really@twitch.tv slash so bored podcast. I am also trying to get started streaming again. It's life happens and then stuff doesn't get done. And that's one of the things that I've kind of put onto the side is my streaming. However, that is starting to change. I will be streaming on and off at twitch.tv/naughty Doc 541. So come check me out if you want. Give me a follow and turn on notifications. So you know when I'm on.
Rachel Cutler:All right. What are we talking about today?
Jake:Crisis?
Rachel Cutler:No.
Jake:We never talked about crisis. Nope. Someday we will be great. Today we're talking to you about patchwork. It's a it's a cute little two player game. I really like it for a lot of reasons. But it was designed by Uwe Rosenberg with art by? I'm pretty sure it's like you way. I don't think so. Based on the last name.
Rachel Cutler:All right.
Jake:Anyways, it was designed by Ewu Rosenberg, and it's got art by lots of different people, depending on the version you're playing. I didn't take the time to list the 40 different names it has. I'm sorry. It was published in 2014 by lookout games. So we have themed our episodes for this month to be Halloween games. Kind of like costume games, spooky games, all sorts of correlations with Halloween. And why is this what a Halloween game?
Rachel Cutler:Yeah, that's what I want to know. Because Jake, like I have brought up several times over the last several months like oh, hey, we could do patchwork. No, no, we need to wait for October. We need to wait for October. Okay, I don't feel like patchwork is particularly Halloweeny but
Jake:first off, it has a Halloween edition that we have. It does. So that right there is reason enough second. When I think of patchwork, I think of like scarecrows. Scarecrow is a good costume idea.
Rachel Cutler:Okay, you know what I think of there is a boss.
Jake:I know you're talking about
Rachel Cutler:in the Wrath of the Lich King raid. Ah, is it in nax Rammus it's in nax Rammus Yeah, named patchwork and he's this big, like stitch Golem. That's what I think of. And so yes, in my mind, that is a very Halloween themed thing because like pretty much all of the Wrath of the Lich King things I think are very Halloweeny
Jake:there's also a Boss Banjo Tooie that is a big blow up dinosaur with patches on it that you fly around and you hit those patches and it loses air. I also think of that when I think of patchwork.
Rachel Cutler:Okay, well, there you go. That's enough reason for the Halloween themed again,
Jake:lots of potential costumes.
Rachel Cutler:Okay, so what is patchwork? This is a two player game like Jakesaid, where your goal is to get the most points by filling in the most space, basically, on a nine by nine quilt, you're basically collecting these different various shaped pieces and putting them together and kind of orienting them a little bit like Tetris, I guess, and trying to, you know, fill in as much of that nine by nine space as possible. So the way you have this setup is in the middle of the table, you will have a spiral Time Tracker, so that just like spirals inwards until you know, it kind of gets to the center, where that indicates the end of the game. And then surrounding that time tracker is going to be all the different quilt pieces randomly placed around it in a circle. And then there is going to be like a token. So you know, we're talking about the Halloween version. In that version, the token is like a grave marker or, you know, a grave headstone. And it goes between the only one by to patch, the smallest one, and whatever is next in clockwise order. And that's kind of where it starts. And that's important because that indicates which of the patches you can pick up as you're kind of going around and playing the game.
Jake:Yes, because you only have a certain number from that token to purchase from, you can't just purchase anything around. So playing the game. So you get to choose one of the following actions, you can advance your token to be space one ahead of your opponent on the time tracker, which gets you currency that will get you one currency for each space you move. Or you can choose a patch within the next three of the quilt peace token that we were talking about, pay for it with the currency and advance the number of spaces on the time tracker notated on the actual patch that you purchased.
Rachel Cutler:And the normal currency and like the regular original game are buttons, but that's boring. Of course that's boring. In this game, it is eyeballs because that's what the Halloween theme is.
Jake:Yes. So the person who is lowest on the TimeTracker goes next. So this could actually lead for the same person to go multiple times in a row. So if Rachel is six ahead of me, and I buy a patch, it's only worth three. And I move up three, I get to go again, actually. And when you pass eyeballs on the time tracker, you count the number of eyeballs on all the patches on your quilt that you have so far, and you gain that number.
Rachel Cutler:And so those eyeballs are like kind of between spaces on the time tracker at various intervals. And yeah, that's just kind of a nice little like gold marker to pass. It's like, okay, I can can refresh my money, you know, refresh my currency that I use to buy the quilt pieces.
Jake:Yes, assuming that you have collected eyeballs, yes. Now if you land on a one by one patch on the time board, you can immediately use it and choose a space to either place it on your quilt, or you could discard it. And so the one by ones are interesting, because we'd haven't really described a lot of the shapes of the patches. But they are not your standard like squares or rectangles, or there's a couple like that, but they are very odd shapes. And you're trying to piece these together like a jigsaw puzzle. And so sometimes you might have one space that is just leftover. These are useful for that.
Rachel Cutler:Yes. So that's how you play the game. Other things to have in mind while you're playing, you do get a bonus like tile. And like a bonus piece, if you've managed to completely fill in a seven by seven area on your quilt. So that means it doesn't have any like open spaces singular little patches missing or anything like that. The first person to do that will get a special tile that is worth seven points at the end of the game. And that can be significant. Yes, it can. The game ends when both players reach the center of that spiral in the Time Tracker, which is usually done pretty like quickly one right after another just because of the way that the turns work. And like you're always kind of close to each other because of the way that oh hey, it's the person who's furthest behind that gets to go next. And then at the end of the game, you're basically going to count up your currency or eyeballs or buttons or whatever, and you will subtract two points for every empty space on your quilt. So it's important to have a pile of money and it's important to have your quilt filled in in order to gain points and then you know if you have that special token that gets you the extra seven you add that but that's it that's the game.
Jake:The currency is one to one right at the end. Yes, this is one of the rare games that having a lot of currency at the end actually does something for you. I found
Rachel Cutler:Yeah, well, I mean, it's one of those ones where currency equals victory points, right likeIt's kind of the same thing in the end. Right. All right, so let's talk about our experiences playing this game.
Jake:I hate it.
Rachel Cutler:Yeah.
Jake:horrible, terrible game. Okay. I don't recommend anybody ever playing it ever again.
Rachel Cutler:Wow, this is a first of all, thanks for listening. I guess that's it for
Jake:no, I really liked this game. It's, we'll get into our ratings later. But it's easy. It's simple. It's entertaining. And the different editions have different shapes. They have some standard ones, of course. But depending on the edition that you're playing, you're gonna have different shapes, so that your quilt is going to need different patches for each game. That's pretty cool, huh?
Rachel Cutler:Yeah, so I don't know, I picked this up on some kind of sale somewhere. I did not initially buy the Halloween version. I think I bought the americano version. Yeah. Which Oh, I even forgot to add that in on the English editions. But what that does is it really kind of just changes the skin of it. It's essentially the same game but like the patches that you're placing are like stars and stripes and red, white and blue or whatever versus the Halloween edition has got, you know, a lots of orange and purple and eyeballs and spooky things. And I don't know spiders, headstones and stuff. So it's really just the skin of the game. But anyway, I picked it up on a sale, it's a very fun game to just kind of pull out and you know, you need to fill 30 minutes or something like that, you know, you just need to kill a little bit of time. This is the perfect game. It's easy to set up. It's easy to get started explaining the rules to a new player and everything. It's just very easy all around.
Jake:Yeah, and I really liked that, because I don't remember what the box says for age limits or like suggestions. But you could teach a five year old to play this game and have fun. And they would enjoy it too. It says eight plus, but yeah, I mean, it's it's really just shapes, matching shapes. That's pretty much what it is. Yeah, it's competitive shape matching, which should be on ESPN eight, the Ocho. Coming next season.
Rachel Cutler:Yeah, this is one of those rare games that I think I would be willing to buy the different themed versions of, I'd be interested in buying the Valentines version and the Christmas version and all of that just for like the different skins and you can kind of pull it out and be like, Oh yeah, it's this time of year. Here we go. Here's a great game, you know, to kind of play for this season,
Jake:which honestly some genius marketing move. Yeah, really it is. But ya know, I really I really enjoy this game. I think everybody should play this game at least once or twice. We'll get into our ratings, but not difficult. Not complex, very simple game, but very fun. Irregardlessly.
Rachel Cutler:Okay, so let's talk about the expansions and add ons,
Jake:what expansions and add ons.
Rachel Cutler:That's basically what we've just been talking about already. Like, there is no real expansions or like things that change the game. It's just these different versions. So for the English ones, we have the original, the Americano, which I forgot to write down the price of a Valentine's Halloween, Christmas. And then there's a doodle version, which is essentially a roll and write version of the game, like you're pulling cards, and you're rolling dice, and then you're scribbling in the different patch shapes. So all of the different, like versions of the actual game are between 30 and$35, on the Asmodee website, and the doodle version is $20.
Jake:That's pretty cool. I think the doodle version would be fun.
Rachel Cutler:Yeah, maybe that's I don't know, a little bit easier for on the go. Like you don't have all the little pieces that you might lose or something.
Jake:Exactly. Yeah, that could be a backpack game. Honestly, this this could be a backpack game.
Rachel Cutler:Yeah, it is small. It is definitely small enough to fit in a backpack. It's just those components that you might be worried about losing but there are also a ton of versions of this in other languages. So I saw in German there is a winter version, which I would expect to be slightly different than the Christmas version that we have an English no Oktoberfest version Come on, not not that I saw but there was a Polish heritage or something like that version that again, it's just really changing the skin and the colors and stuff that are on the quilt but I thought that was really cool was like oh, yeah, you know, like, that is so easy to just kind of reprint the game in these different colors and make it work for the region that you're selling it in.
Jake:That is pretty cool. Once again, genius marketing idea. Yeah. Gotta hand it to him. They did good. Okay, so as of right now, patchwork is rated at a 7.6 of 57,000 reviews. And all the expansions are pretty similar. Are all the different versions? I'm sorry. There is actually an Automa edition. Oh, really? Yes, there is an auto edition that you can purchase? Well, there is an Automa edition. I don't know if you can purchase it or not. It was produced in 2018. So you'll be able to play by yourself, if that's what you want to do. Oh, interesting. And it is weighted at a 1.6. So this is a pretty not difficult game.
Rachel Cutler:Yeah. And again, you know, that weight is kind of a combination of our complexity and our, like, easy versus difficult. Yeah. Ratings. It's kind of a combination of both of those. But it's pretty lightweight. And that kind of goes to what I was saying. It's very quick and easy to pull out, set up play teach. It's pretty universal. I think you'll find people that like this and just can kind of lay back and maybe it's a good way to start the night or in the night, you know, if you're going to be doing a longer gaming session.
Jake:Yeah. I mean, this is awesome. I'm kind of surprised. It's not rated a little bit higher but
Rachel Cutler:yeah, I think again, that goes towards the weight of the game. You know, I've talked about my theory that only like mid weight gamers and heavyweight gamers really use Board Game Geek,
Jake:you're probably right there. So speaking of ratings, we're going to talk about ours first is easy versus difficult. How easy is it for you to understand the rules and mechanics of the game? How easy is it to pick up as a new player and to take your turn? Very, very, there's literally two actions you could do for your turn. That's it. You do one of those two things.
Rachel Cutler:Yeah. And the rulebook is, it's a trifold little paper that's, you know, like, half a sheet of paper. Like, it's got even lots of pictures on it, it doesn't even it's really not that wordy. Honestly, if you put all the words all the explanation in words, it's probably two paragraphs long.
Jake:There you go. I think I would probably give this a one. I'm also thinking of one. Have we given anything else a one before? I don't think so. I mean, okay, if we're gonna go like super, super meta, and like, take any and everything into account. I'd say like, tic tac toe is a one. Okay, so I would put this at a two. This would be a two then yeah, probably was a one. This is a two out of 10. Okay, I can support that. I mean, this has twice as many actions as tic tac toe. So I feel it's only fair.
Rachel Cutler:But yeah, there's no need to go back into the rulebook. There's no remembering. There's no, there's no nothing like there's no little A little help sheet cheat sheet thing. It's those two actions and just go. So I agree. Now, simple versus complex, though.
Jake:Still pretty low.
Rachel Cutler:Yeah, still pretty low. But I was gonna say, I feel like there is a little bit of strategy to this game. Obviously, there is optimization that you can do with how you place your tiles, or your patches. And I don't know if I've historically always won this game, but I feel like I'm a little bit better at it than you.
Jake:You have not always won, but you have won more times than I have in this game.
Rachel Cutler:Okay. Yeah, I feel like I'm a little bit better at kind of compacting everything and figuring out the shape that I need and getting all of that together, like without a bunch of random little spaces.
Jake:I don't do this thing called Tetris.
Rachel Cutler:I don't usually either.
Jake:No, no, no, I just No, no, no. So I think for this, I would give it two complexity.
Rachel Cutler:Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking also two.
Jake:Next is the route versus random rating. This is what mechanics change to make each play a unique experience. Nothing. The only thing that changes it really is the order of your spread out pieces.
Rachel Cutler:Right? Yeah, you've got the randomization of that. But otherwise, the one by one patches are in the same place every time on your time board. The eyeballs on the time board are also in the same place. So not a whole lot going on. But again, that kind of goes into the simplicity of it just oh, hey, I need to kill you know, about 30 minutes let's, let's just whip out patchwork real quick.
Jake:Yeah, it's very, very simple, very easy. Not a whole lot of meat to dig into on this game.
Rachel Cutler:Yeah, so I think I'm gonna put this at like a to one random as well, two to two.
Jake:I want to give it a one but
Rachel Cutler:I don't think it's a one. There is some element that is randomized.
Jake:Yeah, I guess. I mean, you do you technically it does have twice as many randomized elements as tic tac toe?
Rachel Cutler:No, because Tic Tac Toe has zero according to our definition of randomization,
Jake:but you can't have a zero on the scale. Right? So a zero would be a one.
Rachel Cutler:Oh my gosh, okay, I guess . You can't multiply anything by zero is what I was gonna argue. But
Jake:you can multiply but you still get zero.
Rachel Cutler:Mm hmm. Anyway, whatever. I'm going with all twos on this.
Jake:Okay, you're gonna go with all twos. I'm like, I'm gonna go to two one.
Rachel Cutler:All right. Sounds good.
Jake:All right, Rachel, it's time to answer the question. Would you rather prep your lawn for winter by cutting all the grass really, really short filling in all the holes recently dug by your new pet pig and then spreading ryegrass seed on and topsoil everywhere and hope the birds and our pigs don't eat it all before it can take root and start to grow.
Rachel Cutler:Yes. Yeah, I did that this morning. My body aches. My back hurts. I feel like I'm so old. We are old. Yeah, I would way prefer to play patchwork.
Jake:Yeah, I agree. That sounds like a lot of work. And I'm an inside boy, though, huh? I've been declawed.
Rachel Cutler:You've been declawed. Yeah.
Jake:Well, there you have it. That's one of our shorter episodes. But that's patchwork. Feel free to dress up as a scarecrow or as the stitch abomination from World of Warcraft. Or Oogie bogey from Nightmare Before Christmas. Yes. Oogie. Boogie is basically like a really fat version of oogie is what the patchwork like, wow, boss looks like if you're having trouble picturing that.
Rachel Cutler:All right. So thank you everybody for listening. As always hit us up on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at so bored podcast. That's S O B O A R D podcast. We always love hearing from you guys. What kind of fun Halloween games are you playing this October? What kind of spooky stuff have you got going on all of that. If you don't feel like doing it on social media, you can also email us at We are so bored@gmail.com That's w e a r e. S O B Oard at Gmail. And make sure that you subscribe so that you get notified when we have like surprise releases. Because we're doing monthly all of a sudden, or whatever, you know, you want to make sure that you're in the know every time we release an episode, right? That's true. And lastly, it would be awesome if you would leave us a rating we really appreciate it. It helps the podcast grow. It helps other people find the podcast and makes it so that we can do cool things like giveaways.
Jake:Yes, that's super important for us and for you because more giveaways equals more opportunities to win. We also want to thank ANT-podcast management for editing this episode. They are professional podcast editors and can be found at a&t podcast management.com. That's a n t hyphen, podcast management.com. We also want to thank Mitchell Mims, the designer of our art he is currently accepting commissions. So check him out at MIMSCO sar a on Instagram or on his website, Mitchell Mims. That's mi ch e l m i m s dot c ar rd.co.
Rachel Cutler:And again, we are streaming on Twitch on Wednesday evenings right now we're having lots of fun dressing up in costumes and attempting to justify why they match the game that we are playing. So pop in and join us. It's a lot of fun. We're trying to tell more crazy stories about our animals, then all of that so come in, you can chat we can hang out. It'll be a good time.
Jake:Yeah, it really is usually a good time. Even I have fun.
Rachel Cutler:Even you have fun.
Jake:Well, and I'm German and I don't like fun things. So
Rachel Cutler:even though all you do is win win, win, win win.
Jake:All I do is win win win win win. Look sometimes sometimes I get tired of winning
Rachel Cutler:Yeah, no. Let me see what I can do about that for you.
Jake:No, I'm good. Thanks.
Rachel Cutler:I am also streaming on Twitch are trying to get back into it. I am streaming retro games a lot of times sometimes it'll be well Overwatch two just came out. So I'll probably be on that. And I've been playing a lot of while lately so probably that I also really like indie games. So if anybody has any suggestions, let me know. But you can find me at twitch.tv/naughty Doc 541 That's twitch.tv/nau gh t yDOC 541.
Jake:Well, that's it, folks. Thank you guys so much for listening, and we'll see you next time. Bye bye.