Qwirkle

 Qwirkle

Qwirkle is a really simple game of matching either shapes or colours but with the massive benefit of being a really hard game to master.  You can play easily by not affecting other people or screwing them over, or you can intentionally steal qwirkles (worth lots of points) that people have left wide open.

There is a lot of strategy and flexibility in this game for adults and the simplicity of shapes and colours means that is is fantastic for kids.  Players score points by building lines of shapes or colours and the points are tracked through the round, highest points at the end wins.  The first few times I played this with my young son who was 2 at the time we often just did matching and built a grid without concern for points, but as time went on I slowly introduced the points to him and we have played properly ever since.

The only thing I dislike about this game is if you are colour blind (which I don't actually know anyone who is but there are a lot of people in the world) this game doesn't really have a great way of telling between the colours, so I assume you would need some sort of help if this was the case.


Game Play

Each player is dealt six tiles that they keep hidden from the other players. When I play with my 4 year old (and when he was younger) I allowed our personal tiles to remain face up.  This helped me as I could see what he might do and so left qwirkles open for him until he began to understand the game better, but it is not necessary for learning the game.  I did not give him advice about what/how to play as I wanted him to learn that, but I didn't want to wipe the floor with him in terms of points as I had a massive advantage.  In all the games we play both of us win sometimes and not others and I never allow him to just win all the time, as that isn't fair and it doesn't teach good gaming, he will learn nothing in terms of how to strategize, manage resources, concentration etc if all I ever do is allow him to win.

Alright back to explaining the game play.  After everyone has six tiles the player that can put the longest run of tiles down goes first, sometimes this is two tiles and sometimes it is three or more.  The major rules about placing tiles are 1)place all different shapes of one colour together, or 2)play all different colours of one shape together 3) no doubling up of shapes or colour in one row or column created.
In the picture to the left I could not add a blue circle to either the circle row or to the blue column, however I could add a blue circle to the very bottom right of the yellow column and make a new circle row there.  You are allowed to play as many tiles as fit in a row/column that makes sense.  So you could add 5 different coloured circles to a new row entirely or you could add 1 tile each time.

Any time you spend tiles you take more blind out of a bag of tons, when there are no tiles left play continues but you don't get to replenish your stash, and play continues until someone uses all their tiles.  If you finish all your tiles first you get an additional end game bonus of 6 points.  I often get left with a few tiles that I just can't play before someone else finishes theirs.

Each tile placed gets you one point per tile in your placement. For example in the picture above left if I added a blue diamond to the diamond row I would get 4 points.  If the tiles you place get your a qwirkle (all 6 colours or all 6 shapes) you get the points for your placement as well as a "qwirkle" bonus of 6 points (so usually minimum of 12 points for a qwirkle.  In the photo above left the yellow row is one tile away from a qwirkle, that means if anyone has that one tile and plays it they would very quickly get 12 points.  You do not want to leave "open" qwirkles - ones that are easy to finish up if you can avoid it.  This is a big part of learning the strategy of this game.

Review

I adore this game, it is really simple and enjoyable for adults and children.  It is very easy for a child to just play one or two tiles per turn or as they get better many more.  There is a lot of strategy in this game which means it can advance as your child gets better at noticing what has been placed around his/her tiles.  My son often just shape matches because he finds that easier.  I am usually kind and don't take every qwirkle from him but I do finish a few of them so that he learns what he should be trying to get.  Over time he has really begun to understand the game and now holds off on just putting one shape out at a time, more often looking for twos and threes that match to try and get more points.

At home with adults we play two or three rounds of this all the way to the end and then the scores are all added together for the "ultimate" winner.  This especially helps when you have people learning as they can do badly for their first game then be able to pick themselves up later.

Generally this game is for sale at your Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS) but it can be found easily online. I would be amazed if you couldn't find this in most game shops (even ones like toyrus) as it is hugely popular and a long time classic!