Rogue Review - Quilt Show

My wife loves crafting things. She’s made each of us, our son, herself and me, nice big quilts for curling up under during those cold, cold months of Houston “winter.” So when she got this game, “Quilt Show” by Rio Grande games and it was perfect for the family.

The basic premise of the game is you are competing quilt makers looking to make the most elaborate quilts and earn prize money in a three-round quilt show. Quilts are made out of tiles, there are six designs and you use a different number based on how many players. Every time you draw a tile, you also draw an hourglass timer tile. When the timer tiles are out, a round is over and each player has to build a quilt out of the tiles they acquired. Quilt with the highest point value wins the first prize and then down the line through second and third.

It’s a simple enough idea with a couple layers added on top to increase the difficulty of your choices. First, in order to pick up a quilt tile you have to trade in a number of cards of a matching color. A two-point tile only requires one card, while a three-point requires two and five-point requires three. You gain cards on your turn if you aren’t collecting tiles.

You draw cards in a similar way to gaining trains in Ticket to Ride. A line of six cards are dealt face up and you can either draw three of them or draw three from the deck. There are also wildcards available. If you pick up a face-up wildcard you can only pick up two total cards.

There is no hand limit and you can pick up as many tiles as you want to. Building up a big hand of cards is quite common. But there is a catch there. When you pick up a tile, you do not reveal the tile underneath until your turn is over. This prevents anyone from collecting more than one of a particular design a turn. However, they can pick up several tiles of a similar color depending on what tiles are showing. And you can make quilts out of the same pattern or the same color.

When it comes time to make a quilt, each player has some difficult decisions to make. Each round, the three available prizes will be a random set of values from up to $15,000. Highest total prize money at the end of the game wins. Tiles that you don’t use to build a quilt, you get to keep and use in a later round. Also, quilts that don’t win a prize also remain. If the prizes come out in round one are middling values, you have a choice. Use your best pieces to try to acquire them all or save your best pieces for to use for a later high scoring quilt when the big prizes come out.

One final note, the quilt tiles are nice high-quality pieces, similar to the times from other Rio Grande games like Carcassone. They feel sturdy and solid. Overall, it’s a fun little game that does not take long to play. Good for a family, especially is one of them is likes making quilts.