Second Chance.

Uwe Rosenberg has two new games out in his seemingly unending series of polyomino-based (think Tetris) titles that started with Patchwork and continued with Cottage Garden. I reviewed Patchwork Doodle, the first of these two new flip-and-writes, last week; Second Chance is very similar, also a flip-and-write where you try to fill out a 9×9 grid by revealing cards with polyomino shapes and drawing those on your paper, but it is the far easier game to learn and play, but with a really clever twist when you get stuck that can cause massive frustration to other players (by design, I think).

The conceit is as above; everyone starts with a unique, 8-square pattern that they’ll fill out in the center of their papers, oriented however they’d like. The deck of polyomino shapes is shuffled and you draw and reveal two cards on every turn. Each player picks one of the two shapes and draws it on their paper, again anywhere and in any orientation they’d like. (You can rotate or flip the shapes in any way you need to.) The game comes with three reference cards that show all of the shapes in the deck, which are also displayed inside the box itself, so you can sort of plan ahead around certain shapes with the understanding that two shapes you need could both appear in the same turn.

The big twist comes when any player can’t place either of the two shapes shown, usually as you get close to the end of the deck. That player gets a “second chance,” and turns over the top card on the deck. If they can place the shape, they do so and continue playing. If not, they drop out; if they’re the first player to do so, they fill in any empty space on their grid with the number one. (If two players bust on the same turn, they both get the 1.) No other player can use that card, so it’s possible that a key shape you wanted will never be available to you because another player burned that card for their second chance.

A Second Chance turn.

Play continues until one player fills out their entire grid, in which case they win the game; the deck is exhausted; or all players bust. In the latter two cases, the player with the fewest empty squares on their grid wins, regardless of whether they dropped out or were still alive when the cards ran out. If there’s a tie, any players with that 1 on their grid win the tiebreaker. Otherwise it’s a shared victory.

As with Patchwork Doodle, the Second Chance box says it plays 1 to 6, but you’re really just limited by the number of start cards, which I believe is a dozen. We haven’t had anyone win by filling out their entire grid, but my daughter came within a single square of doing so (and she won, of course, even though she busted.) It’s very easy to teach people how to play the game – you don’t even have to explain the second chance part in full until you get there, unless people are counting cards, so to speak – and it’s a quick learning curve to climb too. As with Patchwork Doodle, you’re mostly playing solitaire, but the challenge of filling out the whole grid here is more enjoyable because of the number of cards and variety of shapes on them. It’s also quite portable and I prefer the subtler artwork. I think given the choice between the two flip-and-writes, I’d pick this one.