Qwirkle Flex

• Designer: Susan McKinley Ross, Reiner Knizia
• Publisher: MindWare 
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3IhvLUn
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Take your Qwirkle strategy in a whole new direction! Tiles with three different backgrounds create surprising opportunities to score diagonally. Points add up quickly when you place even one tile that scores in multiple directions. Adjust your focus from foreground shapes to background colors for the thrill of next-level maneuvers.  How flexible is your Qwirkle strategy?

The game is made up of 108 tiles. Three sets of 36 qwirkle tiles (6 designs in 6 colors), one set with a black background, one with a white background and one with a split background.  The tiles are mixed in the bag.  Each player draws a starting hand of six tiles and places them on their rack.  The starting player is determined as each player announces the largest number of tiles in their hand that have either the same color or same shape on them (ignoring background color) – without duplicates.  The player with the largest set goes first and plays the set they announced.

On every turn thereafter, the active player chooses tiles from their hand to play to the board.  All the tiles from the hand must share the same color or shape.  Additionally, they must be played in a single line so that one pre-existing tile is used in the combination.  You are not allowed to have any duplicates in the combination – therefore the largest possible combination is six tiles.  It is possible to play so that you form two or more lines; but if you do so, the combinations must all be legal by the above rules.

Now you score your points by counting all of the tiles in all of the rows/columns that you created or added to on this turn.  If you have made multiple lines, some tiles will be counted twice.  Now, check your Flex score – that is the diagonal lines.  Here, only the background color matters, and you score one point for each tile in the diagonal if they share the same background color.  Note that you cannot place a tile to form a Flex line of 7 tiles or more.

Finally, score 6 bonus points for a Qwirkle – that is six tiles in a row of the same color or shape.  You also score 6 bonus points for a Qwirkle Flex – that is six tiles in a diagonal that all have the same background.  

Draw tiles to bring your hand back up to 6 tiles and then let the next player go.  The game end is signalled when the bag of tiles is empty. Play continues until one player is able to play all of their tiles – that player scores a bonus 6 points and the game immediately ends.  The player with the highest score at that moment wins.

My thoughts on the game

So, this is Qwirkle with some added stuff – a third suit of tiles and a new way to score them.  I have always enjoyed base Qwirkle, as it is super easy to learn and accessible to all.   Though the base game is 15+ years old, it still comes out from time to time.

I suppose that this new version is a more “gamer-y” game, meant to be more challenging.  It might be challenging, but honestly I just find it frustrating.  The new scoring of the diagonals, the Flex score, is cumbersome, and honestly, it’s hard as heck to see.  My brain just can’t really process it that well, especially because the black/white diagonal line doesn’t always line up along the scoring row.    For me, this addition takes out all the elegance of the base game, and instead causes you to have to think far too long about some plays than the game wants now that you have to consider a third axis in your play restrictions and scoring.

FWIW, as is always the case for me, I have issues seeing some of the tiles, especially the yellow print (which is super light in my set) on the all-white background.  

This version was fine to try once, but it is straight onto the sale pile.  If I want something more complicated that Qwirkle, it’s not going to be this.  It’s not often that Herr Doctor Knizia misses for me, but this doesn’t even hit the target.  I’ll still gladly play regular Qwirkle… 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it.
• Neutral.
• Not for me… Dale Y

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3IhvLUn