In addition to the Landmarks module, this expansion includes more unique wildlife scoring cards and habitat tiles to add variety and enough components to play Cascadia with 5-6 players. How similar is this to Patchwork? It’s the obvious comparison, but everything you mentioned feels familiar (from my one or two times playing it) Our collective team of tabletop gamers is here to help discover the best in board games. We've spent thousands of hours rolling the dice, learning the rules & trying new games and are here to share our love for all things Dice 'n Board! Learn more About Us here... Recent Posts There is an element of strategy involved which gives the board game a wide appeal, but it isn’t so complex that younger children would struggle to play.

It’s plain as the whiskers on your cat’s face that we’re in a board gaming renaissance, especially when you notice that there’s a game for just about any theme, including multiple games about making patchwork quilts. And that’s where Calico comes in. The newest title from Flatout Games brings together some of the minds who brought you Point Salad ( Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, and Shawn Stankewich) with designer Kevin Russ and illustrator Beth Sobel to produce a gorgeous and delightfully puzzly game about making comfortable quilts for your feline friends. And at the risk of letting the cat out of the bag, it’s both charming and more than a little challenging. If the game ends in a tie, the player with the most button tokens takes the victory. The winner earns the “Master Quilter” badge. Variations There are also other achievements set out in the rule book (minimum scores and rule restrictions) which aren’t listed as being used in solo mode. But I often use them when playing alone if I am not in the mood to sit down to a full-blown scenario. Full disclosure time; I am a huge fan of this spatial, creative puzzle and not just because, due to family allergies, this is the only way I can cuddle up with a cat! The depth it reaches is very deceptive; it looks light but plays deep and that’s very clever. In Quilts & Cats of Calico, cats are active during your games. Sometimes minding their own business, and other times coming to you and your quilt. They will lazily observe the board, romp and run around, and sometimes fall into a blissful nap. They are cats, you never know. You can interact with them during the game, pet them, and shoo them away when they get in the way.Calico also has a solo player mode, and it doesn’t require some awkward automata or “dummy player”– it plays very like the regular game and the rulebook comes with suggestions for a solo campaign which I intend to explore at some point.

To set up Calico, give each person a player board and the matching colored goal tiles. There are 6 different goal tiles which give Calico some in-game scoring variety. The rules suggest that for your first game players each use the AAA-BBB, AA-BB-CC, and ≠ goal tiles, placing them in the same location on each board. Haberdashery Health Warning; once a group or sequence has scored, those patches cannot form another group of identical tiles for scoring purposes……so choose wisely my little sew and sews!In Cascadia: Landmarks expansion, players create sprawling habitats and place beautiful natural landmarks within them. Landmarks give each environment its own look and feel, while also providing dynamic endgame scoring bonuses! Calico is certainly an unusual board game, and in many ways, it’s much like marmite; you either love it or hate it. Rules are simple - take two adjacent cards from the dynamic city grid and add them to your expanding city. Use your resource cards and bonuses to construct building cards that require specific combinations. Build special civic structures to multiply your city’s points and be the top urban planner! I’ll be the first to admit that Calico isn’t for everyone. Fans of Stratego , for example, aren’t exactly going to be clamoring for the chance to play a game that’s all about cats, colors, and patterns. Personally, I really love abstract games, but when there is a theme, (even a loose one) it does need to be something engaging and enjoyable for me. For example, the game Ingenious is very abstract and has no theme at all, and that is fine by me. The Undaunted games are a good example of where the theme is very strong and in a way that doesn’t work for me – I strongly dislike military and war themes, doubly do if they are based on real-life. Calico, on the other hand, could be themeless like Ingenious, or it could be themed around the military or something else, but instead, it’s themed around quilts and cats. It’s soothing even if the gameplay is challenging and I believe that is really important. Crunchy difficult deeply thinky games don’t have to be themed in a traditional way to do well and have a wide appeal. It feels like a step forward for the board game industry.

Purring like a contented kitty, Calico sits on my shelf. Quiet, calm, inviting. After all, it’s got cats and quilts on the cover. BUT! Don’t be fooled. Even in solo mode, this game is a spatial, scoring optimisation puzzle that ties me up in knots! Do they know what I am collecting? Are there any patches I can use? Will the placement of a patch achieve one of my goals but ruin all the others I have been building up through the course of the game? Would I be better off scrapping my goals and going for buttons and cats instead? Argh! Possibly one of the most wholesome board games to have ever been created, Calico combines the art of quilt designing with adorable cats. So whether you have a feline friend at home or wish that you did, it’s the perfect game for cat lovers. Fit to Print is a puzzly tile-laying game about breaking news, designed by Peter McPherson and set in a charming woodland world created by Ian O’Toole!

Turns are simple - flip over an ocean tile and see what you reveal! Take what you find in the shallows, or dive deeper, hoping for a larger catch. But watch out, the deeper you go, the more plentiful the predators become!