Another game has come off my shelf to be played for the first time. Last night I finally got to play the game about making a quilt and getting cats to sleep on it, Calico. This is a tile placement game where you are trying to get the right combinations of patterns and colors in order to put buttons on your quilt, attract cats, and ultimately score as many points as you can.

How It Plays

Calico is actually a very simple game. You are placing a hexagon tile on your board from two that you have and then replacing it with one in your “hand”. That’s a full turn. But there is a lot more thinking going on behind it. You are trying to get sets of three of a color next to each other so you can get buttons, which are points. You are trying to get groups of patterns so that you can attract cats, which are points. And you have goals which you are trying to match which give you points. The person with the most points wins the game.

The Scoring

So normally when I do a TableTopTakes review, I do what I don’t and do like in the game. In this case, since I want to play it more before I review it, I just look at some things I find interesting. Calico has some great scoring. In particular the scoring tiles. You have three different scoring objectives that go into your quilt. They aren’t too complex, it’ll be something like AA-BB-CC for 7 or 11 points. If you get either the three pairs matching colors or pattern surrounding that tile you score 7 points. If you get both to work, you get 11 points.

That doesn’t seem that difficult because you can mix and match how those patterns and colors go. I don’t need 2 dark blue stripes and 2 light blue dots, I could have a dark blue stripe and a light blue stripes and I have two stripes. But what makes it more challenging is you have three of these. And they are close enough to each other that they will share some tiles. That means you need to make those tiles work multiple times.

The Aesthetic

This game looks amazing. Beth Sobel did the artwork on it and it is just gorgeous. She also did the artwork for Wingspan. It’s easy to tell what everything is in the game, but you just want to spend the time looking at the cute cat artwork on the cat scoring tiles as well as the bigger cat tiles. This is a game with an amazing table presence.

Simplicity and Complexity

This game is interesting because it isn’t a difficult game to play. As I said, you simple put one of two tiles you have onto your quilt each turn. Then you take one of the three tiles available and end up with two tiles for the next turn. I like that the game is extremely easy to teach because of that. But the game offers so much in the way of decision making. In the game that I played, the player who won ended up with a lot of buttons and a lot of cats, scoring well in those two areas. I was only slightly behind scoring well on the objective tiles.

But you need to think about what you’re doing. You can’t ignore a single area and score really poorly. Plus you need to think about both patterns and colors. To get the higher scoring on a tile objective, you often are just looking for that one perfect tile to wrap it up. And if you aren’t careful it is really easy to mess up. For a game that is so simple there is a lot of turn angst that goes on. Which I love in a game.

Who Is This Game For?

So, I am going to finish this up with one question. I said that this game gives you turn angst and tough decisions, but the aesthetic and simplicity make it seem like it should be very accessible. Is this game too tough for someone who is more of a casual gamer? Most definitely not. This game is easy to play, the decisions can be tough if you want to put that full effort into it. But to do even okay in this game you can focus on one of the things, getting lots of buttons, getting lots of cats, or getting the objectives right. You don’t need to do amazingly at all of them to have fun in the game.

This is a game that will be great for families, it’ll be a game that I can take to my parents and play with them. They play games and this would make sense to them. And if the people like cats at all, it is a game that is worth playing with them. It also is going to be fun for all ages or languages. There is nothing you need to be able to read on in this game, so overall, just highly accessible.

The Not So Final Grade

So what grade would I give them game. My initial gut reaction says that this will settle into that B/B+ range for me. I like the game, I’m probably always going to be up to play it. But I might not always pull it off the shelf myself. And I could see that going higher just because of the fun of the puzzle of the game.

Have you played Calico? Do you like it, does it interest you?

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