Calico

I bought a game for Louise.  It's called Calico and combines two of her favourite things: cats and quilting.  Please put your initial reaction aside and keep reading...

This is a tile-laying game with multiple ways of scoring points.  The box contains player game boards, loads of tiles with six colours and six patterns, goal tokens, buttons, and cats.

There are 10 cats with preferences for different size and shapes of quilts, from which three are selected for each game along with a random pair of patterns they prefer.

Whenever you make a set of tiles the cat likes, a small cat tile is placed on the quilt.  Similarly, if you place three tiles adjacent of the same colour, you get a button of that colour placed on the quilt.  Lastly, and most cunningly, there are 6 goal tokens of which 3 are placed on the player board for each game.  These earn further points by satisfying the condition in the six tiles around the hex e.g. six different patterns or colours, or AAA-BB-C (three of the same pattern or colour, plus two different, plus another different).  So each player can score from a combination of achieving goals, attracting cats, and sewing on buttons.

A completed quilt looks like this:

So it looks beautiful and has a fun theme, but is it any good?

Absolutely.  This game has been in high demand since its Kickstarter.  English language versions are all sold out and the second edition isn't available yet.  I couldn't wait any longer so I bought the German version and downloaded the English rules, since there is no language-specific text on any of the game elements to worry about.

With a number of different ways to score, each player has to optimise and balance the different approaches based on the tiles that are coming up, and Louise and I really enjoyed playing it.

The game mechanism could have been skinned with a range of different themes but I really like the fact that they've gone with a theme far from the usual content of board games.  It may not have been a typical Rivals purchase but the challenge and optimisation in the game makes me think it would be good Wednesday night game too.