Number of Plays: 13 (since I started recording games, I’m sure actual number of plays is 50+)
Game Length: 5 minutes – 3 hours (however long your group feels like playing
Mechanics: Real-time, Card game
Release Year: 1960
Designer: Werner Ernst George Muller
Intro
Pst. Hey, kid, come over here. I know you’re interested in that hot new game that everyone’s talking about, but check out what I’ve got for ya. Dutch Blitz is a classic, a real gem I tell ya. You gotta get in on this action while you can. After all, a game that continues to get sold and played after 80 years has to be good, right?
When I say the words ‘Dutch Blitz‘ to a group of people, there’s at least one person who perks up and gets excited. Whether it’s the game they played endlessly with their family, or spent playing all summer at camp, or even played in college instead of writing that boring term paper, Dutch Blitz has touched the lives of many.
How to Play
This section is going to be a little tricky as house rules for Dutch Blitz are rampant, like most games that manage to survive the relentless passage of time and get taught via word of mouth. Everytime I teach Dutch Blitz to a group that has at least one other person who has played before, a difference in rules comes up. So, here’s how my family plays:
Each player is given a deck of 40 cards, numbered 1 through 10 of four different colours. To begin the game each player shuffles their deck, and deals 10 cards face down. This is their ‘woodpile’, and their main goal is to reduce their the number of cards in their woodpile down to 0. They then deal 3 more cards face up in a row as their ‘posts’. The remaining cards in their deck get held in one of their hands.
I’m gonna need a bigger table
Simultaneously, players shout “GO!” and flip the top card of their wood pile. In real time, players are searching for cards they can play to the center of the table, creating piles of cards of the same suit in ascending order (beginning with 1, going to 10). If they see a pile with the top card being a red three and they have a red four in front of them, they can (quickly) take their red four and put it on top of that red pile, face up.
Should your woodpile and posts all be inelegiable for play, you can turn the top three cards from the deck in your hand onto the table, showing you a new card you may be able to put out onto a pile. When you have flipped through all the cards from your deck, you pick up the whole pile (do not shuffle) and start again from the beginning.
You must alternate boy-girl-boy-girl in descending numbers when stacking on your posts
Should you choose, you may also place a cards on your Posts, as long as the cards descend in sequence, and the suits alternate. If you’ve ever played Solitaire, then many of these mechanics and goals will feel very familiar, but with a lot more speed and stress. If you don’t like the word ‘Blitz’, feel free to use my title for the game: “Stressey Speedy Multiplayer Solitaire–y“.
The first player to drain their woodpile of cards shouts “BLITZ!” and all other players either simultaneously groan, or mutter their thanks to a deity of their choice. All players count up the cards left in their woodpile (these cards are -2 points each, for a maximum of -20 points in a round), and all the cards that made it into the common centre area are worth 1 point each. Seperate all the cards back to their owners, wipe the sweat from your brow, tally the score (or don’t, scores are arbitrary), and set up for another round!
Review
I can’t remember how Dutch Blitz came into my family, but I can recall late nights at my Aunt and Uncle’s cabin, young teens and adults alike frantically playing, roccus laughter, and a flurry of bent cards. Later in life, I introduced it to my college class during some down time, and it took off spectacularly. Initially, only one other person in my entire class had played Dutch Blitz before, but after a week of playing it every day during lunch, suddenly four other decks had been purchased and three tables were now dedicated to Stressey Speedy Multiplayer Solitaire–y every day from 12:30 to 1:30.
Get that blue four on the pile, stat!
It started friendly enough; multiple games would be played with the same people, with the first player to accumulate 100 points winning for the day. If if we ran out of time, so be it. Eventually a round robin style was adopted to accommodate a dozen players. After each game we’d rotate one seat to the left, introducing new players to each group (now that there were 4 simultaneous games happening) and we abandoned the idea of accruing a growing score over multiple games. Competition became fast and fierce, elbows flew, and other classes learned to avoid the cafeteria when those rowdy culinary kids were playing their little card game.
A few years later I was hanging out with some co-workers from the restaurant we worked at. I pulled out Dutch Blitz, and one other person had played it before. Two others joined in and after a quick introduction to the rules (and a small argument on house rules), we were off. The other experienced player and I were quickly flipping from our decks and slapping cards into the centre of the table, while the other two chefs sat and stared at our fury. Turns out, while this game is fun to play while getting inebriated, it’s difficult to learn when you’re already in that state.
It’s good manners to put the 10 card face down to indicate that pile is ‘finished’
Like most real time games, a level of familiarity and history does give experienced players an edge. Dutch Blitz can be really intimidating to new comers, especially when playing at the full player count. When three other people are quickly scanning their cards, and slamming their cards into the center stacks, the information available to each player is changing rapidly. By the time you notice that one of your cards could go out onto a stack, it’s entirely likely that someone has already beat you to it. The most dramatic moments of Dutch Blitz are when two players try to put the same card on the same stack at the same time. Either one will get there a moment faster, slipping their card under the other persons and shout victoriously, or the cards will collide and bend, and the owner of the game winces as the players argue over who arrived first.
While I’m all for keeping my games in as nice condition as reasonably possible, there are some games that you just need to accept their damage. I have 3 copies of Dutch Blitz all in varying levels of condition. It’s a game that gets played enough and is enough fun that I don’t mind needing to buy a new deck every 4 or 5 years.
Playing Dutch Blitz with the full complement of four players is a joy. The stacks in the centre of the table grow quickly, and if you miss putting a card out you can be sure another stack of the same colour will grow quickly. While it can be frustrating to watch others play cards while you’re stuck with a 10 card on top of your woodpile, your bad luck can be offset by playing other cards into the centre of the table. While the person who goes out ends the round, they aren’t always the person with the best score.
My wife loves Dutch Blitz and for a while, we’d play together, just the two of us. Unfortunately at the minimum player count of two, it’s not uncommon for both players to get stuck in a rut, just flipping cards, unable to play any to the centre at all. We played that if we both were stuck and agreed to do so at the same time, we’d flip the top card from our deck to the bottom, giving us a new set of cards when flipping through our decks. While it’s still a fun and fast paced game, it’s left wanting at two players.
Heaven forbid they use different colours. Or different icons…
At the other end of the spectrum, I also own the expansion pack, which allows up to 8 players to join in on the action. I’ve only played a few games at 8 players, we all found it to be a tedious experience. The table size required to fit 8 people was expansive enough that people seated on the end of the tables were unable to reach all the way over to the other side, or, if they got excited, dove across the table sending the other piles flying. It wasn’t long before we decided breaking into two 4 player groups was the better way to play.
Overall, I recognize that Dutch Blitz is not the game for everyone. If you prefer your board game nights to be quiet, civilized affairs, I’d recommend giving this a pass. If real time games tend to stress you out, Dutch Blitz isn’t going to change your mind. Nonetheless, Dutch Blitz has been a hit with most of the people I’ve introduced it to. There’s a special kind of excitement that grows in your heart when you find another kindred spirit who has Dutch Blitz in their history. It is joyful to find an opponent to test your skill against and to reminisce about how this little green box made its way into both of your lives.
I come from a Scottish family. My grandpa proudly displays our family crest emblazoned with the MacKenzie clan motto: Luceo Non Uro (translation: I shine not burn). He has a tartan kilt and reads biographies and histories of the Scottish clans. It’s his influence on my life that makes me yearn to visit Scotland and the titular Isle of Skye.
It bothers me to no end that MacKenzie is not an available clan
Naturally, my predisposition to Scottish culture draws me to games like Isle of Skye. I find myself already liking this game before I’ve even took the box lid off for the first time. The playerboards emblazoned with Scottish clan names, long horned cattle just waiting to be herded, and the brochs nestled high in the mountains appealed to me in a way that other games with objectively inferior themes (like Mediterranean trading) just can’t reach.
How to Play
Isle of Skye is for 2 to 5 players and takes around hour to play. Each player gets a castle to start their kingdom, a hatchet to cleave the land, and a player shield to hide all of their wealth from the other players.
You start with naught but a castle
Gameplay is broken into 6 phases, repeated for 5 or 6 rounds (player count dependant). First is the income phase; each player earns 5 gold from their castle, plus one more from each whiskey barrel that has a road leading back to your castle. In phase two each player draws three tiles from a bag and puts them in front of their player shield. Each player secretly sets the price for the tile by assigning coins from their own treasury to each tile behind their player shield. You only put coins behind 2 of your 3 tiles, however, as the third tile gets assigned the hatchet. It can be an agonizing experience to not only weigh how much to value each of the tiles, but also to decide which one of the three you want to throw back into the bag! All my tiles are great, can’t I just keep them all?
The fourth phase begins by lifting away the player shields and pitching the axed tile back into the bag. One by one every player is given one single opportunity to purchase a tile from the another player. If a tile does get purchased, the buyer gives the seller the same amount of coins they placed by the tile in the previous phase and takes that tile into their supply. The seller gets to take the money from the other player and the money they used to set the price for the tile in the first place back into their treasury. Once every player has had one opportunity to buy from their opponents, all the players take any unpurchased tiles remaining in front of them into their own supply. The money that was used to set the price for each tile is deposited into the central bank; you effectively purchased the tile yourself.
If I can’t have the sheep, no one can have the sheep
Depending on how that last phase shook out, the fifth phase has each player taking their 0 -3 tiles now in their own supply and placing them into their kingdom. While roads don’t have to connect to anything, the terrain on each tile edge must match when placed next to other tiles (a pasture must be matched to a pasture, a lake to a lake, etc). Every tile must be placed on the round it was obtained and may not be held in reserve to be placed in later rounds.
The final phase is scoring; at the beginning of the game 4 scoring objectives are placed the 4 slots (A, B, C, and D). Each round some of those objectives get scored. In round one, only objective A is scored, but in later rounds objectives A, C, and D may be scored one after the other. By the time the game ends, every objective will have been scored 3 times.
Review
Playing Isle of Skye is a quick affair. The game begins simply, as each player only has 5 coins to split between two tiles. Inevitably, if you’re early in the turn order, you’ll want to hold money back so you can purchase a tile from someone, meaning your tiles will be cheaper. The reverse is true for players later in turn order; they feel fine committing most of their cash on a tile, hoping to extract more money from their opponents who choose to purchase their tiles. By the end of the game, some players will have literal fistfuls of cash, and suddenly holding money back for spending is no longer an issue.
The flow of Isle of Skye is satisfying. The game moves through the upkeep phases quickly to get players back to making interesting decisions. Having multiple scoring objectives laid out, each game pulls you in multiple directions; do you earn a few points now, or do you build toward a specific goal hoping to earn a massive amount of points in a later round?
Around the third round, the catch-up mechanism shows up; suddenly every player gets money for each player ahead of them on the score track. This encourages players to be just barely in last place to get the largest bonus. I’ve had games where the player scores are grouped tightly for the first five rounds, then suddenly one or two players manage to dial in on the final scoring objectives and fly ahead of their inferior opponents.
While getting a reward for doing poorly isn’t my favourite thing in the world, in Isle of Skye it feels necessary. Without the influx of cash, a player in last place can find themselves strangled, every tile that may be worth a couple of points priced horribly out of their reach.
The economy grows substantially throughout the game. Every player earns at least 5 coins each round, and only the coins left to unbought tiles leaves the game. Each whiskey barrel and every player ahead of you increases the amount of money available to players, and that money changes hands freely. In the first round you have a piddly little 5 coins to try and price 2 of your tiles AND hold enough money back to buy a tile from someone else, but in the last rounds, suddenly everyone has stacks of gold, and it’s not uncommon for a particularly valuable tile to cost 15 or 20 gold, and for the tile to sell. Fortunately money is worth points at the end of the game, at a ratio of 5 coins to 1 point
You get money by having a castle, and for whiskey barrels that have a road going back to your castle
The shopping phase is where the game heats up! Each player has one opportunity to buy a single tile from any opponent. The questions begin to pile on, do you buy from the player to your left, giving them extra money for their purchasing action? You really want the tile with 3 sheep from the person to your right, but they’re furthest ahead on the score track, should you really be giving them extra money? They don’t even need the sheep! They just priced it higher, specifically because they know you get extra points for sheep! Ahh!
If I can close off that pasture, my bonus points for cabins doubles
You can always choose to pass instead of buying, of course, but that’s rarely a good move. Many of the scoring objectives grant points for having tiles arranged in a specific shape (such as having three or more tiles in a column). There’s also the bonus objective scrolls nestled in some terrains that can have their points doubled if its terrain gets completed. This means ANY TILE is often better than passing. Everyone buying tiles from each other keeps the money in the economy (rather than it being lost to the central bank), which in turn encourages others to spend more money and raise the prices on their tiles next round.
By the time the last round of the game rears its head, Isle of Skye is nearly unrecognizable. Tiles are selling for 15 coins each, kingdoms have grown by 11 tiles, and the landscape has become a dizzying array of pastures, lakes and mountains with sheeps, farms, lighthouses, ships, and cattle. Players are gleefully axing tiles with precious lighthouses on them, only to cause other players to clutch their heads in despair because they were counting on buying that lighthouse to complete a set to earn 5 points and would have paid a ludicrous amount of money for it. The dynamics of Isle of Skye are a joy to behold, and when the dust settles and the final sheep bleats, I’m always eager to play this game again.
Having the expansions makes this a well sized box. I’ll talk about those next week.
Game Length: Each mission is between 5 and 15 minutes
Mechanics: Where’s Waldo/Wally, Cooperative
Release Year: 2020
Designer: Johannes Sich
Artist: Daniel Goll, Tobias Jochinke, Johannes Sich
Intro
As a kid, I was a big fan of Where’s Waldo. The cornucopia of colour and activity on the page encouraged me to take out every Where’s Waldo book that came to our local library. I would sit and scan the pages, feverishly searching out the striped devil, while also finding all the neat details hidden in the photo. As an adult, I have a mild obsession with the Wimmelbilder subreddit, again, loving the details and deriving joy from discovering hidden narratives in a chaotic scene.
My experience with MicroMacro: Crime Citybegan with an app; a small section of map on a screen that allows you to zoom in and out as you pan around Crime City. A man was murdered and it’s up to you to find the crime scene. By clicking the corpse you begin a adventure through space and time, retracing the victims steps and following the evidence, clicking the clues until you you find victim’s home, the murderer, the motive, the murder weapon, and the stolen loot. As soon as I discovered that this app was a demo for a tabletop game, I quickly made my way to the local board game store to purchase it.
Components
MicroMacro: Crime City is contained in a thin white and black box. In fact if you look closely there is even a puzzle to solve on the cover of the box. If you buy the game new you’ll need to sort two decks of case cards into individual little paper envelopes. Next, you’re instructed to apply a sticker to a little “magnifying glass” that comes with the game. Once both of those tasks has been completed you are free to unfold the massive map (75cm x 110cm) and begin unraveling the myriad of stories that have been laid out for you to explore. I specifically mention the components here because I think it’s important to know that that you need a big play area and need to sort out the crime deck before you begin to play.
This is pretty much all that comes in the box
How to Play
MicroMacro: Crime City tasks you with finding characters and stories on the large black and white map. Your first task is to find the scene of the crime for the case you’re trying to solve. You remove all the cards from the envelope and the first card will show you an image of your target and a general area where you can find them.
Once you find the scene, the cards will take you through the questions that need answering. The world that is MicroMacro: Crime City isn’t a snapshot in time where every detail on the map is happening simultaneously. Instead, it is a layering of several different stories, all happening in this one city. You follow characters that appear in different locations as they go through their day.
When a card asks you where the victim came from, you and your friends will search around the crime scene for where they were just before they met their untimely demise. Once you find their trail, you trace their day further back in time. Alternatively you may find yourself chasing the culprit as they try to escape the city. You’ll be surprised by how much detail you missed while exploring certain areas of the city for other cases. Once you think you know the answer to the question asked by the card, you can flip it over to ensure you’re correct and move on to the next card until you’ve solved all the questions for the case. In my experience, each case takes between 5 and 15 minutes.
Review
MicroMacro: Crime City tasks you with finding characters and stories on the large black and white map. Much like Where’s Waldo?, your first task is to find the scene of the crime for the case you’re trying to solve. You remove all the cards from the envelope, and the first card will show you an image of your target and tell you the general area where you’ll be able to find them. Unlike Where’s Waldo?, where the entire challenge and fun is in finding one correct detail in a large mess of irrelevant information, you are constantly discovering new and fun details in the lives and deaths of the denizens of Crime City.
As you follow people back and forth from rooftops to alleyways, you’ll pass by interesting snippets of different stories. While those moments won’t help you in your current case, it’s exciting when they show up in later crimes and you know exactly where to look.
Most of the cases focus on small sections of the map, but every now and then the case expands throughout the city, forcing you to search the wider world for clues of where people came from or where they were going. The box says this can be played with 1 – 4 players, but I wouldn’t recommend involving more than 2 at a time. The map may be huge and during the moments when you’re searching all four corners of the city for clues, it’s fine. But if your task is to search carefully in a small area, it’s awkward having four heads all converge on a spot, arms and hands covering the spots where people want to look, noggins casting long shadows across the map. It’s also incredibly hard to see any coherent details when looking at the map upside down. To combat that, you can try and fit four people shoulder to shoulder, but the person on the west side won’t be able to see what’s happening on the east side. While the map is over 100 cm long, the details are minute. You’ll need to ensure you have very good lighting and decent eyesight and/or corrective lenses. I’ve heard of some people needing to don reading glasses for the very first time while playing.
It’s not every day that a baby gets to meet its heroes!
Be aware that this game is not as “family-friendly” as you might first believe. Although the cutesy art depicting adorable walking bunny people on the cover and the description of finding details on a large map may make draw parallels to the aforementioned Where’s Waldo? book series, which is quite popular with kids as young as 5 or 6 years old, the content of MicroMacro: Crime City may contain scenarios that are upsetting for children. The game begins with ‘innocent’ crimes, like a pair of kids using a fishing line to steal someone’s top hat; however, it quickly dives into more mature themes, such as murder, infidelity and prostitution. There are no official content warnings on any of the cases highlighting which ones may be good to play with a 12 year old, and which ones are going to make them ask awkward questions about “what’s a prostitute?”
For people looking for more of a challenge, there is an ‘advanced variant’ where the only clue you get is first one. You arrive on the scene of the crime and it’s up to you to answer all the questions and find all the details without using the rest of the cards in the deck. Personally, I enjoy being lead by the questions. The variant leaves every case feeling open ended and only ends when you feel like you’ve searched enough. I sincerely dislike the “Look around until you feel you’re done!” sandbox nature of that variant. I need structure in my play damnit! But that’s just me. Maybe you like chaos and disorder.
Overall, MicroMacro: Crime City is a excellent and unique experience that is absolutely worth your time. Solving cases by tracing characters throughout this city, all the while questioning details like “Why is that random lady punching that dude with the long nose?” brings about many bursts of laughter and joy, especially if you’re like me and really value ‘discoverability’. Let me tell you, this game is nothing but discovery. With all that said, there is virtually no replayability. Once you’ve solved all the crimes, you’re just… done. You can spend more time combing through the map, creating your own narratives and puzzles, but it really isn’t the same. You COULD replay the cases, but be honest, have you ever re-read a Where’s Waldo? book?
MicroMacro: Crime City could be a centerpiece in your home; something you hang up on a wall that draws people in when they first visit your home; a conversation starter as you walk your friends through the first few cases, and be their sherpa through the Crime City experience. Perhaps after a few years you’d forget the details of each case and returning to Crime City would be like returning to your hometown. You remember most of the broad strokes, like where the churches are or where the best fish and chips shop is, but the details are hazy. Re-discovering the cases could be fun, but I don’t think it’s worth holding onto this box for years hoping your memory fades while your eyesight stays sharp. Instead, MicroMacro: Crime City makes a great gift. Nothing is permanently changed or damaged throughout the cases so when you’re finished solving all the cases, pass it around your game group then chat about your favourite cases. Alternatively, it would be easy to sell or donate it to someone else in your community! If none of those options appeal to you, it makes for a great colouring sheet.
It’s a good day to be a duck
MicroMacro: Full House was announced recently, along with 2 more titles in the MicroMacro universe. While I won’t be keeping this map around my house for long, I am eagerly anticipating the next installment in the series. While I wait for them to hit store shelves, I’ll need to find a new pair of reading glasses.
Calico by Kevin Russ is the first physical board game that I purchased since the COVID-19 pandemic ended my in-person gaming group in March 2020. It’s also the first game I’ve purchased since I launched MeepleandtheMoose.com and started playing my physical games solo. I purchased Calico not only because I was drawn in by the cozy cat aesthetic and endearing art by Beth Sobel, but because I knew the brain bending puzzle of fitting together the best quilt is a challenge that inspires excitement in my little gamer heart.
Coconut is the most comfortable cardboard kitten I’ve seen all day
Thanks to Covid-19, I’ve only had the opportunity to play Calico at 1 and 2 players. I plan on returning to this game once I’ve had the opportunity to play it more with larger groups of people. For now, I’m just so excited to share my thoughts that I don’t want to delay this post any further.
Calico, as I mentioned in my Top 100 post, is a cerebral tile laying puzzle game. In Calico you are given 7 different ways to earn points with the sneaky insinuation that if you’re a competent quilter, you’ll be able to achieve glory in every facet of the game. It’s all a bundle of lies! In Calico, you must first accept that you will not be able to score all the point and the only way that you’ll be able to survive is by picking and choosing which of the goals and objectives you’ll focus on in any given game.
Components
Calico’s components are bright, vibrant, and high quality. Each of the four player boards are dual layered, which helps keep your tiles in place. The tiles come in 6 different patterns and 6 different colours, with 3 copies of each. The cat scoring cards are adorned with artistic renditions of actual cats (you can read their biographies in the back of the rulebook). Associated with these cat scoring cards are miniature tokens of each cat that will dot your player board if you can satisfy that cat’s very specific desires. The cloth tile bag is thick and sturdy, with plenty of space to shuffle the tiles within. Speaking of those tiles, they’re very thick and have a linen finish. The game box cover and some of the tokens have a spot UV coating that will shine if you catch the light just right. The production of this game has left nothing to be desired.
How to Play
The gameplay of Calico is very straight forward. When you begin the game you have a empty player board that you’ll fill with your hopes, dreams, and regrets. Each player starts with 2 tiles in their hand, and 3 more tiles in an offer row. On your turn, you’ll place one of the tiles from your hand anywhere on your board. Then, you’ll take one of the tiles from the offer row, place it in your hand, and refill the offer row. Every turn proceeds in that exact fashion until the boards are full and you’re left with your head in your hands contemplating how everything fell apart so quickly.
Calico Set up for 1 player. More players just get their own boards with the same scoring tiles in the centre
Allow me to speak about each of the scoring opportunities separately, starting with colour coordination. If you are able to stitch together 3 tiles of the same colour, then congratulations! You just earned yourself a button in that colour, which is worth 3 points! If you’re able to earn at least one button for each of the 6 different colours, you’ll be awarded with a rainbow button which itself is worth 3 points.
Each game of Calico will have 3 different cats displayed to the side. To lure those cats onto your board you’ll need to match their requested shape with one of the two requested pattern tiles. Coconut might just want 5 tiles of the same pattern touching each other, while Misty wants a 4 tiles arranged in a cross and no other arrangements will satisfy Misty’s fickle nature. Each of the cats you draw to your board will grant you certain amount of points; the easiest kittens will bestow a piddly 3 points per feline laying cozily on your quilt, while the most demanding cats will award up to 11 points, which should make you purr with glee as you place your awarded cat token on your quilt.
Hey I got a button! This game won’t be so bad!
There are also 3 objective tiles on your board. While every player will have the same 3 objectives, each player is free to slot them into the objective spots on your player board in whichever order you wish. These objectives ask you to surround them with a certain set of colours and patterns. A pattern asking for AA-BB-CC will want 3 sets of 2 different colours or patterns. If you can satisfy the requirements in either colour or pattern, you’ll get the lower number of points (usually somewhere between 5 and 10). If you can pull off the super-human feat of satisfying both colours and patterns… well, along with bragging rights and a slow applause from myself, you’ll earn slightly more points (generally between 10 and 15).
When playing the solo mode, the only salient difference from the multiplayer game is how the offer tiles behave. First you imagine a conveyer belt and visualize the direction the tiles will move in. During your turn you are free to take any of the 3 tiles available. Once you’ve claimed your tile, the remaining tile furthest to the ‘end’ of the conveyer belt is flung into a proverbial furnace, never to be seen again. The final tile is spared such a cruel fate, but it moves to the end of the conveyer belt and two new tiles populate the row. That’s the extent of the differences between the multiplayer game, and playing the game on your own.
I call this board state: The River of Dread
Near the back of the rulebook there is a list of achievements laid out that chart your progress toward becoming a Calico master! The achievements dare you to win a normal game while exceeding 60, 70, or even the insane 80 point threshold. Can you win the game without collecting buttons? Can you get the elusive rainbow button? Can you do it all while standing on one foot while rubbing your cats belly and tapping your head? Both my wife and I really like this feature, as it gives us something to work towards, and amps up the replayability of the game.
Another feature that Calico offers is a list of scenarios. The game suggests 10 set-ups and asks you to accomplish a specific set of tasks. The first scenario requires you to earn a rainbow button and exceed 58 points. The next challenge has requires that you collect 5 cats tokens and exceed 59 points.
Well well well… If it isn’t the consequences of my own actions.
I found the scenarios a wonderful reason to play Calico on my own. Considering the title of my Journal is “I am not a Solo Gamer, I shouldn’t have to reiterate how I rarely play board games on my own. I had this thought when I playedSagrada solo and the challenge of that game was just to exceed the sum of the undrafted die. Simple score attack solo games do not excite me, and perhaps because of that I have not returned to Sagrada’s solo mode since.
I very much enjoy the design of Calico‘s scenario challenges. I like that each scenario has been tested and calibrated to test my quilting skills, and, while it cannot account for the randomness of the tiles that come out of the bag (No, I don’t need a third green polka-dot tile, thankyouverymuch), at the start of each game I do feel the challenge is beatable if the tiles fall right and I play well.
It’s not the prettiest quilt, but my cats seem to like it
Review
Let’s get down to brass tacks. Playing Calico is a very simple affair. Each turn requires only three decisions and at the start of the game when your board is full of opportunity and promise, you’ll happily place tiles somewhat arbitrarily, perhaps chasing a short term goal like getting 3 colours together. As the free spaces start to dwindle and the need for specific tiles rises, you’ll quickly find yourself making concessions and saying “it’s fine if I don’t achieve both colours and patterns for that one objective. It’s fine if I don’t get all 6 buttons and achieve that rainbow button. It’s fine if I only get one cat token on my board. It’s fine if I only achieve one of my three goals…” This amount of negotiating with yourself and being forced to compromise when the wrong tiles come out of the bag is what elevates Calico from a neat puzzle to a fun game.
So, the production is fantastic, the puzzle is great, the aesthetic is wonderful. What’s the downside? Calico has almost no player interaction. If you look across the table and see your friend has sewn a perfectly colour coordinated and patterned quilt, there’s nothing you can do to affect them. The most you can do to affect your opponents is take the tile they may want or need, but then you better hope that you can use that tile, otherwise it’ll be taking up one of the two tiles in your hand and hurt you more than you hurt them. It really can feel like the whole game comes down to the last few tiles that get pulled from the bag. When you’re down to the last four spaces and you are needing a tile that is a specific colour and/or shape, your heart can drop when the next tile that gets pulled is the absolutely wrong one. It’s doubly frustrating when you see your opponent say “I just need a yellow stripes!” and then get it. Smug bastards.
Not a bad sized box
If you can accept that you won’t be able to complete all of the scoring objectives in a single game, I think you’ll find Calico is an enjoyable game. If you’re hoping for a game that has lots (or any) player interaction, Calico is not the game for you. Personally, I love Calico, and I can’t wait to introduce it to my family and friends. I know the production of the components, the art direction, and the deeper than expected gameplay will have my loved ones asking to set it up and play it again and again!
Great Heartland Hauling Co., designed by Jason Kotarski and published by Dice Hate Me Games, is a clever little game packed into a small box. The rules for Great Heartland Hauling Co. can be distilled to a single card, making it perfect for teaching people who only have a cursory interest in board games.
No room for bananas here!
Great Heartland Hauling Co. uses the theme of truckers rushing up and down the American interstate, picking up goods and dropping them off at the next town over for a huge profit. While spending hours driving in one direction may be the bulk of a haulers job, it’s difficult to make an invigorating game about rolling your truck on a straight road through the flat prairies. Luckily Great Heartland Hauling Co. doesn’t focus on the dozen brain melting hours in-between stops, and focuses on the excitement of buying and selling goods, and pushing your luck that the correct waybills will appear just when you need them.
How to Play
This land is ripe for truckers
In the beginning, the landscape must be created. The distribution centre location is laid down in the centre of the table, where all trucks are born. Surrounding the distribution centre are location cards, each one loaded with 5 cubes representing the type of good that can be procured from that location. Everyone gets a hand of 5 cards, and the player with the best moustache or longest hair gets to go first.
In Great Heartland Hauling Co. there are two different types of cards: waybills and gas cards. You use any number of gas cards to move from one location card to another (max movement is 3). When your truck ends its move in a city, you may discard waybill cards to either load or unload goods at that location. Once you’ve moved and loaded, you refill your hand to 5 cards and your turn is over. It’s important to mention that two trucks cannot exist in the same city at the same time, for long haul truckers are territorial creatures and are likely to shank each other in the gas station shower.
It’s not recommended to have a wide variety of goods
If you find yourself beginning a turn without any gas cards, you can spend money to move instead; $1 for each space you want to move. Be careful to not rely on this however, as money also represents victory points. It’s also important to note that you may not mix gas cards and money for movement – you must choose one or the other for the turn.
Each location has a pair of goods they are willing to buy from your truck, as well as the advertised amount they are willing to pay you for said goods. Should you arrive with the appropriate goods and necessary waybills, you can unload those goods and collect a tidy profit. The first person to hit the money threshold ($30 in a 4 player game, $40 in a 3 player game, and $50 in a two player game) triggers the end of the game. The rest of your fellow truckers get a final turn, then money is deducted from each trucker for the goods they left to spoil in the back of the truck. The person with the most money is the winner.
Review
Great Heartland Hauling Co.’s small form factor has caused this game to live a life of constantly travelling in my backpack. I’m sure my copy of Great Heartland Hauling Co. has seen more of the British Columbian coast than most of my prairie saddled family! It’s a light game to drop into your pack and simple to pull it out at a coffee shop when you’re in Gibsons and have an hour to kill before the ferry back to Vancouver departs. Also, if you find yourself at a Serious Coffee table with 3 others and 90 minutes to burn between a wedding ceremony and the reception.
Pick-up and deliver is not a mechanic I often feel drawn toward. Games with this mechanism often feel like a race without the feeling of momentum or speed. Great Heartland Hauling Co.’s satisfaction comes from the quick turnaround of picking up goods and being able to deliver them the very next turn. It can be frustrating when you begin your turn with 3 pig cards, spend all 3 waybills to get those 3 pigs onto your truck, then several turns go by without any more pig waybills becoming available, so you’re forced to take those pigs on a countryside tour.
Don’t get caught with leftover goods!
One thing that I really appreciate in games is forcing players to make decisions. In Great Heartland Hauling Co. you are forced to move each turn, which makes you decide if you want to take gas cards or fill your hand with waybills,. Also, because you cannot exist in the same town as someone else, you may find yourselves tripping over one another, squatting in the spot you know they need to go to, forcing them to delay their payday by an entire turn! The various locations also offer different values for the goods they’re demanding. You can choose to ferry all the corn from one city to the next for $2 per ear, but if you haul it clear across the country they’ll pay you $4! It’s double the money, but also wildly increased shipping costs. If a game doesn’t offer you good or interesting decisions, then why am I even involved? Great Heartland Hauling Co. makes me feel involved.
As I alluded to before, Great Heartland Hauling Co. is a simple game to teach and play. Because of it’s small size and easy to learn nature, I’m constantly introducing this game to new players, and even using it to showcase that board games are more than just Monopoly and Connect Four. Because I’m always introducing this to new players, I haven’t explored the “Inspansion” content that includes player powers and special effects. I look forward to one day exploring the game further, but for now, I really enjoy the simplicity of play offered by Great Heartland Hauling Co.
One of the ways that I have changed things up a bit is by changing the shape of the board, utilizing one of the suggested map layouts. Unfortunately, this made Great Heartland Hauling Co. feel more like a dreary slog in a hot cabin with no air conditioning. While the idea of having a different board layout is exciting, the shape we chose had two long corridors running nearly parallel with only one space where you could move between columns. This ended up dragging the game out extensively. We spent more money to move further as there were less alternative towns to visit when the particular space that we needed to go to was occupied by another player. One time the economy was so choked due to us spending so much on gas and the highest paying customers being so far away from the goods they wanted, that we were ending up with a net profit of $1 per good delivered. This experience really highlighted the limitations of the game and how modifying the route structure makes it a significantly less fun game.
I know that sounds incredibly critical, and it is, but here is where I come to grips with my opinion on Great Heartland Hauling Co. It’s a light, easy to teach game that is perfect for introducing people to the hobby. Having said that, it’s too light for my regular game group gatherings, so we naturally pass it over in favour of something more complex. Great Heartland Hauling Co. is a great game and it certainly won’t be leaving my backpack any time soon, but it’s rarely on the list of games that I’m desperate to play again.
Try as I might, I cannot fit my lunch in this box.
Takenoko was among the first designer board games I ever played. My wife pitched the idea of going to the local board game cafe as a fun date (slightly against my will actually). That date opened my eyes to the world that is cardboard within cardboard. Little did she know that she was introducing me to a hobby that I would fall deep into, hard and fast.
Shortly thereafter, while thirsting for more board games I discovered Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop show on YouTube and chose to watch the episode with Harley Morenstein from Epic Meal Time (of which I used to be a big fan). Tabletop introduced me to Takenoko, a beautiful game about trying to build an aesthetically pleasing garden and grow bamboo to specific heights, all the while a damned panda keeps eating it all.
If the panda is the symbol of harmony and diplomacy, I’m sure the gardener is the incarnation of rage and spite.
How to Play (First Edition)
Takenoko begins with a single blue tile in the centre of the table. On that lonely blue tile sits a single gardner and his eternal rival, the panda. Each turn begins by rolling the weather die (Skip this step on each player’s first turn). The result of the weather die gives you a little boost for your turn, like granting you a third action – the ability to do the same action twice in one turn, a free panda teleportation action, growing a single bamboo stalk anywhere on the map, an improvement tile, or your preferred choice of all the benefits I just listed!
The playerboard keeps track of everything you have, and the actions you’ve taken on your turn
After you apply the weather effect, you take 2 actions (3 if you happened to roll the sun weather benefit). You may not perform the same action twice in one turn (unless you have the wind weather benefit). The actions available to you are to draw 3 plots of land and choose one to add to the central play area; to take an irrigation channel; to move the panda in a straight line and eat the top section of bamboo from wherever he stops; to move the gardener in a straight line and grow bamboo on every irrigated tile of the same colour adjacent to the spot where the gardener stopped moving; or to draw 1 goal card.
The goal cards you hold are what influence all of your decisions. At the beginning of the game you’ll receive 1 card for each type of goal; plots, gardener, and panda. The plot goals encourage you to arrange certain colour tiles in specific shapes. Once the shapes have been satisfied with the required colours, and every landscape tile in the shape has been irrigated, you may claim that goal. The gardener goals task you with growing bamboo stalks to specific heights on certain tiles. Conversely, the panda goals are all about feasting on the appropriate type and quantity of bamboo, making the stalks shrink by one for every piece the little white and black bear stuffs his face with.
When an goal has been completed, you simply place the card down on the table. The first person to reach the required number of completed goals triggers the end of the game and earns the Emperor’s favour (which is worth a couple of extra points). Every other player gets one more turn to accomplish any remaining goals they’re holding before the game is over. The player with the highest sum of points on their completed goal cards has won the game and receives the congratulations of the Emperor.
Just because you’re the one to end the game and get the bonus 2 points, doesn’t always mean you’ll win the game
Final Thoughts
Takenoko is a light and charming game with bright and colourful components. I find the mechanics and goals easy to internalize, and I enjoy evoking ire of the other players by making the panda chomp down on their carefully pruned bamboo stalks that they’ve been trying to grow all game so they can accomplish their goal of having 4 green stalks, all at the height of 3.
Actually the mechanic of hidden objectives is something my wife absolutely detests. It’s one thing if some makes a decision to deny you what you need, but it’s another thing entirely when someone ruins all your plans without even knowing they’re doing so. Apparently she just doesn’t enjoy having her plans ruined.
I absolutely love the artistic direction and the components in this game. The plot tiles are thick and bright, and the panda and gardener miniatures come pre-painted. The real star of the show are the bamboo stalks that stand high off the table. The chunky wooden spires attract the eye and capture the attention of new players. Plus, it is fun to see how high you can stack them while you’re waiting for other players to take their turns.
The game itself is easy to play Each turn is straight forward with few opportunities for making any single turn overly complex or acheive big game changing combos. This is nice and keeps each turn moving quickly, but it can be frustrating when the player across the table from you had 4 more goals cards down, it can feel impossible to catch up.
Personally, I find the weather die to be a bit of a frustration. I find the sun benefit (an extra action) to be head and shoulders above the other benefits, each of which are only situationally advantageous. The other issue I have is many of the cards require specific advancements that either come preprinted on the plot tiles, or are only obtained by the cloud weather benefit. When you have one of the advancement tiles, you can only place it on a tile if there is no bamboo on that tile, meaning the tile must be either unirrigated or the panda must raze the vegetation before any advancements can be placed.
The Panda destroys what the Gardener grows
It’s not uncommon for players to creep close to the endgame without passing the line. In the 2 player game, the first person to reach 9 completed objectives triggers the end game. Often I’ll see the game suddenly stall at 7 objectives realized as each player tries to queue up extra points in their hand. Considering that each other player gets one last turn to complete as many of their objectives as possible, it just makes sense. I find that players draw several plot objectives at the beginning of the game, then slowly move to drawing mostly gardener objectives at the end as the garden sprawls further and further away and the spires of bamboo reach the sky. The randomness can be aggravating as you somehow draw the one goal card that nothing on the board is nearly close to, while your opponent draws cards that are one bamboo segment away from being finished.
Ultimately Takenoko is a lovely game that you can use to allure people who would otherwise turn their nose up at the waves of beige that dominate other board games. With a commanding table presence and easy to play mechanics, Takenoko is often a winner when I’m not playing with my normal ‘advanced’ board game group. I wouldn’t introduce this to a complete non-gamer, as the amount of decisions are a little much (5x weather effects, 5x different actions). If someone has expressed interest and is willing to be engaged in the experience however, this game is a hit!
Lesson of the day, never store Takenoko on its side
I also really like to imagine a world where a gardener is trying to carefully cultivate an aesthetically pleasing garden, but one patch of trees happens to grow much more aggressively than the rest, so his solution is to source a panda and hold it over the tall tree to cut it down to the proper size. I don’t know if that world exists, but that’s the world that I want to live in.
