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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!
If you haven’t yet checked out the multiplayer review, you can find that here. And there are a few hints in there to level up your point scoring as you buckle in for this cat-tastic ride! For now, however, I’m going to take you briefly through my solo experiences in Calico.
Sewing Solo
Setting up a basic Beat Your Own Score (BYOS) solo game is simple. You take a board and select 3 out of the 6 colour coordinated design goal tiles at random which go on the marked spaces. You then choose 3 cat cards at random placing 2 monochromatic pattern tiles under each, and put the button and cat tokens within easy reach. Finally, grab the bag of colourful quilt tiles, give yourself two as a starting hand, and then place 3 quilt tiles on the table to form your draw pool (“market”). The bag then goes to the left of the market. That’s it! You are ready to rumble in the quilted jungle!
So, on your turn, (22 in total); you carry out three actions:
(1) place a tile from your hand onto any empty space on your quilt board;
(2) pick a tile from the market and place it into your hand ready for the next round; and
(3) Discard the market tile furthest to the right of the bag, slide the remaining tile along and then refill the two spaces from the bag.
As your turns pass, you’ll be building your quilt in the same way as in multiplayer mode – having one eye on achieving colour based button and pattern connected cat bonuses, and the other on achieving the design goal tiles! Thankfully with nobody else playing, you won’t need a third eye to factor in hate-drafting opportunities!
Solo Good
Once I became familiar with the beautiful brain pain that is Calico BYOS, I cracked into the Scenarios. And the designers have put a lot of effort into making Calico a crunchy-munchy delight for us single players!
10 scenarios in total, they specify a number of additional requirements when setting up and playing the game. Going from easy to hard, each one shows which design goals and cat scoring tiles to use. Not only that, however, but they also show which type of cats and buttons you need to have added to your quit, and whether those goals have to be met using colour, pattern, or both! And if that’s not enough, every one has a minimum score to achieve! I need to lie down after that! Or I would, if my Calico quilt wasn’t so poorly crafted! Haha
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.
You can also use the family variant and lower-variant two player mode (which takes away one of the patterns) when playing solo. But in true confessional style, I went in hard on my first game and wouldn’t be able to dial down the crunch now. As such, I can’t say what these are like!
Top Quality Quilting
I love Calico. And I love Calico solo as much as I love it in multiplayer mode. But it feels like s a slightly different game. Not because there’s only you around the table (although that is different). Rather, it has to do with the tile-discard mechanic. It works really well to simulate another player taking a tile away – you don’t have to think, pick, or try and score for an AI (and there’s nothing more vexing than a solo mode where you have to spend time thinking about how to optimise a turn for the dummy player/automa!).
The game is different because you basically have some insider information – you always know which tiles are going to be discarded at the end of your turn. So if you know you are going to want one for later, you can take it into your hand (obeying the two tile limit). Playing against another human, their preferences may be obvious from their board, but you don’t actually know which tile they are going to take until they pick it up (and look at you, smiling, as they know they have just hate-drafted the tile you wanted!).
Luck of the draw is still there in the market replenishing stage. But overall it does feel a little more controlled. And that’s not a bad thing at all because those Scenarios are hard! And I am always up for anything to help me smash this catty, crunchy, space optimising super puzzle of a game!
The other indulgence that I get to enjoy in Calico solo is analysis paralysis. Many see this as a bad thing. Admittedly, it can be frustrating in multiplayer mode. Downtime between turns extending into the ether is not fun for anybody. But in solo mode, there is no pace. There is no pressure to get my turn done so that someone else can have their go before their patience runs out. And I love the exquisite brain burn that comes with having zero clue as to what to do for the best. To be faced with a number of options and have a mini-panic over lack of instinctive action. In real life, it is my absolute worst nightmare. In my job and out of it, I have to be in control 24/7 or I have a full-blown panic. In the safe confines of a board game like Calico, however, it is like peeking over the fence to see how the other half live. To experience consequence-limited indecision for just a moment. And in Calico, it’s terrifyingly glorious!
