Thistleville is a small place, but there’s something newsworthy happening around every corner.
Authorities Suspect Fowl Play in Missing Hen Case
Foxes Trot at Local Dance
Rats Ruin Restaurant Rep
Local newspapers are scrambling to scoop the up the latest stories and bring daily editions to critter citizens from all across the town.
You are an editor of one such paper, working hard to layout your edition and get it onto newsstands with the best combination of stories, photos, and ads. No layout will be perfect but you have three days and three editions to publish, grabbing the best tiles from a sea of stories on the table hoping to fill each front page with all the news that is Fit to Print.
Fit To Print
D: Peter McPherson A: Ian O’Toole P: Flatout Games 1-6 Pl | 15-30 min | ages 10+ | MSRP 39.99 | BGG Entry Time to Teach/Learn: 5 minutes
The game poses three puzzles to each of its players. Can you create patterns of matching symbols to meet your goals? You and your opponents will fill an increasingly crowded common board with an ever-changing array of tiles, rotating and shifting them – creating opportunities for some and challenges for others.
Listen in to explore Four Corners and learn why we think its sneaky sideways tactics are most certainly Major Fun.
In the heart of the Aegean, rival Greek cities seek wealth and glory. As an elite architect, you stand ready to help your city expand. New houses, temples, markets, gardens, and barracks will rise toward the sky. Harmonious planning will raise your city’s prestige, but only if you conform to specific building rules and keep your quarries filled with stone.
In Akropolis, you will select and places tiles over the course of 12 turns to build a miniature city in ancient Greece, scoring points for plazas and districts in five different ways.
Akropolis feels like five puzzles in one. Can you play with the shapes and layer the pieces to make each part of your city prosper?
ALSO FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
Francie Broadie joins us for a Mediterranean inspired Meal segment and the second installment of our new segment TARDIS Games, features a game straight from Mount Olympus.
Designer: Kevin Russ Publisher: Flatout Games, AEG 1-4 players 30-45 minutes ages 13+ MSRP $40 Time to teach & learn: 5-8 minutes
Your calico quilt starts as a pile of simple fabric in colorful floral patterns. Patiently you cut, fold, and sew each piece into precise shapes and designs. Your goal? Create a cozy refuge, an irresistible napping platform for every cat in the house.
Calico is a charming tile laying game filled with beautiful strategy and art.
Players compete to create the best quilt. Will you focus on an overall design? Embellish different areas with buttons? Or attract a variety of fuzzy feline friends to help you score?
Calico is a beautiful game. Beth Sobel’s illustrations do a masterful job of drawing in even the most casual player for a closer look. The adorable orange tabby cat curled up on the cover of the box sets the tone for the game. The world of Calico is a peaceful warm place on a cold night.
From the 108 colorful hexagonal patch tiles you’ll use to create your quilt, to the whimsical button tokens, and the five double sided cat scoring tiles (with matching cat tokens), Calico employs cuteness to a degree that should almost be illegal.
Each player has a thick-ridged quilt board on which you will place your patch tiles. There are three spaces marked on the quilt board for your design goals. Each player has six design tiles, so three will be chosen and “sewn” onto your board before the game begins.
Likewise, three cat scoring tiles will be selected at random for all players.
Mix up the patch tiles and place three face up on the table. Then allow each player to draw a hand of two patch tiles and we’re ready to play!
The goal in Calico is to place patch tiles in your quilt to score the highest number of points. Designs, buttons, and cats each grant points in a variety of ways.
A turn in Calico is deceptively simple. There are two parts.
Part 1: Place one patch tile into your quilt. This tile can go into any open space on the board.
Part 2: Draw a tile from the three face up patch tiles available to refill your hand.
Once your turn is complete, a new patch tile is drawn from the bag to replace the face up one you removed.
The game ends when every open space on each player’s quilt board is filled with a tile. Each scoring category will be judged and the player with the highest point total will be awarded the title Master Quilter and win the game.
Calico is a game of layered strategy – of color and pattern. There are six colors of patch tile and six different patterns
The challenge and delight in Calico comes from trying to weave different scoring combinations together with the placement of each colored and patterned tile.
In order to appreciate this aspect of the game, let’s look at the three ways to score: buttons, cats, and designs.
Buttons score by color. For each grouping of at least three like colored patch tiles, you place a button on your quilt. If you manage to place six different colored buttons on your quilt, you get a bonus rainbow button.
Cats score by pattern. Two pattern tiles are drawn to indicate each cat’s favorite type of pattern at the beginning of the game. Each cat tile also shows a specific configuration of tiles or a specific number of tiles. If you can create that configuration or the right size group of tiles in one of the cat’s favorite patterns, you get to place a cat token on your quilt. And every time you fulfill a cat’s pattern preference, you get to place a new cat on your quilt. Some cats preferences are easy to meet; others are considerably more difficult. Easy cats score less; picky cats score more.
Design tiles can score by color AND pattern. Each design tile maps out a recipe describing a specific combination of tiles needed to surround it.
For example, a design tile might want to be surrounded by three pairs of like tiles. You could fulfill this recipe by placing a pair of green tiles, a pair of blue tiles, and a pair of yellow tiles around it. You could also fulfill the recipe by placing two striped tiles and two polka dot tiles, and two floral pattern tiles around it. With some careful consideration and tile placement, you could score this design tile both ways!
Buttons, cats, and designs are independent ways for you to score but their needs will overlap and conflict from the moment you place your very first patch tile on the board.
To gain points in one area, you most often have to be willing to forgo points in others. The delicious fun and agony of Calico comes from these decisions. Want a quilt covered in cats? You’ll most likely give up making elaborate designs. Decide to focus on buttons? Cats may look elsewhere to nap.
Calico is not a game about perfection. Your final quilt won’t be perfect. It’s a game about creating something of beauty with what you have on hand. Your decisions create the beauty in the game. And this makes it truly satisfying when you are able to mesh several scoring opportunities together by placing a single tile.
Calico will entice you to grab your thimble, put on some music, and pour yourself a nice cuppa tea. This peaceful game harbors simple beauty and hidden depth. That makes Calico a wellspring of Major Fun and a worthy recipient of our Spiel of Approval.
Squaremino is a clever and strategic twist on the tile laying classic. The goal remains the same, however: be the first to play all of your tiles to win.
There are 64 square domino tiles in the game. Each one measure s1 1/8” on each side is 3/8” thick. They are made from a nicely weighted material which gives each tile just the right heft. It’s a pleasure just to hold and fiddle with your tiles as you’re setting up and playing.
The 64 tiles are divided into 4 colored suits: red, blue, yellow, and green. Each suit has 16 tiles numbered 1 through 4. So there are four of each number within a suit. Keep in mind, unlike a conventional domino, each tile only has a single number instead of two.
To play, you spread out all the tiles face down and each player draws 12 tiles as a starting hand. The tiles are thick enough to stand on their own, so it’s easy set your hand up in a line.
Like most domino games, you’ll need room for several lines of tiles as the game goes on, so make sure to leave plenty of room in the middle of the table to play. Push the unused dominoes to the side as a draw pile and you’re ready to go!
Each player will take turns playing 2,3 or 4 tiles to create a shared board – lines of tiles extending vertically and horizontally, crossword style.
There are two simple rules for playing tiles.
The set of tiles you play must be consecutive numbers in the same color
OR
The set of tiles you play must be the same number but different colors.
So, a 1-2-3 in blue would be legal. So 4-4-4 provided that each 4 was a different color.
There are a few no-no’s in the game.
You can never play a single tile. And you can never play more than four tiles at once or extend a line of tiles past four.
The tiles played must be in a straight line. And the tiles played cannot create a square of tiles on the board.
If you cannot or do not want to play, you draw an extra tile from the face down pile and add it to your hand.
The first player to get rid of all his or her tiles wins the game.
Many times a Major Fun game will be a champion of innovation. It will offer up an experience that is totally new and very different from other games.
In the case of Squaremino, what makes it noteworthy is its decision to not stray too far from the comfort zone of the classic on which it is based.
There are certainly new strategies that are very different from the classic. This is not a game of matching numbers. You’re playing either a sequence or a set to build the board.
And the game does offer a bonus for completing a row of four tiles. Each time you do this you have the option to turn in a tile and draw a replacement. Setting yourself up for these bonuses and also keeping your opponents from them is key.
What makes Squaremino special and noteworthy, though, is that it resists the urge to reinvent the wheel. It would have been very easy to add several additional layers of complexity to the game, bonuses for longer runs or making certain shapes within the layout of the board. But I’m certain this would not make the game better.
Sometimes the key to fun is knowing when to stop. Knowing what not to ad,. Perhaps it’s like negative space in painting. The things that are not there help give art shape as much as the things that are.
The structure of the game is one any domino player will recognize. And though it borrows some of its inspiration from games like Qwirkle (another Major Fun winner), Squaremino feels familia and comfortable. Like a favorite sweater or perfectly broken in old pair of shoes.
Its so familiar, in fact, many may even think they have played before because it stays true to the soul of the classic. It celebrates its heritage but finds a way to stand on its own.
That’s a fine line and a fun line for any Major Fun game to walk.
Whether you’re learning for the first time or the pips on your set of double twelves have worn off, Squaremino is a game almost anyone will find hours of fun playing.
Genealogists are a curious and squinty lot. They spend much of their lives buried in the archives doing research, trying to uncover hidden branches of their family trees.
All those late nights are about to pay off. If all goes well you’ll have enough information to prove your lineage is historically significant – a family tree for the ages!
Ancestree is a tile drafting game where each player cultivates a family tree over three rounds. You’ll build dynasties, marriages, and wealth to score points.
The game is wonderfully simple to learn but the scoring system makes each decision matter and each decision fun.
Ancestree is also inclusive. It celebrates diversity and allows us to play with the idea of family. Allowing more people to find themselves in the game is a powerful and playful idea. Inviting more people to the table helps open a door to the wider world of games and (we hope) allows even more people to share the joy and fun we find through play.
Listen in for a full review and discover why Ancestree is Major Fun! Ancestree
Being King is a tough job, especially when your subjects need more land. Some like the forest, others the desert, some even like the swamp. And it’s your job to make sure they all have a place in your realm. To do this, you’ll expand out from your castle, laying dominoes of different types of land, hoping to create the highest scoring tabletop kingdom.
Kingdomino mixes the time tested classic tile laying game with several simple, clever modern twists. Easy enough for kids and families to learn quickly but deep enough to provide a fun challenge every time you play.
That’s a surefire recipe for Major Fun!
Listen in to our full review of the game and discover why Kingdomino might deserve an honored place on your shelf, too.
