Knitting Circle

I probably haven't talked about this on the blog yet but I love cats. They're definitely my favorite pet for sure and I've had a few of them in my life growing up. So cozy cat themes will absolutely draw me in, which is what got me to play and enjoy Calico when it released. Between that and Cascadia, Flatout Games has garnered positive reputation for me so I definitely look out for their campaigns, not to mention they typically have very reasonable prices. So when a new game within the Calico line was annouced, I knew it was a game that I would get.

Knitting Circle keeps witin the same theme of cozy cats and woven yarn to make garments. Where before you were making a quilt for cats, here you're making various garment types which require different amount of yarn segments to make. There's the familiar juggling aspect of colors versus patterns here but as well as the buttons which are your personal goals and scoring with crafting restrictions.

What has certainly improved is the drafting mechanism. In Calico, you were only given three options to draft from and had a personal "hand" of two, forcing you into tough choices for what to take and when to place it. Now, Knitting Circle features a rondel of alternating patterns and you'll move your token one or two spaces taking one yarn tile. This means not only are there more choices but you can also plan a little bit more for future turns. This adds an interesting element of blocking, kind of like Cat Lady, since each draft spot can only be taken up by a single player.

Overall, I really like this version of the game. It's still as just as puzzly as the previous Calico but with less disheartening drafting choices. It's still tough in its own way in how it asks you to craft garments but not as disparing as Calico where you just have to fail a certain goal because the specific tile you desired never showed up. Which can still happen to an extent but I feel like you have other means and options to use a tile.