Bargain Ninja comes out of the Shadows

Yes - that's right! The Bargain Ninja comes out of the shadows (or from behind a bush apparently... 🤣)

to swipe up another heck of a bargain recently!

My weeks are getting loaded up right now between my "real job", music gigs, coaching our women's club team and scouting for our college team (women's soccer), as high school seasons are in full swing. Meaning the next month is spent 3 days per week most weeks using my free time for running the roads, watching games and chatting with coaches and prospects. It's fun, but definitely tiring and of course, it takes me away from other fun stuff such as getting to the table.

Last week in between scouting and getting back to work for some evening clients, I met up with a nice woman who was selling The Isle of Cats on Facebook Marketplace. She was asking $25 (sells for $50 CDN new) and was only played once! Clearly they only played the family mode that's included in the game, because I had to punch several more pieces out when I unboxed it. BARGAIN NINJA ROUNDHOUSE KICK!!!! 😃 WOO!!!!

I've had this game on my wishlist since it was released 5 years ago 😳 knowing my wife and daughters would enjoy the puzzley aspect, and the funny looking, colourful cats as well.

I had ZERO energy to dive into the game that night after work, scouting and more work so I watched Rodney Smith's video on how to play to get an idea of what I'd be getting into as soon as I could get it to the table. And I liked what I saw. 😊

The following night after scouting, I DID get it to the table and really enjoyed my first solo playthrough. Which I actually WON!! That's rare for first plays for sure. Granted, I tried it out on the easy difficulty.

Here's the solo setup before starting:

This game has enough strategy to make me happy, but is also smooth and simple in terms of the mechanics and phases, so it'll be easy to introduce to others as well.

Here (above) is a shot of one of the Oshax cats you may end up with on your boat (depending on cards you draw) and one of the public lessons I drew as well. The variety game to game will be high based on the cats that are drawn and the cards drawn.

There are many ways to score points in Isle of Cats as you rescue them to your boat. One of which is having "a family" (which is cats of the same colour touching adjacent tiles). Here's a family of 4-green cats on my boat. The bottom green cat doesn't count in the family, as it's diagonal not adjacent.

All in all, this is a nice edition to my collection from my wishlist. And it's going to be fun introducing it to my family as well. They're better "puzzlers" than I am though, so I'm going to have to be sure to get plenty of solo rounds in to keep up. 🤣