The Isle of Cats: Don't forget the kittens is live (All Kittens aboard)
The Kittens and Beasts, Boats, component upgrades, and Explore and Draw expansions for The Isle of Cats have launched on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 30 days. You may back Kittens and Beasts, Boats and KS pack 2 as a bundle, and also choose to get the storage box and wooden insert. You can combine these with the Explore and Draw game. More combination options are also available.
Our preview post below was published on May 20.
The 1-4 players drafting and polyomino placement game The Isle of Cats returns to Kickstarter on May 25 with lots of new content for fans of cats and puzzles. Owners of the base game will get the chance to expand it with Kittens and Beasts, Boats, component upgrades, and a new Explore and Draw game.
The Kittens and Beasts expansion includes three modules: Kittens, Beasts, and Events.
The Kittens module comes with 20 kitten tiles, a green kitten bag to store them in, and a kitten board. Besides cats, now you will have the chance to also rescue kittens. Kittens require a basket and 2 fish to be rescued, and you can rescue two kittens with the same basket, if you spend another 3 fish. New kittens will be placed on the board only if you have already saved some. In the solo mode, you will be once again competing against your sister. If the sister is faster, the current batch of kittens will be discarded, and new ones will be placed on the board.
The Beasts module comes with 18 beasts, a red beast bag, and 25 beast meeples. Beasts are rescued in the same way cats are, by spending 1 basket and 5 fish. To keep them happy, you will need to form friendships between the beasts and the cats on your boat. Each beast tile contains 3 or 4 cat icons and to form friendships, a cat icon must be touching a matching cat. Furthermore, the touching cat must be part of a family, and for each friendship formed by the end of the game you will score 5 points. Once you have formed a friendship, you will place a beast meeple between the beast tile and connected cat to show the friendship is complete.
The Events module includes 15 double-sided event tiles, 1 blue event bag, 18 rat meeples, 12 semi-permanent tokens, and 60 point tokens. The designer notes that this module adds considerable difficulty to the solo mode, and solo players will want to turn the game difficulty down the first time they play with it. At the start of the game, you will place 5 random tiles on the island board over the specified spaces. Gem side up tiles change the rules, while Gem side down tiles are mainly ways to score points. In the solo mode, your sister will be gaining points for each event tile and she will score very highly for them. So you will either need to play each event perfectly, or modify your strategy accordingly.
The Boat Pack adds new boat boards to the game, each of them with a unique layout. The Kickstarter Pack 2 adds component upgrades (beasts and cats), as well as some extra new content that hasn't been revealed yet.
The Explore and Draw game accommodates up to 6 players and is a faster version of the base game. It takes place over 7 rounds, and the player with the most points wins. At the start of each round, you will place 12 cards in a 4 x 3 grid. This will present you with 4 combinations of cat, treasure, Oshax and lesson cards. Then, you will choose a column of cards and resolve every card in that column. Lesson cards are marked off on your lesson sheet, giving you personal goals to score at the end of the game if you achieve them. Cats, Oshax, and treasures are drawn onto your boat: the first can go anywhere, and the rest must touch a previously drawn shape. Your sister will score points for the cats on your boat and will have her own lesson cards which will score off your boat as well.
I've played the original Isle of Cats with my GP. It was fun. She likes cats (owns 4 of 'em), so she gets most "cat games". She's even givin' me a couple of cat games: Cantankerous Cats and Kibble Scuffle. Kibble Scuffle has a little spout for the cubes that represent cat food. 🙂