Vesh is coming! We save cats faster. Overview of The Isle of Cats

ABOUT THE GAME

 In the game The Isle of Cats, you sail your ship to an amazing island. There have been rumors of an island full of beautiful cats for some time now. The rumors are true! Unfortunately, the island is in danger. Vesh Darkhand's army is on its way to destroy the island. Fortunately, you arrived on the island in time and can try to save as many cats as possible!

 The goal of The Isle of Cats is to rescue and collect as many cats as possible on your ship. In addition, you also collect as many valuable treasures as possible. At the end of the game, cats and treasures bring points in different ways.

 Cat Island needs some time to prepare. Each player gets their own field in the shape of a ship with a basket to carry cats. In the middle of the table you place an island. It has a circular track, and it allows you to track the order of the move. To the left and right of the island you place a supply of cats. They are randomly drawn from the bag. Each player places 2 cats on the left and right. So in a two player game there are 4 cats on both sides. The difference between the left and right side is the price. Cats on the left side are worth 3 fish, and cats on the right side are worth 5 fish. In addition, you place regular treasures, special Oshax cats, meeple cats, fish tokens, cards, and of course a big bag of cats on the table.

 Island of Cats is played for 5 rounds. These 5 rounds are divided into 5 phases.

PHASE 1 FISHING

 In the first phase of the game, all players go fishing. After all, to lure a sufficient number of cats, you need a lot of fish! During this phase, all players receive 20 fish.

PHASE 2 OF THE RESEARCH

 The research phase is divided into 2 parts: selecting research cards and paying for the cards you decide to keep.

 At this stage you have to draw cards from the deck. Each player receives 7 cards. From these 7 cards, each player chooses 2 to keep. Then each player passes the remaining 5 cards clockwise to the next player. You repeat this until all the cards are dealt.

 There are different types of cards. You can distinguish cards by different colors.

• Gold : Gold cards allow you to collect both common and rare treasures.
• Blue : Blue cards are tasks. Tasks can be personal or shared. You keep personal tasks a secret, joint tasks remain open on the table. Tasks earn you points at the end of the game. An example of a personal quest is 5 green cats on your ship.
• Green : Green cards determine turn order with boots and give extra baskets to carry cats. You need one basket for each cat you want to place on your ship.
• Purple : You can play these cards anytime and they give you different bonuses. For example, you can immediately get 5 fish by playing a purple card. These cards are good to have because you need fish to be able to place cats on your ship!

 From all the cards in your hand, you can choose the one you want to keep. The price of the cards is indicated on the top left. You must pay with fish.

PHASE 3 READING TASKS

 During this 3rd phase, you look at all cards in your hand and play task cards. All individual tasks are played face-to-face in front of you, shared tasks are read aloud and then placed in the middle of the table for all players to see. If you have to choose a color in the co-op, you do so and place a cat of that color on the card.

PHASE 4 CAT RESCUE

 At the beginning of this phase, all players play their green cards. These are salvation cards. These cards determine who will rescue the cats first, as well as how many cats each can rescue. The number of boots indicates who will go first, and the number of baskets shown on your green cards shows how many cats you can save. During this phase you can save the cats. If you want to save a cat, you have to pay 3 or 5 fish and you need a basket. If you can pay for a fish and a basket, you can take a cat and place it on your tablet. You can place the first cat anywhere. Subsequent cats are always placed next to another cat. If you place a cat above a scroll of the same color, you can immediately take a normal treasure and place it on the player's space. When placing cats on the player board, you should try to fill your boat as best as possible, place as many cats of the same color together as possible, and have as few rats as possible on your boat.

PHASE 5 RARE FINDINGS

 When everyone has finished rescuing the cats, the final stage begins. During phase 5, you can play gold and brown cards. These cards give you treasures or special Oshaks cats. Treasures are placed on your boat as normal. Oshaksy cats are wild cats. When you place Oshaks on your boat, you can choose a color. You specify the color of Oshaks by placing a meeple cat of any color on it.

 At the end of each day, you remove all unsaved cats from the table and place 8 new cats next to the island. Each player then gets new cards and you go through all the stages again! You do this 5 times. After the 5th round, it's time to count the points. At the end of the game, you receive one penalty point for each rat on your boat and 5 penalty points for each room that is not completely filled. Points are earned by cat families on your boat! You also get points for completed tasks. The player with the most points wins The Isle of Cats.

IMPRESSION

 We like games like Patchwork, MyCity and Calico. The latter can also show that we love the cat theme. Cat Island is perfect for us! After we finished MyCity, we started looking for a new similar game with enough difficulty. Then we decided to purchase "Island of Cats". To this day, we definitely do not regret it!

 "The Isle of Cats" is a fun and very multifaceted game. The game comes in a large box and thankfully offers a lot of options and replayability! You can play the game in two ways: normal way and family mode. We're divided on which version is more fun. The regular version is more advanced through the use of task cards. The family version is played faster and much easier. Sometimes we're more into a longer and more expansive game, and sometimes we just want to play a quick fun puzzle game. In the latter case, we prefer family mode. Overall, we really like that you have a choice between these two versions. This shows that "Cat Island" is very diverse. During a game night with your experienced board game friends, you can play the extended version. However, if you're playing Cat Island with your parents or inexperienced board game friends, you can easily play the family version. Therefore, "Island of cats" often ends up on our table.

 Replayability is high not only because you have multiple play options, but the game also comes with a decent stack of challenge cards. In each game, you will likely have new task cards to choose from. This ensures that no two The Isle of Cats games will be the same.

 While playing The Isle of Cats, you may not have a lot of direct interaction, but there is definitely a lot of interaction. Each round is a battle to see who is first, then you grab each other's cats by the nose and can compete for shared public lessons. This way, Isle of Cats doesn't feel like a solo game, but a fun game to play with friends!

 As far as we're concerned, Cat Island is perfect if you like puzzle and tile placement games and are looking for a game with a lot of features. You'll definitely want The Isle of Cats in your collection because of its fun theme, but the game itself is definitely a worthy addition to any gaming shelf as well!

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