All tiles can be rotated, flipped, and oriented in any way that helps you fit the tile into open squares on your boat. The player will receive a boat, 20 fish at the start of the round, as well as a permanent basket - same as multiplayer. The sister will also have Solo lessons, which will be affected by what is placed on your boat. The easy difficulty will have 3 solo lessons, and the number of additional advanced lessons will increase depending on the difficulty. This ranges from 1 advanced lesson for Medium, up to 4 advanced lessons for Expert. Also included in the bundle is The Late Arrivals Expansion. This is one of the earlier expansions and adds the 5th and 6th players. It also adds in more lesson modules. This feels like a very necessary expansion especially because you can now play with more players. Having more lesson modules to mix and match is important for variety and keeping the game fresh. More cat tiles and treasure tiles are another welcome part of this expansion. Can we ever get enough of the gorgeous artwork on these feline lovelies? I think not! Overall

The final part of the expansion is the events module. When playing with events included, tiles are drawn at the beginning of the game and placed over the day numbers that Vesh’s boat travels along. On each day the drawn event tile must be resolved. The new cats that are included in the Late arrivals expansion make it possible to play with more players. More interestingly they are in different shapes than the original which means more options for filling your boat in the best way possible. The more choices the better as far as I’m concerned. Even if you are happy playing with a smaller player count, I think this adds to the game play. Twenty fish equates to four cats from the most expensive field or potentially all seven of your reserved cards (which cost between zero and six fish each). More likely it’s a mix of the two. Every card is useful, although some are more expensive for what they do than others. This feels like a deliberate design decision, forcing you to weigh up what seems reasonable at that moment in time. Working out which cards are worth keeping and balancing that against your future cat-buying potential is possibly the most interesting part of the game. Buying Cat Tiles – The Perfectly Pleasant DecisionWith 150 cards included it’s genuinely exciting to see what you’ve been handed. In some games, card drafting mechanisms can produce less interesting choices once the best cards are snagged. The Isle of Cats sidesteps this problem by restricting player choice: in reserving two cards each time there are only 3 decision points during each drafting phase. This curtails any saggy decline and keeps the game pacey. Strategy Meets Fun: Managing resources while drafting cards to explore the island, rescue cats, find treasures, and befriend Oshax keeps the gameplay engaging and full of strategic decisions.

At the end of each day, any cats that weren't rescued from the fields scurry away and are removed from the game. Unclaimed treasures (common and rare) are not removed and remain below the island. Draw new tiles from the bag until there are 2 cat tiles per player in each field to the left and the right of the central island. Any rare treasure tiles drawn are placed below the island. This game has you and your friends trying to get as many points as possible by strategically placing your rescued cats on to your ships.

Along with cats, treasure can also be collected and stowed using treasure cards. Common treasures are smaller shapes that can be used to fill any awkward gaps in boats. Rare treasures are bigger and more bountiful, granting extra points. Although the players are competing to get the most points, they must also work together to get rid of the curses before Professor Whispurr appears, which changes the victory conditions and can spell disaster for players. And since cards must be obtained by spending fish, this requires players to decide how much they want to spend on cards each round, and balance that with how many cats they want to rescue. You may want to keep your whole hand of cards, but that will cost you probably 75% of your fish for the round, leaving you with only 1 or 2 cats you can save. And that’s assuming you even have enough baskets. Players start with one and must use cards to catch more than one cat each round. Players can score extra points by drafting lesson cards.

Points are awarded for families of cats, with at least three cats grouped together to be classed as a family. Three cats score eight points, four cats score eleven points and so on. Rare treasures score three points each, lessons are scored based on the objectives detailed. Points are deducted with each visible rat scoring negative one and each room that has not been filled scoring negative five points. The player with the most points is the winner. Solo PlayStrategy Tip: This phase is the only time that Lesson cards can be played from your hand to the table. Be careful not to acquire additional cards (e.g., using an Anytime card) too late in the last round! Phase 4. Rescue Cats Saving a beast has its benefits if you can place matching coloured cat families around it as indicated on the tile. Depending on the beast chosen there are up to 4 coloured cats on each tile. Each match you make is worth 5 points a game end. When you make a match, you take a beast meeple of your choice and place that on the edge of the beast showing the alliance that has been formed between the beast and the family of cats. The legend of an Isle of Cats is real! But it is threatened by the approaching armies of Vesh Darkhand, who will stop at nothing to destroy the island and its feline inhabitants! And with a game as gorgeous as this it’s hard not to. The Isle of Cats is lovely from the box lid down, filling you with the warm satisfaction of a cat purring on your lap.

When you place an Oshax on your boat, you must immediately choose which color of cat it will "befriend". A cat of that color will be placed on the Oshax. The Oshax counts as both an Oshax and a cat of the chosen color for the rest of the game.Broken baskets: You can combine 2 broken baskets to make a regular basket. Just like regular baskets, these can only be used once. All these factors mean that there’s never a right decision – any one cat tile can be slotted into a multitude of places and still reward or cost you. When it goes right, boy does it feel satisfying: My lowest scoring games on Isle of Cats were whilst playing with the beast’s expansion. As they are optional to take, for myself at least, it seemed to work better to not have a beast aboard at all! To add an extra challenge though, we made a house rule that when we play with the beast’s expansion each player MUST take a beast. This added an interesting new challenge to work around and fun addition to our boats. Days Full Of Events If there’s one thing the internet loves, it’s a cat. The latest kitty to send social media into a state of excitement is the star of Stray, the video game where you play as an adventurous moggy exploring a sci-fi city. Sewing matching patterns together will let players add buttons to their quilt - earning them bonus points - while forming specific combinations of colours and patterns can attract cats to come and nap on their blanket. This earns you even more points and, more importantly, it’s just very cute.