Rescue all the cats!

It’s not new when I say that there is a trend here nowadays, which I definitely don’t mind: 2 player versions of everything! 🤭 You probably heard of 🐈 The Isle of Cats, the polyomino tile-laying game about saving cats from an island. It also had a flip & write 🖍️ version before, and now we have The Isle of Cats: Duel, a version specifically made for 2 players. 😼

Most of the game remains the same as the original: 😉 You draft cats of different colors that sit or lie in odd polyomino shapes, and place them onto your ship. The first cat can go anywhere, then they all have to be placed adjacent to previous tiles, following the typical rules of these games. Your main goals are to cover up rooms completely for bonus points, cover up rats 🐀 to avoid penalties, and make the biggest possible contiguous same-color cat families.  

Additionally there are also cards 🃏 you can take instead of cat tiles. These are either one time bonuses (like treasures that can help cover up more squares on your ship board), or end game scoring objectives that bring you even more points. 🏆

So far it’s all pretty much Isle of Cats as you might know it. The divergence comes with the way you draft things. 👉There is a central board made up of 5x3 spaces that are filled up each round with cat tiles and cards. On your turn you can move the shared cat meeple a few spaces along pawprints and choose one of the components you touched. 🧐 This adds a bit of a tactical layer on top, as where you end the movement affects the choices of your opponent during their turn. You also have fish 🐟 as a resource that let you move further on the board, or let you grab additional discoveries or treasure.

💬 Basically, that’s it! It doesn’t reinvent the wheel and honestly, if you have the original big box game or the flip & write version, then Duel does not bring enough innovation to warrant owning it too, but if you don’t have it and love cats and cozy tile-laying, then this is a pretty fun one, with the usual struggles and satisfaction of laying polyomino tiles next to each other, trying to perfectly cover up everything (which is always easier said than done).