WHAT'S ERIC 

PLAYING?
 Search …

#805 – FORT: CATS

October 4, 2021 • What's Eric Playing?

Base price: $13.

2 – 4 players.

Play time: 20 – 40 minutes.

BGG | Board Game Atlas

Buy directly!

Logged plays: 2

Full disclosure: A review copy of Fort: Cats & Dogs

was provided by Leder Games.

I think we’re doing Pet Week on What’s Eric

Playing?, or games all about cats, dogs, or in this

case both! I’ve been a big fan of Fort since it

wasn’t even Fort, so I’m excited to see how an

expansion changes things. Plus, I’m a big fan of

Kyle Ferrin’s art, so, more of that is always a fun

time. I could talk more about it, or we could dive

right in, so let’s get to it.

In Fort: Cats & Dogs, your whining has finally paid

o! and your parents have consented to you

getting some cats, some dogs, or both (lucky kid).

As usual, though, you want to play with your

friends and have your pets around, so things

might get a little hairy in the literal sense. Your

pets are prone to wandering o!, but thankfully

they might end up coming right back, so let them

get the lay of the land for a little bit. Can you

come out ahead in the latest round of

neighborhood shenanigans?

CONTENTS
Setup

Gameplay

Player Count Di!erences

Strategy

Pros, Mehs, Cons

Overall

SETUP
Two modules means two di!erent forms of setup!

Let’s cover both!

DOGS SETUP

Very easy. Start by giving each player a doghouse

in their player color:

Before dealing out the initial cards, shu"e the

dogs:

Deal three to each player. Players draw five

additional cards to add to their three dogs and

two Best Friends to form their starting deck.

If you’re playing with the advanced Drafting rules,

draft the 5 kids and 3 dogs together.

CATS SETUP

This one’s even easier than Dogs Setup! Shu"e

the cats:

Deal one per player face-up near the score board.

I generally place them above. If you’re playing

with the advanced Drafting rules, deal out the Cat

Cards before drafting.

GAMEPLAY

Same deal as setup! Dogs and Cats interact with

the game di!erently, so I’ll talk about them

separately. They can be played either as unique

expansions or as a combined expansion. Up to

you!

DOGS GAMEPLAY

Dogs are essentially extra cards that you can play

under specific conditions. To play a dog, you must

first meet its Need. Its need may be anything from

your Fort level to having a certain number of

cards in your Lookout to discarding cards of a

certain suit (“adding” them). Regardless, you can

play that dog as your full turn action, and it

cannot be followed. These e!ects are pretty

powerful, so they may be worth it?

After playing a dog, generally, it moves into your

doghouse and awaits the end of the game. Any

dogs that are not played go into your Yard, where

they may be recruited by other players as normal.

However, there is one change. At the start of your

turn, rather than adding all dogs in your yard to

your discard pile, you place them in the discard

pile of the player to your left!

While you can use dogs to follow actions (since

they, too, have suits), you cannot add dogs to

your Lookout or trash dogs. This is considered

animal cruelty by the rulebook, which, fair.

At the end of the game, the player with the most

dogs in their doghouse scores an additional 7

points. If there’s a tie, all tied players score 7

points. Dogs also count as cards in your deck for

certain Made-Up Rules.

CATS GAMEPLAY

Unlike dogs, cats have zero loyalty and will

wander o! without a moment’s hesitation. Any

cat owners should be unsurprised by this, and I

applaud Fort for its authentic portrayal of cats.

In another moment of art imitating life, cats

cannot be played or told what to do. Instead, at

the end of your turn they will show up in your play

area if you meet certain criteria on their card. This

usually is having cards of some type and number

present in your Yard at the end of your turn (coins

count as a unique suit, not a suit of your choice,

for this purpose). If that happens, on your turn,

you may use their ability. If multiple cat abilities

would activate on your turn, you may choose the

order.

While you don’t lose a cat if you no longer fulfill

their criteria, other players can attract the cat to

their play area as long as they meet the

requirement at the end of your turn, even if you

have more of the indicated card. You only check

at the end of your turn if you attract any cats.

At the end of the game, you do score bonus

points for the number of cats in your play area:

1 cat: 1 point

2 cats: 3 points

3 cats: 6 points

4 cats: 10 points

PLAYER COUNT
DIFFERENCES
For Dogs, the player count shouldn’t technically

matter, as the dogs should be cycling between

various yards without a ton of input from you, the

player. You might notice it if, somehow, multiple

players manage to get their dogs into your discard

pile before you reshu"e, but I doubt that it’s

altogether that likely. There are always three dogs

per player added to decks at the start of the

game, so the ratio remains pretty constant. If you

have one player hoarding the dogs, there’s also a

bit of joy as they’re wasting their turns in order to

get 7 points at the end of the game, so you do see

some diminishing returns on adding dogs to your

doghouse over the course of the game. Cats, on

the other hand, is a bit more interesting as you

add more players. As you add more players, there

will be more cats in play, but there are also more

players to swipe the cats between your turns. You

may, as a result, actually see less of the cats

between rounds if there’s a lot of contention

between players (including hopefully seeing less

of Dumpling, though we love them). The cats can

provide some pretty useful abilities, so they may

swing some aspects of the game towards them,

but I wouldn’t say that they super negatively

impact the game as presented. I’d lean towards

introducing Cats at higher player counts, and I

might suggest Dogs for slightly lower counts. The

two modules can synergize nicely, at times

(playing a dog to make sure you drop a few cards

of one type to your yard so that you can get a cat),

but they add a fair bit of additional complexity

and occasionally some slowdown to an otherwise

speedy game.

STRATEGY

A lot of this is going to come down to what

cat you specifically want to come to you. If

you are looking for certain cats, it might be

worth recruiting cards that will allow that cat

to come to you. Jitters or Scavenger is fun!

Particularly, try getting cats who don’t match

certain player colors or who want symbols

you don’t see as often. If you can get them in

the early game, it might be harder for players

to take them away from you without having

to get cards that may not come up in the

same hand. It’s the purr-fect crime.

It may be worth risking some of your cards

to get certain cats. Or, at the very least,

worth it to keep them from your opponents.

It’s not ideal to have strong abilities available

to your opponents, but you also don’t

necessarily want to put your best cards in

your Yard where they can be taken or

trashed. See which cats are available and, if

you think it prudent, go after them.

Keep an eye on how many cards end up in

your Yard; otherwise, you may attract

Dumpling, who makes fort construction

more challenging. This is the incentive to not

just take every card that comes your way. The

more you have, the harder it can be to play

them all. With three or more cards in your

yard, Dumpling shows up, and once someone

has Dumpling, I’m generally inclined to just

leave Dumpling there. Cute cat. I don’t want

it.

Some of the dogs are best activated in the

early-game. If you can get the dogs in your

Doghouse early, you will be able to focus on

your chaining strategies later in the game

without having to worry about trying to get

the dogs to work for you.

Similarly, large decks can make certain

dogs tougher to activate. A few dogs want

two cards of the same suit, which can be hard

to get if you have a huge deck with di!erent

types of cards. If your strategy relies on

getting a variety of di!erent cards, these dogs

might be ones you want to pass o! to

another player.

Watch out for the dogs-Dumpling anti-

synergy: if you play a dog, you’re more

likely to dump 3+ cards to your Yard,

which will attract Dumpling if they’re in

play. Dogs don’t always allow you to play

additional cards, so playing the wrong dog will

put you in a weird spot. You’ll end up with a

ton of cards, take Dumpling, and now,

building up your Fort takes additional

resources. You hate to see it. It’s an oddly-

specific anti-synergy, but try to avoid it if it

comes up.

If Bandit is in play, it may be worth

keeping your Pack lean. Bandit can pull

from an opponent’s Pack every turn, which is

aggressive. As a result, you may not want to

keep a ton of resources in your Pack, if Bandit

is in the game.

Some of the dogs’ e!ects are powerful

enough that they’re worth blowing a

whole turn for. It depends on where you’re

at and what’s in your hand, but don’t dismiss

it. Some of their abilities are super useful!

Some are also a bit take-that, which, alas.

PROS, MEHS, AND

PROS

The art is incredible, as usual. I really like

what Kyle has done here! I think there’s a few

pets in here for basically everyone, ranging

from extremely cute to extremely large to just

… flu!y. And a couple that look like someone

put too much water on them. It’s a good set

that also has a nice range of color options, so

there’s just a lot to like, here.

I like that there are enough pets in here

that almost every player will have at least

one (maybe more than one) favorite.

Currently, mine is Kingsly, but I’m open to

other options. I would normally say

Dumpling, but I do hate being the victim of

Dumpling’s e!ect, even if I do love the art and

the idea of having an extremely large cat.

Every time an expansion fits in the base

game box, an angel gets its wings or

something. I was lightly unimpressed by the

tuck box (just out of an initial lack of

understanding as to what was in the

expansion), but the cards still fit nicely in the

core game box. Actually, even the tuckbox fits

nicely, which I appreciate. Not much room for

anything else, though.

The doghouses are a cute extra addition. It

still has the kind-of-awkward problem that I

don’t know exactly how to tuck cards such

that they’re not sliding all the time, but it is a

nice aesthetic add-on for the game. I kind of

wish there were a similar place to put the

cats, but I guess any cardboard box will do.

I appreciate that the cats are essentially

seamless integrations that just watch for a

condition to be true. There aren’t really any

additional rules to the cats; there are just

conditions for them to move around and

powers they give you. It’s not quite the same

as variable player powers, but the abilities

aren’t too far beyond the pale, either.

I also like that even if you just got a cat,

they can wander o! to another player who

meets their criteria. It seems fitting. It’s

on-brand. They’re incredibly fickle. My house’s

cat only likes me maybe 10 – 20% of the time.

I’m kind of pushing to bump that to 25% by

2025.

I appreciate that the modules can be

played together. They are relatively

compatible, which is nice, though they can be

a lot together, as cats and dogs can tend to

be.

MEHS

Starting with three dogs in your deck is a

lot. It means that you hopefully will be able to

play one of them, but you likely won’t be able

to play all of them if you have a rough draw. If

Dumpling is in play, you might end up with

that fat cat dropping by.

Having a list of the Dogs and Cats in the

rulebook would have been nice. It’s mostly

for reference, though I kind of assume they

opted not to do that given that the rulebook

is already pretty short. Might have expanded

the size of the tuckbox, I guess? It’s just

helpful when you have a small number of

cards to have a potential reference.

Scratch can be brutal, especially if you’re

playing against the water gun player.

Scratch allows you to basically burn cards

straight out of the yard, but if you’re playing

against the player holding the water gun

cards, you may have a tough time if they can

consistently dump a couple cards to keep a

hold of Scratch. It makes it super dangerous

to let any card into the yard if you can get

them, which can be gently frustrating.

More generally, the take-that e!ects of

the Cats may limit exactly which ones you

use (but there are enough that you can

avoid them!). I just shu"e the cats that lack

any take-that abilities and play with those,

when I play, and that’s generally fine. I just

like peaceful and pleasant games, I guess. I

think Loki has a take-that e!ect, as well,

which is gently frustrating. I don’t feel like the

take-that elements of Fort are that strong, to

start, and so adding additional ones feels

unnecessary, to me.

CONS

The dogs can often just be junk in your

hand. I mean, there are plenty of them that

might just not be playable when you draw

them. Your Fort isn’t the right level, you’re

missing some cards, etc. It adds a few speed

bumps to an otherwise clean game where

almost every card can be usefully played to at

least some e!ect. It’s an odd state for the

game to be in.

Additionally, for a nontrivial number of

dogs, their abilities can only be activated

once you’re at Fort Level 2. By then, you’ve

usually already started building out

synergies and don’t want to waste an

entire turn on playing just one card. This

has largely been my experience, but I usually

am trying to set up better combo flow by that

point, rather than just getting one card

played. That said, the abilities are occasionally

powerful enough to be particularly useful. I

just find the requirements to be a bit heavy

for their benefit.

I think, more generally, the “Need” idea

can be a bit clunky. It doesn’t flow as well as