The Isle of Cats Expansion: Late Arrivals

We’re heading back to The Isle of Cats with the Late Arrivals expansion! We’re bringing with us more cats, more players and new cards…. Let’s dive in!

Expanding The Player Count

The first and probably most important part of this expansion is the fact that it adds in the 5th and 6th players to the game. This is obviously very important if your gaming group exceeds 4. It’s also just really fun to play with more players. In my opinion the game works at all player counts.

New boats are included to make this possible along with more fish, more cat tiles, more treasure tiles and a wooden Oshax figure.

New Feline Friends

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.

There are more common treasure tiles added in, which are the same as we have had previously. The rare treasures are new to us though, which again helps with filling previously difficult spaces.

Back To School

The next item included in Late Arrivals is new cards. I would say this is the most important part of the expansion. Once you have played enough times with the original cards it can get a little predictable. But add in some new cards and it’s like a whole new game!

There are additional discovery cards that are only used when playing with 5 or 6 players. However, the lesson modules can be used with any number of players.

The lesson card packs are given a letter and if you have the big box expansion you will see that there is a slot for each of the lessons to be stored in. When beginning a game you just pick which packs you want to play with, mixing and matching to make a different game each time.

Some of the new cards include ‘7 points if you have covered exactly 3 treasure maps’, ’25 points if the middle row of your boat is empty’ and 9 points if you have a group of at least 5 treasures’. Having new lessons to achieve is definitely my favourite part of this expansion.

Overall

This isn’t a huge expansion where game play is significantly altered forever. I for one am glad of that because I enjoy The Isle of Cats as it is. It adds (as well as the additional players) the ability to extend the life of the game play. Keeping things fresh and fun whilst preventing predictability.

The Isle of Cats is one of my favourite games and now that I have all of the expansions, it’s one that I will continue to play and enjoy for a long time.

If you don’t have any of the expansions and are not sure where to start, I would suggest here with The Late Arrivals expansion before moving on to Kittens and Beasts. And if you don’t own The Isle of Cats base game yet then what are you waiting for?!