Fort with Cats and Dogs Expansion Review

A gorgeous deck builder with a surprising amount of depth and strategy.

I've been looking at Fort for as long as I've been in the hobby so when I was given the opportunity to try it out I jumped at it. In Fort, you are trying to build and upgrade your fort to be the best in the neighborhood. This is done by playing cards to collect resources, fortify cards, and even mess with your opponent a little bit. At the end of your turn, you have to put all of your cards from your hand that didn't get played into your yard. Your opponent will get an opportunity to take one of them for their deck on their turn. The game ends when one of three end game conditions are met; one player reaches 25 points, someone levels their fort to the maximum, or if the deck completely depletes.

The Cats and Dogs expansion adds another layer to the game by giving you the option to use the cats or dogs modules. We played with the dogs and they were a game changer. If you meet a certain condition on the cards you are able to use a one time power and they are added to your dog house. Whoever has the most dogs in the dog house at the end of the game will get 7 points.

At the time of writing this, I have not yet had a chance to try out the cats module but reading about it adds an additional level to the cards you have in front of you. Cats will be added to your board and give you a power but it can easily be taken away if other players are able to fulfill their conditions as well. Even in a board game cats are jerks.

The Good: I absolutely adored Fort. It was such a clever game with a lot of different ways to play it. In the one game we played, I was focusing on hoarding pizza and upgrading my fort to the max level. I was stalling a bit because the other player was a level below me so I had some time. However, he was focused on victory points and wound up having a nice little engine that was collecting him points pretty consistently. I think the score was something like 24 - 2 by the final turn. He scored the points needed before I could upgrade my fort. In the end I made some poor plays and didn't do enough to get the points I needed but I got the score to be respectable.

The Okay: There's a lot of icons. Like a lot. There is a really nice player aid that they give you that does a good job of telling you what they all do. After we really got going, I didn't need to use it all that much.

The Not So Good: There are some cards that are tough to interpret. They almost looked like a math formula so the thought process required for them was a it much for my brain to handle. The rulebook does a decent job of instructing it but I struggled with those immensely.

Overall Score: 9/10

Like I said, I adored this game. The strategy, the gameplay, the art. Everything about it was spot on. If you're looking for a relatively quick deck builder that has a ton of strategy and unique gameplay, I couldn't recommend Fort more. Leder Games continues to be one of my favorite publishers. I'd love to see more games that are a bit quicker and maybe not as asymmetric from them.