A deck and hand management game for 2-4 players
40 minutes
Designed by: Grant Rodiek
Published by: Leder Games
What does every board gamer look for when they discover a great game?
Expansions!
Fort is a deck building, combative, whimsical game that manages to capture the spirit of childhood fun and the fierce sort of competition unique to kids. In Fort, you and your besties eat some pizza, play with toys, and recruit some other kids to help you build the biggest, best Fort. We reviewed Fort last year and are excited to now cover the Cats & Dogs expansion.
This review contains a short version of the original Fort Review for context. Check out the original review HERE.
The Cats and Dogs expansion was generously provided by the publisher for a fair and honest review. Click HERE to learn more about our review policy.
Gameplay Overview
*This is a general overview meant to provide context for the review, some rules may be glossed over or missing.
Fort is a relatively straightforward game with few rules and a low barrier to entry. Start the game with your two best friends and 8 cards, either drawn randomly or drafted.
1. Remove cards from the yard
We’ll get into this in more detail later, but the yard is one of the coolest – and most contentious – mechanisms in the game.
2. Play a single card doing at least one of its actions completely
- Top = public actions
- Others can also do
- Bottom = private action
- Only you can do
- If applicable, play additional cards of the same suit to amplify the action
3. Recruit 1 new card from the park or opponent yard
Here’s where the yard is critical – you can choose to recruit a card from an opponent’s yard, either to gain a great card or to mess up their strategy. Is an opponent building up a ton of squirt guns? Take one away and make their life that much harder.
4. Cleanup
- Discard played cards and best friend cards
- All other unused cards are placed in the yard
- Draw 5 new cards from your personal deck
Along the way, as you advance your fort level, personal scoring objectives and perks are unlocked. No two players will have the same scoring objective or perks.
The game ends either when a player advances their fort to Level 5, or passes the 25 point marker.
Cats & Dogs Expansion
The expansion is actually a two-in-one modular expansion, where you can choose to add in the “Cats”, “Dogs”, or both. Each game, you choose a number of cards from either expansion based on player count, and return the rest to the box, so each game will have unique combinations of cat and/or dog cards.
Cats
The Cats expansion is a new deck of cards, each with a unique cat and effect. When the criterion on the cat card is met, the cat visits that player’s yard and gives them an ongoing bonus for as long as they have the cat. At the end of the game, score bonus points for cats in your yard.
Cats are fickle, though, and will leave your yard as soon as another player meets the criterion, even if you did it better.
Dogs
The Dogs module comes with a doghouse addition to the player boards and a deck of dog cards.
At the beginning of the game, dogs are dealt to players as part of their starting hand. Dogs have special abilities that can be played like any other card as long as the criteria are met. If you successfully play a dog card, add it to your dog house. The player with the most dogs in their doghouse at the end of the game gets bonus points.
But be careful, if you leave a dog in your yard at the end of your turn, it will run away to another player!
What do we think?
We really enjoyed the base game as it was. While Fort is technically a deck building game in that you are getting more cards to add to your deck, that can also be a little misleading. Fort turns deckbuilding on its head and comparing it to other deckbuilders is tough since it’s unique.
When most of us think of deck building games we think of games like Dominion, Clank, or Aeons End where each card has either an action or money value assigned to it, and you can chain your cards together in satisfying combos. Fort is a deckbuilding game, but it is NOT a chaining game and you won’t be building big engines. Instead, it’s all about suit management and creating the optimal streamlined deck for maximum effect of specific cards. In that way, it’s a bit more like the tableau in Race for the Galaxy than Dominion.
What did we like?
We really liked that the mechanisms in this game are unique for a deck building in that it’s not very heavily reliant on action chaining. For many actions, you can add cards of the same suit to make your action more powerful, getting you more stuff or VPs. You can also stash cards in your “lookout” to have permanent access to certain suits so you can always amplify your actions.
Pro tip: Since managing an efficient deck is so important in Fort, the lookout is an efficient way to streamline your deck.
A lot of games we play are very interactive at 3+ players, but lose a lot of that head-to-head tension at 2-players. Fort is not one of those games, we found it to be very interactive (and tense) at 2 players with a ton of direct competition. Your unused cards don’t just go into your discard pile where you hope that more vigorous shuffling will lead to a better hand. Instead, unused cards go to your yard where they can be stolen, and on occasion destroyed, by your opponent.
One thing we LOVE about this game is the artwork and the components. Gotta talk about that dual-layered player mat that doesn’t let your little wooden pieces slide everywhere when your toddler inevitably bumps the table. And each character is unique and interesting. The art is stand-out and fits the theme so well, it’s silly and yet captures the intensity kids can have when they play.
Cats & Dogs Expansion
We love both modules of the cats and dogs expansion. It gives the base game an extra oomph that is especially welcome for players who have played Fort regularly already. The integration of the modules feels natural, like these rules have always been a part of the game.
Some of the cat and dog abilities can be really cool and really powerful. One cat let whoever had it trash an opponent’s card at the beginning of every turn. In a 2-player game, it completely changed both of our approach and strategy!
We probably won’t play Fort without both modules going forward. We liked the game without them, but now they feel almost necessary and we can’t imagine going back!
What didn't we like?
In the base game of Fort gameplay can be a bit more of a race than we typically like. We generally prefer games that have multiple ways to win, even for lighter games. In Fort, especially in a 2-player game, whoever builds their Fort first generally wins despite there being other ways to score.
We found that the Cats & Dogs expansion changed that significantly, tipping the balance just a bit so that being the first to fully build the Fort isn’t such a huge advantage and you can win through other ways that are a lot more fun, like having the most dogs or getting points from cards.
Who would like this game?
Fort is the perfect medium-light (with expansion) game fit for a wide audience. The rules are simple enough that it’s approachable for newer board gamers, but there’s enough hidden strategy to engage more experienced players.
We tend to play a lot of heavy games, so this fits a nice niche in our game shelf of a lighter, faster game. It is strategic and interactive enough to be a challenge, yet light enough that we can play at the end of a long day. We put this on our shelf along with games like Isle of Cats, Oceans, and Race for the Galaxy.
Sarah's Take
Fort took me a couple times to get into. I went into the game thinking “deckbuilder” and was ready for satisfying action chains and combos. Nope. The meta and approach to being successful in Fort is more like Race for the Galaxy than Dominion. There is a delicate balance of making sure you are playing the best card for yourself, but not a card that will help your opponent too much, while still paying attention to what your opponent is likely to do so that you can prosper from it.
I can’t imagine playing Fort without the Cats & Dogs. The planning and thought process around both the cats and dogs adds exactly what I was missing from Fort. Do I try to hold on to this dog card long enough to play it, or hope that Emily also doesn’t have the right supplemental cards and ends up passing the dog right back to me?
I personally found that I enjoyed letting the cats come to me organically vs trying to end my turn with exactly the right cards in my yard.
At the end of the day, I want both the Cats & Dogs but will still always be a dog person first and foremost.
Emily's Take
You see “deckbuilder” and you kind of think you know what game you’re getting into. In Fort, I was pleasantly surprised at the interesting gameplay that’s unique among its genre.
I am a little salty right now because in the last game we played Sarah went hard on the “mess with Emily” route and perhaps just a few words were exchanged. For a game with a playful theme, this can get pretty intense which I guess plays into the theme even more. Anyone who has played anything with a kid recently knows forts are serious business.
First Play
Honestly, we were a bit disappointed the first time we played when there were no big combos or satisfying action chaining sequences. This is totally on us assuming all deckbuilders are alike.
Rulebook
We learned the game from a Watch It Played video from Rodney Smith. We did not have any trouble locating anything in the rulebook when we needed to check it.
No matter how you learn this game, the low barrier to entry makes this an accessible game to learn, even if your toddler interrupts for “goodnight hot tea” followed by a “goodnight banana”.
Subsequent Plays
More plays make a big difference for effectively playing Fort. We won’t hide the fact that we didn’t get this the first time through from a strategy perspective. We scored super low and both rushed the ending. The next few plays were a lot more fun exploring different card actions and combos and discovering new ways to irritate each other by messing with the other’s plans.
Adding in Cats & Dogs Expansion
The Cats & Dogs expansion gave this game a jolt for us that got us re-interested again after not playing for a few months. It changed the game enough that it felt brand new, and yet integrated well enough that it felt natural.
Parent Perspective
Setup/takedown: Super quick. You don’t have to plan an extra half hour of non-play time just to get going or clean up.
Interruptions: While learning the game may be forgiving of interruptions, Fort itself is not forgiving of stopping in the middle to sing a dinosaur song (or whatever it is your kid is looking for). Since there’s so much interaction, all players need to be present and attentive to get anything done, and it can be a bit tricky to figure out where you left off.
Rating
7/10: Very Good
In the grand scheme of our collection, Fort is definitely a game we will continue to revisit, particularly with the Cats & Dogs expansion. The unique deck management mechanism makes it interesting and fun. It’s also a great go-to for a good quick 2-player game that’s challenging yet not overly complicated for a weeknight game.