HomeGame ReviewsCantankerous Cats Review: Mischievous Feline Fun

Cantankerous Cats Review: Mischievous Feline Fun

Cantankerous Cats is a lighthearted fighting style card game where you play as a cat to gain affection from your hoomin and become the most mischievous cat in the neighborhood.

Cantankerous Cats Game Stats:

 

Players: 2-6 players

Time: 25-60 minutes

Ages: 10+

By: Mentha Designs

Retail price:  ~$20

Categories: Card game, Take-that, Cats

 

Cantankerous Cats Game Play:

 

Each player starts with their cat card, a pounce token a hand of six cards. The goal is play affection cards for your hoomin, and then use that currency to play mischief cards. The first cat to 9 mischief points wins.

On your turn, you’ll grab cards from the “food bowl” (draw pile), and take two actions. You can play affection, mischief or incident cards (discarding them into the “litter box”), draw a new hand of cards or purchase a pounce token. On other players’ turns you may use your pounce token to interrupt their turn with a mischief or incident card.

Be careful, if someone pounces you and you cannot pay the affection on their mischief card, you’ll go feral. When you go feral, you have more limited options, though you can attack other cats more easily.

Cantankerous Cats Card Game Review:

 

With language like “hoomin,” “litter box,” “food bow,”, the cat theme is very prevalent and fun. For example the card “Fountain” showcases a kitty taking a dink from a toilet and saying “Toilet must be the hoomin word for watering hole…” These puns do not disappoint animal fans. You might see a player giggling uncontrollable when just starting this game for the first time.

The art is equally fun and slightly kitty-crazy. The player cards themselves are sweet and adorable on one side, while dangerous and wild on the other side to note your feral status.

The theme doesn’t stop there. Players are encouraged to meow and hiss at certain points in the game, which is fun, but optional.

You can choose to play without the feral option in a simpler version of the game, which they recommend for first-time players. We dived right into the standard version of the game without too much trouble.

The game reminded me a little bit of munchkin, which the take-that aspect of trying not to let anyone else dominate and win right away. Basically you are exhausting all your retaliation options and hoping everyone has exhausted their’s right before your turn to attempt to win.

Overall, I really enjoyed the game. I especially enjoyed getting new cards to laugh at, and it made the inherent competitiveness of the game a little more lighthearted.

Cantankerous Cats was funded on Kickstarter last year and you can buy the game on the website.

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