I suppose “Dog Days” was disqualified for connotations. That’s alright – I think “Woof Days” is cuter! From the same people who made Cat Days, Woof Days is… well, the dog version. Admittedly, I know far less about dog behavior, so I can only hope it’s as spot-on as the cat game. I’d expect that it is. The contrast between the games is especially interesting! (That’s mostly what I’ll be discussing here, so reading the Cat Days post first would be beneficial.)
Instead of starting with four random cards and a Cat Tree or equivalent, players start this game with five random cards, making your opponent’s opening moves even more unpredictable. Whereas Cat Days cards tend to affect the top card of a pile, many movement effects in Woof Days move the whole stack as a unit, which in retrospect highlighted for me the mix ‘n match behavior of cats and who they choose to hang out with. Some of the animal cards correlate pretty directly – the Rescued Cat and the Mixed Breed have the same effect – while others are distinct. The Chihuahua, for instance, must be played on a day that’s not adjacent to a Great Dane, German Shepherd, or St. Bernard.
Overall, it’s sort of like Fluxx variants: you expect the overall mechanics to be the same, in new flavors. And there’s one more flavor to discuss, so I expect I’ll be posting about that next week!
