Monopoly Cats vs Dogs

Of all the games we tested out at the hotel room today, our favorite was Monopoly Cats vs Dogs.  I almost never buy those Monopoly clones for cities, states, TV shows, and so on.  But this sounds like a slam-dunk theme.  How could you go wrong with cats vs dogs?

It turns out, this game is from Parker Brothers itself, not from one of the companies that normally make the clones.  The unboxing was fun.  The game pieces were (of course) cats and dogs, and the property cards now have cats on one side and dogs on the other.  The board has only 8 spaces per side, and every set of cards has just two cards.  There are no railroads or utilities, and the Chance and Community Chest cards are now cat cards and dog cards.  Instead of hotels, you "mark your territory" with little fish (for the cats) or dog bones (for the dogs).

So the game feels familiar, but it is more friendly, since you're not trying to drive the other players bankrupt, and the math is minimal.  You roll dice and move as usual.  You can buy the unowned spaces as usual, except that they are all pets.  If you're the cat team, you use the cat side of the property cards.  And you immediately mark your territory but putting the fish or bone on that space where hotels used to be.  When you land on someone else's space, you don't pay "rent", you pay "tribute" (cute), BUT you can also pay an extra $100 to steal the property from the current owner.  Stealing the property feels weird at first, but it is really at the heart of the game.  When you steal a property, you click your icon (fish or bone) on top of any markers that are already there ... until the third marker locks the space so it can't be stolen again.  The tribute amount is not based on the number of markers, it's just one value if you own one space and another value if you own both cards in the set.  

The game ends when the last space has been sold and marked.  Then you count how many spaces each team owns, and that's it.  Whoever has the most spaces wins.

Aside from that, the cat/dog cards are cute and funny and useful.  

You can't mortgage a property, because if you flip it over, it's just an animal for the other team.  The rules say that if you don't have enough money to pay the tribute, just pay nothing but hand over a card to the other team.  It's not that different from our house rules for regular Monopoly where we would rather sell a property to the player we owe money as opposed to getting the crud deal from the bank.  It also says that if you have no cash and don't own any spaces,  you owe nothing "because you're already having a day enough day."

The game is meant to be polite and fun, unlike the cutthroat, heartless original game.