Raccoon Tycoon: Fat Cat Expansion Review – Fat Cat Expansion Review – A Box Large Enough for a Real Raccoon

If you missed it, I’ve already reviewed Raccoon Tycoon. A lot is going on within the game, from market manipulation to stocks, to auctions, and more. However, it didn’t push the players to end the game, and as such felt like the game dragged on. So will The Fat Cat Expansion change this, and make Raccoon Tycoon a better game?

Let’s find out.

What’s New in The Fat Cat Expansion?

Here’s what has been added:

• 13 Building Tiles
• 4 Town Cards
• 2 ‘Wild’ Railroad Cards
• 8 Meeples of four different types (locomotives, houses, animals, and tycoons)
• 6 Player Shields with unique player powers
• Components for a sixth player
• And a couple of deluxe upgrades

For this review, I bought the Raccoon Tycoon Deluxe Edition, where the components provided lived up to the title. Such as a fantastic insert, filled with plenty of wooden tokens and meeples, dual-layered player boards, thick cardboard tiles, and some of the coolest, chunkiest, and wooden-est first-player tokens ever.

But this deluxification is a double-edged sword, as with all these upgraded components the box is much bigger than necessary. This box could hold several live raccoons and their wardrobes it’s that big.

When board games are already competing for space in your collection, this box size makes Raccoon Tycoon Deluxe a harder sell than it needs to be. Because it won’t be challenging your medium or light games for space but instead your heavier, more expensive games.

How Does it play?

The Fat Cat Expansion provides additional avenues to score points through buildings and collecting animals and tycoons. As a result, there are more interesting choices and strategies outside of collecting towns and railroads.

This makes the game feel more alive and gives you options and strategies to chase even when you think you’re out of the game. But the beauty of this expansion is it does all of this without bogging you down with additional rules.

These additional scoring mechanisms also do a better job of hiding who’s winning. This makes you feel more invested while playing because, despite the buildings you build, you feel as though you’re in with a chance. This is a huge improvement over the original game where the front-runner is obvious, and given the runaway leader problem of the base game, you feel like there’s little point in trying to win.

Now, with the Fat Cat Expansion, even if Bob has this crazy money-generating engine, and is winning all of the auctions. You can avoid the auctions altogether and spend your time collecting resources. Both of you are generating comparable points, and we won’t know until the end who’s going to come out on top.

Unfortunately though, even with the additional end-game criteria. The Fat Cat Expansion doesn’t do enough to address my main criticism of the base game: there’s no force driving players to end the game.

Therefore, Raccoon Tycoon – even with this new expansion – overstays its welcome. And with the additional ways to score points, stalling out the end game is more prevalent now than ever.

Better or Worse?

My table adored the addition of the player shields, which gave each player a character to play as. The character names are hilariously on point like Governor Charlemagne C. Clawton and The Prospector Erastus Dudley VI. But outside of a one-time use of a special power, these characters are just names. Hilarious as they are, you’ll forget about them by turn three.

This is a real missed opportunity with Raccoon Tycoon and The Fat Cat Expansion where instead of leaning into this anthropomorphic theme. They avoid it at all costs. It feels like a bait and switch given the excellent artwork and well-dressed raccoon on the front.

Overall, this is a great expansion for people who like and love Raccoon Tycoon. The designer, Glenn Drover, should be commended for listening to their audience and implementing changes to address their concerns.

Unfortunately, while they were on the right track, The Fat Cat Expansion doesn’t change the game enough to take Raccoon Tycoon from being a good board game to a brilliant one. So while it’s a large improvement, it’s not going to win over any new fans.