Bezier Games: Cat in The Box Deluxe Edition

Product Information

Larry (2 plays): It’s clever and feels completely unique, which is something I always prize in a game. It may have a touch less control than I usually like, but it’s a title I’d like to explore some more.

My review for Cat In The Box is available here so please go and have a read if you want to know if this is the kind of game you would like (hint it definitely is). A round of Cat in the Box ends in one of two ways: either everyone plays down to their last card, or someone causes a paradox. With five of each card possible, if you have two or more cards in your hand, you can safely discard one of them, knowing that there are only three more out in other people’s hands. After throwing out your repeat, that’s only four left in the game. That number is now “safe.” Even if your plans go wrong, at least you have an out.There are four slots for each number, one for each suit, but there are five cards of each number. If it comes to your turn and you cannot play a card, either because the four other cards in that number have been played, or because the only available slot is in a suit you declared yourself out of earlier, you cause a paradox. Despite having a 1 and a 4 in their hand, with a 1, 3, and 4 available on the main board, this player can no longer observe yellow, meaning they have caused a paradox. James Nathan (8 plays): I originally reviewed Cat in the Box on the blog in January 2022 and still love it. 🙂 Simon sighs with resignation. He’s out of Diamonds, so he plays the 2 of Clubs. Since it’s not in the lead suit, it won’t do anything. This is a lost cause. This review is of the Deluxe Edition, which is what was released last year. It adds components for a fifth player, and it features nicer components. To my knowledge, the Deluxe Edition is also the only available edition: the first version is out of print.

If it becomes impossible for a player to play any of the cat cards from their hand because all of the numbers are taken then they must declare a paradox. This immediately ends the round. End Of Round I hope this has helped you to learn the rules and how the game plays. Obviously I would always recommend people use the official rule book to learn the rules in depth but this blog should give you a really good flavour of how the game flows. A person would not know if the not-real cat is alive or dead until they open the box. They would consider the cat alive and dead simultaneously, and its actual status is only known once the box is opened, aka “observed.” This clash of conditions creates a glorious tension throughout the round because of multiple worries. Simultaneously. Again.While there is the typical bidding mechanism in Cat in the Box, it by no means work in the usual fashion. Of course not!

Cat in the Box adds additional structure to the available card distribution by fixing the play space to exactly one of each card in the distribution, such as 1 through 8 in each of four suits. It doesn’t do this perfectly, but puts the onus on you to make sure it works out. And if you mess it up – welcome to Paradox City! The hand ends, adversely for you, and closer to fine for the other players. Shuffle the cat cards and deal them equally to all players (ten cards for a two, three or four player game and nine cards for a five player game). Also give each player a set of player tokens and a player board. Each player then places one of their tokens on the four X’s on their player board. Choose a starting player and away we go. Dealing Cards The game includes a grid showing the potential cards that can be played, and players have tokens that they’ll place in the grid to show the cards they have played. That is, if you play an 8 from your hand and declare it to be yellow, no player will be able to play a yellow 8 later. This continues until a player says they cannot follow the lead colour at which point they remove their token from their player board for that colour revealing the X. This indicates to all other players that this particular player has declared they have no more cards of that colour. Everyone can now use this information to their advantage. Playing The Trump ColourThe start player of Cat In The Box is moved to the next player and the game continues until all players have had one turn of being the start player. You then add everyone’s scores up and the player with the highest score is the winner. Ties are broken by the player who scored the most points in the last round. Two Player Variant I have spent 1,500 words, the longest straight review of my Meeple Mountain career, talking about a small card game. I could probably keep talking about it, but I should eventually go outside. Go get a copy of Cat in the Box. Buy two, even. It’s cheap, you can afford it. This game is fun, it’s dramatic, it’s funny, it’s crunchy. It is, in a word, neat. A Brief Note Pertaining to the Use of Combinatorics At Gen Con this year, I ran into a teenaged girl who was very excited to show me (or anyone in sight) that she had bought Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition, because it was “cute” and had a cat on the cover. Maybe she really knew what a brilliant but challenging game was in the box and didn’t just buy it for the adorable box art. If so, I hope she forgives me for thinking, “oh, I really hope you know what you just bought.” I love this game, but Silly Cat Game it is not. You watch your hand diminish before your eyes, the initial 1,048,576 or so different possible timelines for your own cards in a 4-player game collapsing into fewer and fewer concrete realities as cards are played and suits claimed. Your options don’t simply narrow as a round progresses, they fall off a cliff. I Will Follow You The starting player will play a lead cat card and will declare what colour it is (not red at this point). They will then use one of their tokens to cover the colour / number option on the research board.

And then there is the paradox. What a cool concept to tie into the game. The impossibility to play a card results in time coming to an immediate stop (and the game). I haven’t equally been in awe and dread of a mechanic like this in a long time. In fact, it’s the only green 6 in the game. You place a player token onto the green 6 slot of the central board. Having been observed, the green 6 is no longer available to other players. This 7 has been observed as blue. A token is placed on the corresponding spot. That all feels normal. But there is one giant twist: the cards in Cat in the Box do not have suits on them. There are simply five of each card rank in the box, even though there are only four colors in the game. Some ranks get taken out at different player counts (and the two-player rules are beyond the scope of this review), but there are always five cards of each number. There is so much to explore – in a single game and in the next game. With the group you’re playing with today, and the one you’ll play with tomorrow. It also does it with minimal rules overhead. Plus, the production value of the new version is stunning. It includes two-player rules (which I have not played) and five-player rules. The game works well at five players. The rulebook is well written (even if a little over-written) and the components are high quality. The plastic markers are an especially nice touch. It is easy to see from the table presence of the game why so many people were drawn to Bezier’s booth at Gen Con.How many players are playing Cat In The Box? This is the most important question at this point. Depending on the number of players you may need to exclude some of the cat cards. For a full game of five players you use all of the cards, if you have four players you exclude all of the 9 cards, three players you exclude the 7, 8 and 9 cards and for two players you exclude the 6, 7, 8 and 9 cards.