 Cat in the Box needed two plays for us to review it and I cannot imagine that more play will change my opinion of this game. It will probably change my heuristics and like I'll figure out how to be good at it. But Cat in the Box possible is such an elegant well designed trick taking game that I'm just going to say it's here right now. I bought a copy like immediately after I got home for packs. I mean it's up there right. It's you know so we've played a lot of trick taking games especially a lot of the small Japanese ones that seem to be a whole trend. Right. You know we've talked about those the scared ghost one and there's the high food one and you know there's just so many right. You know this is a classic ones you know your wizard's hearts spades with all those anyway but this one is really different in terms of what rim just said at the level of polish it is so streamlined and so straightforward. It doesn't have any like weird gotchas or anything you know like you can only trump on the second moon of the third or weird anything if you have formed a coalition with the player who chose the Trump then you then the other coalition forms the alternate Trump like move none of that crap. Yeah I feel like a lot of trick taking games even ones that are pretty smooth. They have one little quirk at least one like quirk or gotcha that makes them a little rough rules wise. Right. Even if they have something you know and some of them which I think are smooth don't have like a strategy or you know anything to crunch your brain on decision wise like just sort of straightforward like you draw your hand. It's easy to figure out the best way to play that hand and we win or lose based on the draw. Yep. Now sometimes that becomes crunchy if you get good at the game and start counting or you know like you gain some skill. Sometimes they become crunchy until you're good at the game. But I guess we're about to describe the rules because the game is so simple. But what I'll say is so simple I can teach you the entire rules and I will do so. Yeah. But a point before I have rarely seen a trick taking game that is so quick to teach to a table where nobody makes a mistake like God damn did everyone understand how to play this game after about three minutes of instruction especially because you already had some trick taking knowledge. Yeah. But even if you don't I think you could learn it very quickly. This is like a breath of fresh air. Right. The only reason I think this could be someone's first trick taking game. The only reason I think you wouldn't want it to be is because the genius of it shines when you have the understanding of a trick taking game and you see how this is a twist on that formula. And it's sort of like you can appreciate it. Right. Whereas if you could just play this never having taken a trick in your life but you wouldn't have a full appreciation for what they've done here. So so how does this game work. It's really simple. There's a deck of cards numbered one through nine and every number there are five copies. So five ones five twos five nines. Right. There's 45 cards. Yep. And you deal out the cards to all the players. Now it's very important to note these cards are all the same. All the fives are the same. They're all just black. Yeah. There's no suits. It's just numbered one through one through nine. Just deal out the cards and you deal them out and everyone now has a hand and everyone picks a card to sort of get rid of right. They just throw it out of the game basically like so now you know let's say I have a one in my hand and I throw it out. Well now I know that there's only four ones left in the game total right because there were five. There could be even less than four but I know that there are less than five ones available in the total deck because I threw one out right. OK. And then you start playing a trick taking game. A very normal trick taking game. You play a card. Everyone has to follow suit. Whoever has the highest in that suit wins unless someone didn't have that suit in which case they can play a different suit. If that if they play the Trump suit then they would win right again even against someone who had it's just basic trick taking game. Nothing weird about it whatsoever. Completely normal. Not one weird rule at all. None. No special anything red. The red suit is Trump. But wait. Didn't you just say that all the cards are all black. There's no suits on them. Well when you play a card you play it on a little like cardboard thing in front of you and you decide what its suit is at the moment you play it. Right. So I play a five and I say this five is yellow. I decided it when I play it at the moment I play it I decide I can pick any suit I want and I say it's five yellow it's yellow. And what I do when I do that is I take a little marker and as a board and the board has 45 slots on it one for every card and I put a marker on the yellow five. Now someone else might have a five in their hand and they might want to play it. Well they can no problem. They just can't say it's yellow because well the yellow five already got played because remember the name of this game fully is cat in the box and then subtitle quantum trick taking game because the rule is you can only play one real card meaning a yellow five. There's only one yellow five. You can't play a card that has already been played the combo of number and color. It's a riff on Schrodinger's cat. Yep. So you everyone goes around playing a trick taking game. So I play a yellow five right. Well now it's rim is to the left of me. All right. So rim I guess he has to follow suit. So he plays it if he plays it to. He's got to say yellow. He can't be like read to. Well I could be read to. But I have to then first say oh no. I'm out of yellow. That's right. And then I take a marker off my board showing that I'm a quote out of yellow and I play some means that for the rest of the that round rim can never play another yellow card because he said he didn't have any yellows left. If I if I desuit myself by just declaring I've desuaded I am tied to that for the rest of the hand. And if it turns out that yellow is literally the only play I have left for one of my cards I'm just right. So that's the final thing is like you play cards you decide the suit when you play them. And when you decide the suit you can only choose a suit for that card that hasn't been played by any other player and you can't choose a suit if you have already declared yourself to be desuaded in that right. And then if someone is in a position where all the cards remaining in their hand have no legal play then that person is caused a paradox and they lose and they get boned and they lose points. Otherwise everyone gets a point for every trick they took. Yep. At the beginning of each round you can bid on like how many tricks you think you're going to take. But your options is like one two or three like it's not you can't write so if you go over three that doesn't matter. But if you hit exactly the bid that you made then you get bonus points equal to like these markers on this. It's like a bonus basically when you play you know the yellow five and you put the marker on yellow five and say later you play a yellow six or a blue five or whatever's next to it on that chart on that marker board orthogonally. Whatever your bonus points if you hit your bid are the total number of your markers that is largest of a contiguously or thuggingly adjacent set. So if I make a big blob of like eight of them daddy eight points and I probably definitely won the entire game because that's right. But it's like you have an incentive to pick colors you know suits such that your markers on the board are orthogonally adjacent. So you want to make runs in the same suit. You want to be like I played the yellow four and the yellow five and the yellow six or you also want to pick right like I played the yellow four and the blue well this to this the easy side of the board about say there's a there's an easy baby mode and there's a baby really good mode in the baby mode everything's lined up so you can just be like blue four yellow four green four right blue five and make a blob that way. But in the hard mode everything's offset a little bit so you can still make runs like three four five in the same suit. But if it's like you want to be like blue two yellow three green four that would make a vertical column. So so the only other rule and just standard trick taking rule you can't lead the Trump suit unless it's been broken. Like that's it. And that's a totally normal. That's not a gotcha. That's just a regular old trick taking thing like trick taking well that's the whole game. That's the whole game. You play several rounds. He was the most points the end. And it's great. I want of the two games we played. I came in second place by one point in the first game and I won the second game. But I don't think that was my the first game that was luck. But I do have some heuristics like there is some skill here and I think play can evolve based on what I noticed in the two games we play. I am ashamed to admit it took me several games to learn the most basic fact is right. And so I'm going to teach it to you. So you don't fuck it up. I'll teach the thing I figured out in game two. This is so simple and obvious. I should have figured it out both as soon as I heard the rules. It took me several games to understand this that there are five copies of any number in the deck. Right. And you can only so there are five fours right in the whole deck. If four fours get played obviously the fifth one can never be played otherwise trouble. If you start in your opening hand and you've got more than one four or more than one two and you take one of them and throw it out at the start then you know the other one is perfectly safe. You can always as long as you don't de-suit yourself and and stupidly right. You'll know that you can safely play that other one. Right. So if you draw in your opening hand like three threes obviously you should probably throw away one of the threes and now you know for sure those other two threes are safe and you could just sort of hold them till the end of the round and you won't paradox that way. Try to get all the other cards if you got like one four in your opening hand. Okay. Keep it but try to play it quickly. That way you can get it out and if no one else is thrown away at four and there's a dangerous paradoxical four out there at least it's not in your hand. So and I paradoxed like often when I started playing and is once I understood this I stopped paradoxing basically. I only paradoxed once and it was a zero a negative zero paradox. I was okay on that one. Yeah. But so my slightly more advanced heuristic that worked so well. It's kind of like when you showed how you're winning set of dolls that everyone was like oh fuck that's what mine wasn't even a heuristic it was just like a basic fact. Yeah. It was so it's so simple. I don't know how I didn't understand that from the game. My baby heuristic that is the sole reason I won that second game and will definitely not work again was whatever number every single player played first unless there was like a weird situation with like you know like someone leads something really high first round whatever they play. I assumed they were trying to get rid of it because they have more than one in their hand. So no that's that you would get rid of it early because you don't have more than one in your hand. Well no because they met no meaning they have more than one in their hand after throwing stuff away and they're trying to get rid of the most dangerous card in their hand. Those are but if you if you have multiple numbers of a card in your hand say you have two fours in your hand after you threw stuff away but I would have thrown away one of the fours. What if you have three fours and three ones when you have to decide what to throw away. That's really really common like I got lucky draw but I draw like that every game. Yeah. If you haven't what you the other thing is that when you get to the end of the round you don't play your final card. So really you can save two cards. So if I had three ones and three fours I would throw away a one at the start because or maybe throw away a four at the start and then one of the ones I would just sort of say this is the card I'm not going to play this round no matter what and now I know that the ones and the fours are all safe to play and I would put those also deep prioritized playing those and try to get all the other cards played first. I went harder. Those are the dangerous and risky ones because the fact that if someone paradoxes the hand ends immediately. I won the second game because every time someone paradoxed I almost every time I would have been forced to paradox if it got around to me but someone paradox before I aggressively tried to make someone paradox and the way and the way I would do that especially the turn order matters a lot too especially to on the final round like if you can see because everyone's going to deal one hand right. So if you say okay I'm the first dealer and the first round and then that means on the last round I will be going second and so I'm probably relatively sick because you're not going to paradox before the last round unless you're really bad right. It happened a couple times though you can get you can just get screwed by the colors or like being forced to de-suit or something. It's possible but it's like on that final round it's like okay I'm going to be going second I'm kind of safe but I can probably do I can obviously be in a position of power to really hurt right. The third and fourth players like if I see that like if I look at that board on that final turn and I see that like three threes have been used and I've got the fourth three it's like I'll play that and it's like all right can't be a three what do you got. So what I did and this was super effective just saying in these early games I don't think it'll last because obviously this is easily defeated whoever in the first hand whatever number I look at all the numbers everyone who did not lead played. I pick one of those players and especially if I have one or two of that number and I do the same thing like pushing spades and hearts I play that number at my next opportunity to try to force them into a corner by getting to the point where I hope they had two threes let's say they got rid of one I forced other threes out to try to get to the point to where all four threes are taken up so now they've got a liability in their hand. I mean filling up filling up a number in general is going to force someone right is going to create the most dangerous situation someone right but you know it's if all but so I would try to keep all five number which is highly risky like two fives someone plays a five I play a thought my next two cards are five just try to fuck well if you have two fives and you haven't shoved one under at the start I would keep one sometimes it's like right well it's like you you know that if you keep one of them to the end you're safe but if you can play both then you know you've definitely probably put the hurt on somebody exactly and I played this game both times the same way I play hearts I don't try necessarily to minimize my score so much as I try to fuck over other players and force them into bad situations and that's just how I play often play trick taking games and it's highly effective in two plays right I think the worst right the worst draw I think in this game would actually be like three pair right because you you let's say got three ones two twos two one two threes two fours I can hide a two at the start I can save a three at the end and it's like well I've got two fours and I have to play them both right if I had that situation I would aggressively desuit like early on purpose which you remember I desuaded way early and everyone was like whoa and I won so but uh but it's like I would try I would play those fours right I would try to play them quickly so that you know because there's a risk that there could be five of them out there I would in that situation if I had like three pairs I would aggressively desuit to try to get them all out on purpose because early quickly because if you have those cards you're playing with the skewed board then that lines up into an extremely orthogonally adjacent pile of points that is worth the risk you can have like a seven eight nine point hand and that'll probably win you the whole thing it's worth going for of course if you have a problem is if you desuit the problem is desuiting too early you might end up hurting yourself because it's like okay I know for sure that there are I ditched a one at the start and I've got a second one yeah I know there's only four ones out there right and I desuit you know in blue or something and then everyone gets played except the blue one and I'm the only I've this is the only one that's left because I ditched one of them yeah but I can't play it because I desuited blue too early and now I screwed myself yeah and I guess what I'm that's the risk you take when you desuit too early and that you know I played a very aggressive high-risk strategy in a game where everyone else at the table was playing very safely and conservatively so I want to see what happens if someone else goes as aggro as I go and I imagine we both get fucked over and someone else wins well I just I didn't under you know I think the thing is in those early games right I was trying to play safe but I wasn't playing safe because I didn't understand how to play that's true that's true and I just explained how to play safe is to just realize as long you know there are five of each card if you ditch one at the start or the end then all other cards of that number are safe as long as you don't hurt yourself by desuiting a color too early that it's you can and you then you know which you can separate your hand into the numbers that could paradox and the numbers that can't paradise realize you know why we were able to get such heuristics and figure stuff out so quickly with two plays and this game here at other trick-taking game played with a bunch of smart people several times in a row well we played twice but not just that it's because three or four times without suits counting cards is trivial everyone at the table can have a full count in their head what do you mean counting cards there's a board that shows you which cards have been played with little gems so playing this game you don't have to count anything exactly so playing this game lets you as a player who may not necessarily count cards and like hearts or wizard or something else feel what it's like to play a trick taking game if you were counting cards hmm that is the magic of this board and I just realized and you can see like I got a yellow six and you look at the board and it's like it shows you that the yellow seven and eight have already been played and you're like yellow six oh you have a six not a yellow six but you make it a yellow six because you've seen that the seven and the eight have already been played and there's you know and it's like well that's you know it could beat that unless they break and play the only hidden the only information you have to keep track of really is what card did you throw away because that's the only information you have other than your hand that no one else has yep so and they all the and you I guess the other and you would love to know what everyone else throw away that would be super valuable information so uh yeah I want to you can probably take other trick-taking games as a teaching exercise to make the count on a board like this so people can experience what hearts is like if like everyone was counting cards that I feel like you could just play you could just play like one hand of wizard right until everyone understands it just play wizard until everyone gets it and then just immediately switch to this and yeah I think I think this game is going to be a big hit with my family too like I'm going to anyone who is a trick-taking game enjoyer should add this one like if you're only going to have like five trick-taking games on your shelf it's like you know besides regular deck of cards yep it's like it's probably this one you know a wizard maybe the Haifu one kousu dice like those are the top ones that I've that I've done so Fuji flush I guess if that is an elevated experience that is not for everyone yeah but it's like I like move but I can't I'm not good at it maybe the stick out maybe it's like up there maybe because I really like check out but I haven't played it in so long yeah but like this one is the last time we played check out was at the packs where the the seventh guest arrived yeah but the point is the cat one is above the stick out in the of the world right yeah well check out I don't know if I like it because it's good or I like it because it's almost an inversion like it's such the opposite of everything trick taking game stand for it's like it's like the deconstruction of a trick taking game so I don't know if it's good or if it's just so novel that I'm obsessed with it it might not be good but anyway also you know coming up with this genius and also the deluxe edition that we were playing has very nice pieces all these cute little gems with like you know cat related and science related items oh yeah the game the style is just great the cute little cat with a little like chromatic aberration this game is just a gem yep so excellent game and it's not expensive and it's not large which is great oh and I guess we wanted to mention the game was published by hobby Japan it's a Japanese game oh yeah right who was the who was the designer again the designer I gotta go back I was clicking around in photos of the game for the livestream while we were talking the designer of this game mune yuki yokuchi okay but well yeah good job to that person but the thing I learned thanks to this game is I thought hobby Japan was a magazine right which it is I guess you know about like gundam modeling and stuff like that but apparently hobby Japan is like a publisher of like many different nerdy things in Japan not just a magazine most Euro games like it's a if you buy D&D in Japan it's like translated and locally published by hobby Japan they've even got the distribution rides to advanced squad leader yeah it's like I didn't realize hobby Japan was this whole publishing company I thought it was just a magazine but nope it's a whole publishing company they published lots of stuff over there including board games including this tabletop game so that's pretty cool