It’s so easy to paint yourself into a corner that you have to be very intentional at times, often sacrificing points to make sure you can make it to the end of the round without triggering the paradox. There are actually five of each number, making a deck of 45 cards if you play with the full five players.

Red, by the way, is always the trump suit, but you can’t lead with it until somebody has played red while following. Domestika on using python to do generative art and then realized the whole thing was in Portugese with subtitles. I’m always very impressed with folks pushing the boundaries of trick-taking games; it’s a very classic genre, so bringing in some modern design to try new things almost always results in a very interesting game.Cat in the Box is a trick-taking game that continues the “tradition” of untangling suits and ranks from their natural connection. And, since Transportation Tricks was mentioned, I’ll say – I think Cat in the Box is clearly the more clever design. It can be a bummer to finish the game with negative points, but for folks already familiar with trick-taking, that happens in some games. Play only continues until each player has one card left in their hand (if it gets that far) so you will essentially only be playing 8 cards in the round (assuming it gets that far).

Across my plays, I’ve come to realize that the greatest opportunity for control in the early game belongs to the second player, but it comes at a risk. If for some reason you can’t or don’t want to play a card to follow suit (for example, the only numbers you have available in a given suit are already eliminated), you can declare you don’t have any more of that color and you can play another one (including the red trump suit). You won’t need them, though I suppose if you wanted to ditch the boards and just take the cards for portability, these would save you a little bit of space. I’ve seen this game doing the rounds on BGG but wasn’t quite interested since I am not a “trick taking” aficionado (The Crew wasn’t able to turned me into one), but your review added an unexpected depth to the game (one I strongly think would have given a great finish to the Deluxe Edition at least as an added bonus), suddenly this “trick taking game” evolved and is now a purchased simple, practical, musings inducing quantum physics experiment.It was originally published in 2020 (I don’t know who the original publisher was) but in 2022 Bezier Games came out with a “deluxe” edition and that’s what I played. The themes are fun, but I have also found these games do a great job of making their gameplay interesting, as well. The winner of the previous trick starts the next turn by playing a new cat card and declaring its colour.