%2Fpic6731829.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
About Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition
Cat in the Box is a trick-taking game built on a genuinely new idea: your cards have numbers but no suits. You choose the colour when you play, marking it on a shared grid, and a combination that has already been used is not available. Play a card you cannot legally colour and you cause a paradox, which is as bad as it sounds.
This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.
Is Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition Right for You?
Best for
Cat in the Box is for groups who already like trick-taking games and want the genre genuinely reinvented rather than reskinned. The suitless cards mean you are simultaneously playing a trick game and a spatial placement game, and the paradox rule creates a slow tightening of options that nothing else quite reproduces. Four and five players are best.
Maybe skip it if…
If your table has never enjoyed a trick-taking game, this is not the one to start with, because it assumes you already understand following suit and trumps before it starts breaking those rules. It also punishes carelessness hard: one paradox can wipe out a round.
How to Play Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition
Setup
Deal the numbered cards. Place the shared research board where everyone can reach it. Each player takes their coloured cubes.
On Your Turn
- Bid how many tricks you expect to take this round.
- Play a card, declaring its colour and placing a cube on the matching space of the shared board.
- Highest card of the led colour wins the trick, with the trump colour beating everything.
How to Win
Score for hitting your bid and for connected groups of your cubes on the board. Highest total after the final round wins.
💡 Strategy Tips
The board is public. Before you declare a colour, check whether you are about to strand yourself with an unplayable hand later.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Declaring colours greedily in early tricks. Every declaration removes an option from the board, and most of the ones removed are your own.
- Bidding by hand strength alone. Because you choose colours as you go, hand strength is fluid, and the bid should reflect flexibility as much as high numbers.
- Forgetting to place your cube. It is the easiest thing in the world to miss and the board is the entire scoring engine.
- Ignoring cube adjacency when picking a colour. Two equally safe declarations are rarely worth the same number of points.
Advanced Strategy
- Track which number-and-colour combinations are gone, not just which colours you hold. The dead combinations are what create paradoxes.
- Holding a low card in a scarce colour late is often stronger than holding a high card in a crowded one.
- Bid one under what your hand suggests when you are seated last. Late position gives information but costs you control of what colours remain.
- Deliberately spend a mid-value card early to claim a good board region. Points from cubes are reliable in a way trick counts are not.
Variants & House Rules
The five-player board
The deluxe edition includes a larger research board for five, which changes the density of the grid considerably. Worth using rather than squeezing five onto the smaller one.
Advanced scoring
An included variant that weights connected cube groups more heavily, pushing players to think spatially from the first trick.
Video Guides
Loading videos…
Our Verdict
Cat in the Box is the most inventive trick-taking game we have played, and it earns the comparison to The Crew without imitating it at all. Deciding a card's colour as you play it sounds like a small twist and turns out to restructure the whole genre. For a group that already loves tricks, it is essential.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to know trick-taking games first?
It helps a great deal. The game assumes following suit and trumps are familiar and then subverts them, which is confusing without the baseline.
What is a paradox exactly?
If you cannot legally declare a colour for the card you play, because every valid combination is already claimed, you cause a paradox and take a significant penalty.
Is the deluxe edition worth it?
Yes. It includes the five-player board and much better components, and it is the version most widely available.