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In any case, one of the hundreds of new games released at Tokyo Game Market in Nov. 2015 was The Waltzing Cat by Saien, and the four-minute video below includes rules and a complete game played by perhaps less-than-completely-aware players:
For those who prefer a written description to video, here you go:
Quote:
The Waltzing Cat is a two-player game that consists of eleven wooden blocks, with each of those blocks depicting two differently-colored cats on opposite sides. Gold cats show up five times, red and blue four times, and white, black and green three times; no color is repeated on a block with another color that appears the same number of times, e.g., red doesn't share a block with red or blue, but it does with the other four colors.
To set up, shuffle the blocks without looking at them, then set them up so that each player can see only one side of each block. The player who sees more gold cats takes the first turn. On a turn, a player pushes a block away from them (so that it falls on the table), pulls a block toward them, or declares the end of the game. If you push a block and the face that lands facing up appears on another face-up block, then you keep the block that you just pushed over. If you pull a block — thereby revealing a face that you haven't seen — and the face that lands facing up appears on another face-up block, then you keep both matching blocks.
If you declare the end of the game, the other player takes turns either pushing or pulling blocks (claiming blocks when appropriate) until no further matches can be made; the player who claimed the end of the game then takes all remaining face-up blocks.
Players then tally their scores for the face-up cats in their collection. Each gold cat is worth 2 points, while each non-gold cat is worth 1 point. A pair of one blue and one red cat is worth an additional 3 points (for 5 total points). Whoever scores the most points wins!
The Waltzing Cat resembles Saien's Katteni Shiyagare (which I wrote up in May 2015) in its components and graphic design, but the two games aren't connected except in you needing to use deduction to try to figure out which blocks might be which colors based on what you've seen so that you can make smart plays.To set up, shuffle the blocks without looking at them, then set them up so that each player can see only one side of each block. The player who sees more gold cats takes the first turn. On a turn, a player pushes a block away from them (so that it falls on the table), pulls a block toward them, or declares the end of the game. If you push a block and the face that lands facing up appears on another face-up block, then you keep the block that you just pushed over. If you pull a block — thereby revealing a face that you haven't seen — and the face that lands facing up appears on another face-up block, then you keep both matching blocks.
If you declare the end of the game, the other player takes turns either pushing or pulling blocks (claiming blocks when appropriate) until no further matches can be made; the player who claimed the end of the game then takes all remaining face-up blocks.
Players then tally their scores for the face-up cats in their collection. Each gold cat is worth 2 points, while each non-gold cat is worth 1 point. A pair of one blue and one red cat is worth an additional 3 points (for 5 total points). Whoever scores the most points wins!
I've now played The Waltzing Cat more than a half-dozen times on a purchased copy — I'm not sure how many times as the game lasts only a few minutes, and we typically play a few games in a row — and find it a fascinating distillation of deduction games. You have so little with which to work, but each turn you must push or pull something, which reveals information to the opponent in the process and possibly sets them up with opportunities.
In the video above, I was wondering why the girl kept pushing tiles away from her, which revealed info to my son and told her nothing — yet she knew exactly when to call the end of the game in order to have enough points to win. Okay, perhaps that was luck, but I have no idea. Even with 6+ games under my belt, I'm not sure what constitutes good play in The Waltzing Cat!
As with many other Japanese games, this design intrigues me partly because I feel like I don't understand it, but I could if I just played it a few more times. The game tickles something in my brain; I want to figure it out and play better while also wanting to introduce it to others because it seems so far removed from most of the other games that I play. Yes, it's a deduction game, but it's not a Frankenstein's monster of designs I already have on my shelves. I'm not sure what to make of it, so I'm reduced to being a kid again, poking at something with a stick to try to figure it out...
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