Caty Mini
Caty Mini Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
- 4 player boards
- 4 spools
- 50 toy tokens (5 in each of 10 colours/types, with values 2, 2, 3, 3, 4)
- 4 strings
- 20 furniture tiles (5 in each of 4 colours)
- 1 starting player marker
Object of the Game
Each player has a room full of toys. Cats run happily around the rooms. The more toys interest a cat, the more points the player will earn.
During the game you lay out tiles showing furniture, towards which your cats run. You score points for every toy that your cat ran past. So try to choose the direction of the cat's run wisely!
Setup
Before the first game, tie knots at both ends of each string.
A. Each player takes one player board and places it in front of themselves.
B. Randomly choose 1 furniture tile of any colour and place it in the middle of the table (furniture picture face up).
C. Divide the remaining furniture tiles by colour. Shuffle each group thoroughly and for the moment place them in piles at the side of the table (pictures face down).
D. Then take the appropriate number of tiles, depending on the number of players. Hold them so as not to reveal the pictures on the tiles to your rivals.
- 2 players: each takes 1 tile from each pile + 3 additional tiles from any 3 different piles.
- 3 players: each takes 1 tile from each pile + 1 additional tile from any pile.
- 4 players: each takes 1 tile from each pile.
Put the tiles remaining in the piles (C) back in the box; they do not take part in the game.
E. Choose your string and wind it onto the spool of the same colour.
F. Then push the end of your string into one of the two notches in the board next to the piece of furniture visible in the middle of the table (laid out in step B). Do it so that the knot is on the underside of the board.
G. Divide the toy tokens by picture and make 10 piles of them in the middle of the table (numbers face down). Then adjust the number of tokens to the number of players:
- 2 players: randomly remove 2 tokens from each pile and put them back in the box.
- 3 players: randomly remove 1 token from each pile and put it back in the box.
- 4 players: do not remove any tokens; all take part in the game.
Then arrange the tokens in the piles (pictures face up) from the smallest to the largest value (the smallest value lies on top of the pile).
H. The game is started by the person who most recently petted a cat; they take the starting player marker and put it on the table in front of themselves.
Course of the Game
The game lasts 12 rounds. Each round consists of two parts:
A) Setting the direction of the cat's run. B) The cat's run and scoring points.
A) Setting the direction of the cat's run
The person with the starting player marker decides towards which piece of furniture the cats in all players' rooms will run. They choose one furniture tile (from those held in hand) and place it (picture face up) in the middle of the table, on top of the tile laid there earlier. They place it so that a piece of the previous tile sticks out.
Example: A player chose the yellow tile with a table and put it in the middle of the table (on the turquoise tile with a chair lying there). This means that the cats in all players' rooms will run towards the yellow wall: to the table shown on the tile.
The chosen tile must be a different colour than the tile visible in the middle of the table. Remember to place tiles so that a piece of the previous tile sticks out. Thanks to this it will be visible how many rounds you have already played. After the 12th round the game ends.
B) The cat's run and scoring points
The person with the starting player marker begins. Afterwards it is the turn of the player sitting to the left.
The player leads their string across the board to the piece of furniture indicated by the tile lying in the middle of the table. Each board has a different arrangement of furniture. So during the game the cats in each room will run in a different way.
In the board, on both sides of each piece of furniture, there are 2 notches. The player must hook the string using both of these notches. The string must enter through one notch and exit through the other. The player decides for themselves which notch to use as the entry and which as the exit of the string.
Make sure the string passing across the board is always taut.
Example: A tile showing a table on a yellow background has been laid in the middle of the table. So the player hooks the string on the table next to the yellow wall of the room. The player makes sure that the section of string on the board is taut.
After the cat has run (that is, the string has been hooked on the furniture), the player checks whether they scored points.
The player scores points if the cat ran across one or more toys lying on the floor (if the string touches a space with a drawing of a toy). In that case the player takes the corresponding token from the top of the pile (that is, the one with the lowest available value). If that pile has run out, the player takes no token (scores no points).
Example: When the cat ran across a toy, the player gains that toy's token (taking it from the top of the pile). Players whose cats run across this toy later in the game may be able to gain tokens with more points! Remember that the tokens in the piles are arranged from the smallest to the largest value.
During the game you can score points for the same toy several times (if the cat runs across it several times).
The player places the tokens they have gained in front of themselves on the table (number face down). If the cat did not run across any toy, the player scores no points.
The player's turn ends. The player sitting to the left begins their turn:
- hooks their string on the piece of furniture indicated by the tile lying in the middle of the table,
- checks whether they scored points; if so, takes the corresponding toy tokens.
The round ends when all players have taken their move. The starting player marker passes to the person sitting to the left. They will begin the next round:
- set the direction of the cat's run,
- hook the string on the furniture,
- check whether they scored points.
End of the Game
The game lasts 12 rounds (during the game you will lay out 12 furniture tiles in the middle of the table).
After the last round ends, add up the values of the toy tokens gained. The winner is the person with the most points. In case of a tie, the winner is the person who has the longer piece of string left on their spool.
If in the last round any player ran out of string (did not reach the notch in the board), they score no points for that round!
Variant for Older Players
The game proceeds in the same way as in the basic version. The difference concerns the counting of points gained:
- add the values of the toy tokens gained (as in the basic version),
- in addition you receive 1 point for each kind of toy on the tokens gained. If a player managed to collect all the toys (10 kinds), they receive 15 points as a reward!