Welcome to the most famous fish market in the cat’s world, Tsukiji Market! You and your fellow players are kitten chefs competing for the freshest fish to cook up your dishes with. You have to be quick, both with your claws and your wits.
In a roundabout way through HeidelBÄR Games and brought to the US from Czech Games comes Fish and Katz. A quick-playing set collection game designed by Benjamin Leung. Fish and Katz can be played with kids as young as 5+ and plays best with 4-5 players.
Gameplay Overview:
The goal in Fish and Katz is to be the first player to 6 points. Each player starts the game by sliding on a knit cat paw onto one of your fingers. I’m sure cat lovers reading this are already yelling “SOLD!” (I’m looking at you Marcus), but for the rest of you here is how the game is played.
Each round, cards are dealt to the table equal to the player count +1 and on the count of 3, each player slaps their cat paw/finger on a card on the table. If you are the only one that picks the card, great! You add it to your score pile. If someone else chooses the same card you did, nobody gets it.
When at least one player has collected 3 cards of 2 different types of fish, a scoring round happens. Players gain points for their sets that have at least 3 cards. Then all cards are collected, shuffled, and a new round begins.
The first player to 6 points is the king cat chef… or something.
Game Experience:
This game was first handed to us at Gen Con this year when we met with Czech Games Edition and I’m not going to lie, we were all curious about the little cat paws you wear. We decided that even though this is really a family game, we should try it out then and there. And it’s actually a good little filler game. The rules take about 30 seconds to explain, you slap some cards, and have a few laughs. With Fish and Katz, what you see is pretty much what you get.
Once I got home, I tried it out with my little ones (ages 6) and their eyes lit up when they saw the cat paws. They loved them (shocking, right?) and even fought over who got to wear which. But once we were actually able to play the game, they picked it up quickly. They had a great laugh when two people chose the same fish, and sometimes they’d even try to pick the one we were going for just to mess with us.
That being said, they eventually figured out that they needed to keep an eye on what we were doing to avoid letting us get too many sets. And since fish cards have different values, they also quickly realized going for the higher costs fish will net them more points. They enjoyed it quite a bit and made us play it multiple times in row.
I will say that Fish and Katz definitely plays better at the higher counts, with 4-5 players being the sweet spot. There are some alternate rules for 2 players, but I probably wouldn’t bother with that player count. You really want a few players to fight over cards for this game to really shine.
Final Thoughts:
Fish and Katz is a light filler game that my kids seemed to really enjoy. It provoked quite a bit of laughter when players selected the same fish as others and most people didn’t really seem to care about the final score. The theme and cat mittens do a lot of heavy lifting with this game, so if you are a cat lover, this will spark some joy on your gaming table. For a quick 15-minute filler to be played with family or nonigamer friends, it fits the bill.
