Blancat

• Designer: Nutgoo Lee 
• Publisher: Korea Board Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 20 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

You’ve made new blankets for your cats, but they want their old ones back! Remake the original patterns quickly before the yowling begins! Each round, a goal card is revealed for everyone to see. All players try to recreate that pattern as quickly as possible by weaving threads on their personal player boards. Players grab a cat token as soon as they finish. The player who fails to complete their blanket before the tokens run out receives a penalty, unless another player wrongfully claimed a token with an incorrect pattern. It’s a unique, pattern-matching puzzle game for friends and families alike.

To start, each player gets a board which has a cat bed in the middle and then three paper strips coming off of each side. Choose a deck of goal cards, shuffle it and place it on the table.  Take one less cat token than the number of players and put those on the table as well.

When everyone is ready, flip up the top goal card and everyone immediately starts to fold the paper strips on their board to match the pattern on the card.  All the strips must be folded in.  When you think you’re done, yell out “Blancat” and take a cat token.  You can no longer work on your board once you take a cat token.

Once all the cat tokens are collected, score the round.  If any of the cat token people have made a mistake, those players take a penalty (a face down goal card).  If all the cat token people have done it correctly, the player without a cat token takes a penalty.

Here’s a penalty. I thought I had this done, but missed the upper left corner

Continue until someone has 3 penalty tokens. That player/s lose/s. The other players should point their finger at the loser and laugh.

If you feel that you’ve mastered the base game, you can move onto the advanced game which requires each player to thread every strand under at least one other.  The easy way to test this is to hold the board upside down – no strand should come loose.

My thoughts on the game

This is a super cute speed game which uses a weaving mechanic I haven’t seen very often.There are two levels of difficulty, but the easy cards definitely feel a might bit easy.  That being said, adding the tucking variant to the easy cards turns the game into a nice challenge.  I’d definitely recommend that for gamers who are new to the game.

The hard cards definitely take a bit more thought, and this is where the time pressure can come into play.  Sure, like any speed game, there will likely be someone at the table who just gets it faster than everyone else – but the game is short, and the puzzles are fun to do – so I don’t let this bother me too much.

There’s honestly not much more to say about the game.  If you like weaving or other needlework, if you like speed puzzle games or if you like adorable little cat meeples, this is a game to check out.

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor