Cat Blues: The Big Gig Game Review

And a 1, and a 2, and a 1-2-3

Cat Blues: The Big Gig is an auction game from designer Reiner Knizia and publisher Bitewing Games, a reimplementation of Knizia’s 1998 release Katzenjammer Blues. While the original has long been out of print—a 2019 Korean printing is the only edition from within the past decade—it has retained a minor cult following. With Bitewing’s appetite for reviving more obscure Knizia designs, a reprint felt inevitable.

What we have here is an auction game, played over three rounds. The deck consists of cards valued from 1-5, along with wild Jokers. Each auction starts with the Band Leader—the winner of the previous auction—revealing cards off the top of the deck until they draw either a duplicate of a card already in the market row or a Joker. At that point, the bidding begins, with the market row as the prize.

The player to the left of the Band Leader can make any bid they want. Bid values in Cat Blues are idiosyncratic, though sensible enough once you get the hang of it. You can either bid any number of cards with different values, or you can bid a specified number of cards of the same value. A bid with more cards always beats a bid with fewer cards, while a bid with…

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