by W. Eric Martin

In a late May 2025 post, I suggested an article called "Hot Take: Reviewers Aren't Representative", and this review is an example of just that, with German publisher AMIGO offering me the chance to play a game before it's released on the general market, an experience few people have.

That said, my job is to write about new and upcoming games, so yes, I'm going to get opportunities like this — and since I wrote and recorded a glowing review of Reiner Knizia's LAMA in 2019 and this new game is another quick-playing title from Knizia and AMIGO, I'm not surprised that the publisher reached out to me. Keep that bias in account when you read the following.

Like LAMA, Meister Makatsu is a card game for 2-6 players in which you want to score as little as possible. (Side note: I dislike when a game gives players negative points and tells you to avoid taking these negative points, which means that you actually want the highest score as in a game that scores "normally". Keep things simple: Tell us that we score points and want the lowest score — or keep things complicated by telling us that the player with the absolute value closest to zero wins. Your call.)

Another way to think about the game is that Meister Makatsu presents players with a "run faster than your friends" scenario, with one or more players being bitten by the bear each round and with you trying to avoid that.

Each player has a deck of 24 cards, with cards in three colors numbered 1-8. To start a round, each player draws four cards, then clockwise from the round's starting player each player lays down a card face up, then another card face up. Whoever played the highest card in each color takes a penalty chip worth as many points as the current level, that is, 1, 2, or 3 points for the first, second, or third time through your deck. Whoever played the highest yellow card takes two chips instead of one, and whoever played the highest purple becomes the start player for the next round. Ties are lost by whoever played last, by which I mean the bear bites them.

As for the two cards remaining in your hand, place them aside for use in the second level. Draw a new hand of four cards, and play it out, doing this six times in total, after which you'll have played (and discarded) twelve cards and placed twelve cards aside. Shuffle those twelve unplayed cards, then draw a hand of four cards to start level 2.

Play out hands three times, taking 2-point chips when you're the highest in a color, then shuffle the six unplayed cards to set up for level 3, which works a tad differently: Draw four cards and play two, then draw your remaining two cards, then play two and discard the final two. Whoever has the fewest points wins.

Meister Makatsu has the same appeal as LAMA: minimal rules that allow you to speedwalk through multiple rounds, with each round featuring a new puzzle of a hand that asks what you want to play and what you want to sit on. The goal is straightforward — don't play the highest card(s) — but everyone has the same cards at random times, so...then what?

Should you play an 8 to get it out of the way in level 1 for only 1 point? That seems obvious, but maybe you're playing after someone else's 8, so you'll save them from a bite — or maybe everyone else plays 7s and 6s of that color after you, which means you might get bit when playing those cards later. You can discard two 8s at game's end, but that means you'll be forced to play other cards in the meantime...and they might still net you points.

Do you want to ditch a color so that you have less chance of being the only one with that color in level 3 and thereby scoring for your 1 and 2? Well, what is everyone else doing? Are they concentrating on ditching high cards or a color?

The more players you have in a game, the more likely someone else is to end up in the bear's mouth instead of you, so scores are generally lower — but that means one error in level 3 (or even level 2) might be enough to knock you out of competition. With only two or three players, you'll score more often, but you can probably better track what's been played so that you know what's coming in level 2 and 3. Will that help you? Maybe...

Mock-up components, with a frog scooting back into my deck for the next level
I've played Meister Makatsu five times on that mock-up copy from AMIGO with two, three, five, and six players, and like LAMA the game feels vastly different depending on the player count, which makes sense given that you're far more likely to be the high card when fewer people (and therefore fewer cards) are on the table. With a lower player count, you can more easily track who's played what, which lets you play the odds as to what someone might have in hand...although that someone always has a choice of which cards to play, so a player's personality also affects how a round plays out.

With more players, the points tend to be spread out, which means everyone's score tends to be lower, which means if you goof in the second or third level and score a few times — or even once with a yellow card — you could blow your chance, and it's harder to track who's played what with more players, so once again you're playing the odds.

One fun aspect of that "odds playing" is that you get to engage in it multiple ways when playing a card, both in what others will play on you and on what you'll get in the future. For this latter aspect, since you have a choice of what to play, if you play late in the round, you often can decide who scores. If the leader is going to catch a point token or two, you might decide to hold off on playing a high number now at the risk of being forced to play it later.

None of the decisions in Meister Makatsu are that tough, but you have them in almost every hand, and you get little victories and setbacks along the way, so you feel invested constantly, with the points escalating over the game's short timeline to bring everything quickly crashing to an end.

For more demonstrations of gameplay, complete rules, a short take on the game's setting, and even more LAMA comparisons, watch this video:

Youtube Video