It Blowed Up Real Good!

Despite the popularity of a certain long-eared protagonist, you can count the number of bunny-themed games on a rabbit's foot. In Wabbit Wampage and Wabbit's Wevenge, you stole carrots and whomped critters, with the help of the Acme mail order company. Steve Jackson Game's Toon RPG let you play an indestructable Toon. Bunnies and Burrows was inspired, in part, by Watership Down. Killer Bunnies from Outer Space crossed Lara Croft with trailer trash. These games are long out-of-print.

Lagomorphs return in Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot. The plot line is pretty simple: Eliminate your opponent's bunnies, while keeping yours alive **and** collecting carrots. The game ends once the last carrot is drawn. The Magic Carrot is determined randomly, and whoever owns it, wins. Unfortunately, I found play to be tepid, and the theme felt more like gangsters and gunbarrels. The new players, however, enjoyed both the game and loved the graphics.

Mechanics

Setup

Killer Bunnies is a card game for 2-8 players. Players draw and play cards. The blue-backed cards are shuffled to form the Draw Pile. The pink-backed Large Carrot cards, numbered 1-12, are placed in their own pile. One card from the Small Carrot cards, also numbered 1-12, is randomly chosen (and not seen by any players) as the winning, Magic Carrot. (Once all the Large Carrot cards have been captured, the selected Small Carrot card is revealed, indicating the winning Large Carrot.) The smaller-sized Water cards and Cabbage cards as shuffled face-down in their own decks. (Water and Cabbage cards have values ranging from 1-10, mostly 1's and 2's indicating their worth when a Feed the Bunny card is played. More on that later.) The Kaballa's Market card is placed in the center, showing the cost of purchasing Cabbage cards, Water cards, and Carrot cards, with Kaballa Dolla cards (more on Dolla cards later).

Each player is dealt a hand of seven cards from the Draw Pile. Kaballa Dolla and Terrible Misfortune cards are played from one's hand immediately and replaced. Kaballa Dolla are played the player's Dolla pile. Kaballa Dolla cards range in value from 1-10 (mostly's 1's and 2's) and are used to purchase cards from Kaballa's Market. Terrible Misfortune cards result in one of your bunnies being "eliminated".

Each player will now have in his hand Run and Special cards. All players play, face-down, two Run cards. The first Run card is called the Top Run card and the second is called the Bottom Run card.

Play

On the current player's turn, he either plays a Special card directly from his hand, or the Top Run card. After the Top Run card is played, the Bottom Run card promotes to the Top Run card. The player then plays a Run card face-down as his new Bottom Run card. He then fills his hand to five cards. Again, like in the Setup, if he draws Kaballa Dolla and/or Terrible Misfortune cards, they are immediately played.

Types of Run cards are Bunnies, Choose a Carrot, Weapons, Feed the Bunny, and other effects. You need one or more Bunnies in play to play a Choose a Carrot card, or a card with the Aggressive trait. (Aggressive cards allow you to play cards against your opponent.) If you have three Bunnies of the same color or trait (eg. Congenial, Gleeful, etc.) in play, you may play two cards per turn. Choose a Carrot cards require you to have a Bunny in play, and allow you to take a Large Carrot card. Weapons allow you to attempt to "eliminate" another Bunny. (To "eliminate" a bunny with a Weapon card, the Bunny's owner rolls a d12 against the Level number indicated on the card. If the roll is higher than this number, the Bunny survives.) Feed the Bunny cards require Cabbage and Water cards to be discarded by the owner of a Bunny or the chosen Bunny dies. (For example, a Feed the Bunny card may require a card to discard Cabbage and Water cards worth a total of 3 Cabbage and 1 Water.) Miscellaneous effects range from Lucky Clover cards, which protects a Bunny against Weapons; Area 51 cards, which temporarily removes a Bunny from the game; and Kaballa's Market Closed, which shuts down Kaballa's Market (until the Kaballa's Market Opened is played).

The game ends when the last Large Carrot card is taken. The Small Carrot card selected at the beginning of the game is revealed. Whoever owns the matching Large Carrot wins the game -- but must have a Bunny still in play. For added suspense, the **other** Small Carrot cards are revealed, one at a time, first.

Rule book

While play is simple, the rule book could have been written better. For example, the game overview is in the middle of the book. Important mechanics (eg. the Cabbage and Water piles are not reshuffled when exhausted) are not described in the main rules. The rules attempt humor, which I found more wordy than entertaining. Strategy suggestions were mixed in with the main rules. The rules also have a "Wheeling and Dealing" paragraph which isn't clear if you can actually trade cards. However, the rules are only ten pages long, and players should understand the game after a little play. In fact, in our first game, we forgot part of the rules, and it didn't affect play. You can see the rule book for yourself on the Playroom Entertainment web site (www.PlayroomEnt.com). In addition to rules, the site has sample card art, information about future expansions, and information about the company's other games.

House Rules

The deck and rules are easily tweaked. Some cards too confusing for the non-gamers? Remove them. Bunnies dying too fast? Remove some aggressive cards from the deck. Game too long? Start with fewer Carrot cards. Winning conditions too random? Whoever has the most Carrots wins. (BTW, During play, we found the Halo card, which protects a Bunny from most cards in the game, to be too powerful. I suggest initially not playing with it.)

Art and Packaging

Killer Bunnies has a great colorful cartoonish graphic design. The 165 cards are stiff quality playing card stock. (They're also sorted and stick a bit, so make sure you shuffle the cards **very** well.) In addition to clear card text, cards also feature convenient color "codes" so players can recognize a card's type immediately. (New players, however, had problems distinguishing which cards were Bunny cards.) The game also comes with six colored transparent d12's for various die rolls in the game. The game retails for $25, but you can find $20 prices on the net.

The game is sold in a Blue Starter deck (with a "free" Yellow booster deck) and future booster decks of different colors. The game, however, is non-collectable, and a better description would be that this game is a conventional card game with expansion sets.

Expansions

Each expansion set consists of 55 additional cards. Of these cards, roughly 2/3 are additional cards similar to the base set, to keep the correct proportion of different cards in the game. More Carrot cards are added, making a longer game. Some additional Bunnies belong to new colors, making it more difficult to have three bunnies of the same color in play. Each expansion set has a different colored back, even though they're shuffled into the same play deck. Aside from the Yellow Expansion, which comes with the $25 basic game, each set costs $12.

Yellow Expansion: Comes with the basic game. Adds Carrots 9-12 and yellow and purple bunnies. Miscellaneous cards include Bunny Block Bid, which allows you to use Kaballa Dollas to buy another player's Bunny; and Minilith, which doubles the level of your Weapon cards.

Red Expansion: Adds Carrots 13-16 and red Bunnies. Each red Bunny has its own abilities, unlike Bunnies of other sets. The set also adds Rodney's Weapons Emporium, which allows players to buy Weapon cards, and Defense cards. When players play Weapons, the played Weapon cards go to a separate pile. A player may buy a Weapon card for an amount of Dollas equal to its Level. (The Level of a weapon is the number the victim's bunny must roll equal to or higher for it to survive.) Defense cards are bought face-down (like Cabbage and Water cards), and range from 1-11. Before the die is rolled for a Weapon, the owner of the bunny may discard one or more Defense cards whose total value is equal to or greater than the Level of a Weapon to discard it before it takes effect. Other miscellaneous cards include Bounty Mounty, which allows you to place a bounty (in Kaballa Dollas) on an opponent's bunny.

Violet Expansion: Adds Carrots 17-20, Speciality Bunnies, and some miscellaneous effects. A Speciality Bunny is its own "color". A Specialty Bunny may be a pair, so a pair and a single bunny would count as three bunnies, qualifying the player to play two cards per turn. A few cards refer to cards in the Red Expansion. Other miscellaneous cards include Run Transformer, which allows you to play a Run card as a Special card. This expansion should be purchased after the Red expansion.

The Play

My main problem with the game is that I was making even fewer decisions than your typical "beer and pretzels" game! Most Run cards require a Bunny to be in play, so if you don't have a Bunny, your only option is to play a Bunny as a Run card. Although you can play a Special instead of a Run card, many Specials are defensive cards, played only as a reaction to another player. Players thus often found themselves with only one or two playable cards in their hands. And if you had two Weapon cards, the one with the higher Weapon Level (ie. greater chance to eliminate another Bunny) was always superior, and thus the obvious play. The only consideration I had to make was whether or not my Bunny would last long enough for my Choose a Carrot card to be successfully played. Another possible decision is whether or not a player should buy a Carrot (ten Dollahs) or Cabbage and Water cards (three Dollas each). But considering you can have insufficent Cabbage and Water to save a Bunny from a Feed the Rabbit card, buying Carrots became the easier decision. About the only real strategy was to target the player in the lead.

A second problem I had was that the game had "complexity without depth". The game has quite a few mechanics, yet this didn't give players more options for play. The mechanics likewise didn't contribute to the theme of the game. The game felt more like faceless gang members trying to wipe each other out than a "toon" game.

But I may be analyzing more than I should about a "beer and pretzels" game. Us jaded regular gamers didn't think it particularly stood out. Players totally new to hobby games did enjoy the cartoony-looking cards. They quickly mastered the mechanics and strategy wasn't important to them. Perhaps as the ultimate compliment, one of the new players asked where he could purchase the game.

I guess those rabbits did blowed up real good.