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Review of Karnickel
Players: 2-4
Playing TIme: 15 minutes
Summary of the Components
Karnickel comes with: cardboard track, rabbits, and carrots; and wooden dice.
Quality: The cardboard is all good-quality and linen-textured. The dice are sturdy wooden dice, but unfortunately you have to apply stickers to them yourselves, and the stickers look like they were printed off an Inkjet or something similar. 4 out of 5.
Beauty: There's nice artwork on the track and the rabbits are quite cute, including some armored bunnies and other similarly humorous element. Unfortunately, the rabbits (and train) come with stands to hold them up and the stands obscure a considerable amount of the artwork. 4 out of 5.
Usability: The game is extremely simple, so there isn't much necessary to play the game. The dice and rabbit stands are color-matched, and that's about it. The circular tracks did have a minor issue: it seemed impossible to actually form them into a tight circle. In any case, everything worked well enough. 4 out of 5.
Theming: I'm not sure why the best carrots are found on railroad tracks, but overall this game of rabbits searching for carrots was thematic enough. 4 out of 5.
On the whole, Karnickel is a nicely produced game, but a number of small nuisances keep it from achieving a perfect score, so I've given it "4" out of "5" for Style.
Summary of the Gameplay
The object of Karnickel is to grab carrots when the train moves … without getting hit by said train.
Setup: The train is placed on one of the 8 tiles that make up the circular train track. Each rabbit is then placed on a track tile as well.
Dicing: On his turn, the player rolls the dice. Faces show either (black) train movement or else (colored) rabbit movement. The player sets aside any train movement he rolled. Then, the player chooses one color from the dice and moves the appropriate rabbit forward that many spaces.
When he's done, he passes on the dice he didn't set aside to the player.
Moving the Train: Eventually all the dice will be train movement. The active player picks them up, rolls them all again, then moves the train forward based on the the amount of train movement shown.
What Happens to the Rabbits. If a train runs over a rabbit, he's removed from the board. If a rabbit is either on a bridge or else the train doesn't move past him he instead gains a number of carrots, as shown on the board — from -1 (on one of the bridges) to 3. Then, all the removed rabbits are returned to the board and a new round of play begins.
Winning the Game: When a player collects 8 carrots, the player with the most carrots wins.
Relationships to Other Games
The die-rolling and the connected ability to move any rabbit a set amount is the most clever element of the game and reminds me of the core mechanic of Winner's Circle / Royal Turf by Reiner Knizia. There, each player places bets on certain horses, but when you roll a die you can choose to move any horse, not just yours.
The Game Design
Karnickel is an extremely light game. with fairly minimal choices. It's all about constantly jockeying to move your rabbit to good positions and other rabbits to bad positions. This means that you can theoretically press your luck by putting your rabbit a bit close to the train in the hope of earning a carrot bonanza. However, both your choices and your risks are largely offset by the chaos of what other players do and by the randomness of the dice rolls.
Karnickel doesn't actually say that it's a family and kid's game, but it does list an age of 6 . The gameplay is also light enough that I don't think it'll hold up long for more strategic players. As a kid or family game, it's fairly average, and I'd give it a "3" out of "5" for Substance. More serious gamers might briefly enjoy it as a filler, but I think the shine would be off the carrot pretty quickly.
Conclusion
Karnickel is an extremely light game with just a bit of choice and a fair amount of random luck. It'd be OK for kids, for families, or as a light filler.
