Well, it’s one for the bunny

Saturday at Sam’s saw three eager visitors (me, Chris, Matt) arrive for some board games. When I arrived, Sam, Chris and (Sam’s son) Joe were playing Karuba the card game, a neat little encapsulation of the original. I don’t remember who won, but I’m pretty sure there were two of them.

Matt arrived and, after the usual ritual of polite but brief conversations and blank staring at the choice of games, we went for Bunny Kingdom. This game only made its debut a few days ago, but I was happy to give it another go.

Bunny Kingdom's handy cheat sheet to work out scores

Matt was a feisty one, playing one bunny very early on that separated my only two bunnies on the board. I got him back later on by taking a territory that he had camped on. Chris had a seemingly huge fiefdom, but it was split in half by a stream of lava. Sam, distracted by the pressures of parenthood, kept misreading cards.

In the end of game scoring, I had a huge pile of scrolls, Chris was smart enough to have the cards that copied a scroll of a player on his left AND his right. Matt sneakily kept hold of the Opportunist, giving ten points to him if he ended in second. This was enough to put him in first.

Matt 115
Sam 107
Andrew 103
Chris 91

Then I requested a game of Billabong that Sam had recently got in a trade. I was amazed that anyone would want to trade away a game this good. We bounced around the dirty brown track, leaping over our opponents, and I found one of my kangas being left behind. Matt was in a position to finish in first with his next move, so Sam warned us of this. As it happened, the player who profited most from our attempts to foil Matt’s plan was Sam himself.

Sam
Chris
Matt
Andrew

Then we played Catacombs and Castles, a team-based flicking game whereby each character has different abilities and also two special shots that they can charge up using hit points stolen from the other team. I can’t say I cared for it, since there are other flicking games that do strategy (Ascending Empires) or comedy violence (Cube Quest) better.

Sam & Matt win
Chris & Andrew lost

Then we played the mind. Our first round begun with us sitting in stoic silence, waiting for the others to play because our card couldn’t possibly be the first. Sam rejected my suggestion of a shuriken and, eventually, the first card was played.

After this, things didn’t get much easier. We battled through to round six, and then tried again, reaching round seven.

And with that, we were done. Another late one for me, but worth it. Cheers all.