What’s up Doc?
2017’s Bunny Kingdom, made a big splash in modern gaming with its cartoony artwork and cutthroat card drafting mechanism, even spurring off an expansion the following year. You spent the game drafting plots of land where you could build ever expanding fiefs, trying to collect towers to build and resources to use. Playing up to four players, the game worked best at maximum playcount and although it had a two player variant, it never quite captured the interesting tension created with more players. Although it had a safe space on my game shelf, it very rarely got played due to the fact that my husband and I would always pick other games that worked better with just the two of us. Well almost 10 years later Bunny Kingdom Town has arrived, taking everything that we loved about the original game and focusing it into a tight and fun duel.
Let’s hop to it…
At the heart of Bunny Kingdom Town remains the cutthroat drafting that made the original so interesting. In the centre of the table is the town, made up of a grid of 5 x 5 squares, divided by a river and made up of different terrains. Some buildings had to be built on specific spaces and building on others would give you wood (which will come into use later). There is also a row of five building tiles and a row of plot cards, each relating to a spot on the grid where you can build for an increasing cost. The game is split into four rounds. On your turn you first take a building and place it into your supply. This is the only mandatory action. Then you may build it. To build you take one of the plot cards, paying its cost and then place that tile on that spot. Every time a tile is placed you score for that ‘neighbourhood’, made up of all connected tiles. Scoring is straightforward and very similar to the original. Each building has a ‘type’, and some will come with stars. You simply multiply the stars with the amount of unique buildings you have. There are also illegal buildings that usually let you steal something or do something underhanded and these will not count in your scoring but can often have powerful bonuses. The real fun here is keeping an eye, not only on your towns but the other player’s too. Taking plots away from them can be as important as taking them for yourself, especially if they are free or only cost one coin. The buildings all offer something, some give you stars, sometimes for nothing and sometimes ones that will only be unlocked if you have a certain building type in your neighbourhood, Some will give you money and some will give you cards but most importantly you can build as many as you can afford in one turn so holding off until you can do a big turn can sometimes really pay off.
Run Rabbit, Run Rabbit, Run, Run, Run…
The final pieces of the puzzle are the stack of end game scoring cards and a set of construction tiles. The construction tiles are where you can spend your wood. At the end of each turn you have the chance to buy a tile, offering anything from points to a chance to score your largest neighbourhood again. You can only ever have three through the course of a game and there will only be a select few available to choose from creating a bit of race . Then, much like in the original game there are lots of different ways to score at the end of the game. Each round will begin with you taking two and selecting one to keep. These can range from points for largest neighbourhood or most or least money to points per building type. This is where the big scoring can happen. It also means that due to the amount of these cards that each game can vary dramatically.
I really like Bunny Kingdom Town, it really scratches that Bunny Kingdom itch whilst also not feeling like a simplified version. It often doesn’t feel as brutal as the original, if that’s what you are looking for. but there is more than enough tension to keep the game interesting.
