Retail Price: $50
Player Count: 2-4 (best at any number)
Age Range: 12+ (7+ if you are willing to help with the score calculations)
Play Time: 40-60 mins. (we run around 30 mins per player)
Complexity: 5 out of 10 (consistent with our experience)
Mechanisms: Area Majority, Card Drafting, End Game Bonuses
Designer: Richard Garfield
Artist: Paul Mafayon
Publisher: IELLO
Educational Value:
Strategic Thinking
Problem Solving
Spatial Reasoning
Math: Multiplication
Flavor Text:
"You will need to get the best of what these lands have to offer. Explore the furthest corners, construct Cities, farm Resources to make your Fiefs prosper, and accumulate precious Golden Carrots. Don’t forget to satisfy the King by accomplishing Missions of the utmost discretion on behalf of His Majesty! Every choice can bring you laurels of victory, but in the end, only the most valiant among you will be named “Big Ears” by the Bunny King. Will you be worthy?"
Overview:
Bunny Kingdom is really a card drafting (sort of engine building) game, with a physical representation on the board. Where your objective is to get the most castle spires and unique resources, that are all connected orthogonally, and fulfill your special game end bonus requirements.
Setup:
Place the board in the middle of the table, and set up single spire cities on each City space on the board.
Each player selects a color, takes their bunny figures, and places one on the 0 space of the score track.
Shuffle the exploration cards, and make a deck (we usually make two because there are so many cards).
Place the remaining cities and tokens next to the board.
Gameplay:
Each round you deal cards to each player ( 12 in a 2-3 player game, and 10 in a 4 player game), and then players select two cards to keep. You will pass the remaining cards to your left in round 1 and 3, and to your right in rounds 2 and 4. There are 4 different types of cards:
Territory Cards - each card represents one space on the board
Building Cards - each card allows you to place either a city or token, on the territories you control
Parchment Cards - these provide some way to earn additional victory points, and are divided into two types
Missions - reward you with victory points if some objective is completed
Treasures - give you victory points without any other requirement
Provision Cards - these let you draw 2 more exploration cards
You then must reveal all your cards except Parchment Cards, which are kept secret until the end of the game. You will place a bunny on each of your territories, draw more cards if you have Provision Cards, and may place the buildings you have, or you may wait to place them until a future turn. Some Building Cards do have special requirements that must be met for the territory you place them on, which may include:
Carrot - must be placed on a farm territory with a carrot icon.
Tree - must be placed on a forest territory with a log icon.
Wave - can only be placed on a sea territory with a fish icon.
Mountain - can only be placed on a mountain territory.
Points are earned each round, by multiplying the number of spires you have times the unique resources you have in each fief (the groups of vertically and horizontally connected territories you have, but not diagonally). There are 3 basic and 7 unique luxury resources:
Basic
Wood, Fish and Carrots
Luxury
Pearls, Mushrooms, Spices, Diamonds, Stone, Gold, and Iron
There are also Sky Tower tokens, which may be placed on two separate fiefs to connect them for scoring. Lastly, there are camp tokens, which allow you to place a bunny on any unoccupied territory, but if another player draws that card in a future round you get kicked off, so make sure you time the use of these wisely. After the last round, you add in your Parchment Card scoring items, and the player with the highest score wins.
Expansion:
Without question, the base game of Bunny Kingdom is a great game, and so I would never say an expansion is essential. However, “Bunny Kingdom: In the Sky” is an excellent addition to the universe of Bunny Kingdom, and adds some fun new abilities and resources, a beautiful board and components, and new Parchment Cards for end of game scoring. Two of our favorite things about the expansion, are the new 5 spire castles (which are beautiful), and the abilities that allow you to connect your fiefs in the sky to your fiefs in the original game, which makes for significantly expanded new scoring abilities.
Luck/Strategy:
There is a fair amount of luck involved in Bunny Kingdom, in that there are so many cards in the deck, you won’t see a lot of them every game. However, you have enough information between passing cards, and seeing what your opponents are going after, that you certainly can develop a general strategy. I would describe the game as much more tactical in that regard, as you do have to be willing and able to at least slightly adjust your strategy based on what cards come out in future rounds. One additional note I will make here, is that with 2 players the luck is significantly reduced, because you have a much higher chance of getting cards back that you pass up the first time through. I noticed in BGG it is rated as best at 4, but I actually really like the 2 player game better, largely due to the reduction in luck that occurs.
Artwork:
The artwork in the original game, and most certainly in the “Bunny Kingdom: In the Sky” expansion, is incredibly well done. The boards have tons of detail, but the cards are the real show stopper here. The detail on all the cards is incredibly immersive, and definitely takes the game to a whole other level.
Theme:
I really enjoy the theme of this game, as the little bunny farmers and warriors (and Chocobos to boot), make this a game that I can have a blast playing with my kids. As far as thematic integration of the mechanisms, I could see people argue both that the game is pretty thematic, and that you could technically replace it with most other themes. The scoring process to me does feel pretty thematic, in that you get a higher score based on how big your castles are and the variety of resources you are able to produce.
Replayability/Fun Factor:
In my book this game is infinitely replayable, because you are literally going to play with only about half the cards in the deck each game. There is no consistent strategy that is going to guarantee you a win game in and game out, or even across rounds in the same game for that matter. This is probably one of the most fun games we own, and I have never not had a great time playing it, whether I won or lost.
Conclusion/Audience:
If you don’t enjoy complex calculations, and are unwilling to just enjoy the art and play freely, then you may not enjoy this game. Other than that, I think this game will appeal to just about every audience. The art may look like it is intended for a younger audience, but I assure you there is plenty of strategic depth here to appease most gaming groups. It can be somewhat interactive, depending on the strategic nature of the group playing it, which I think gives it even more broad appeal. This is going to be hard for early elementary age kids to grasp, and even late elementary may need help in calculating scores. Older kids are going to almost certainly have a blast though.
+ Easy to learn
+ Beautiful artwork
+ Very thinky
+ More tactical than luck
- Can be a bit fiddly
- A lot of cards to shuffle
Final Score:
Jared - 8.5
Abigail - 9.5
Other Games You Might Like:
Powergrid, Terraforming Mars, Underwater Cities, Sushi Go (Party),
This game was purchased from my friendly local game store, and Bunny Kingdom is available here and Bunny Kingdom: In the Sky here. This isn't an affiliate link, but just my way of trying to support my FLGS, who carry great games at even better prices.
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