by W. Eric Martin

Sjoerd Yska‘s Badass Bunnies from 999 Games gives you a simple goal: Reveal at least ten bunnies from your deck of cards in a single turn.

You start with only two bunnies, though, so you’ll need to pick up more as quickly as you can…and to get bunnies, you’ll need carrots. Your deck starts with four carrots, and you can use them to buy more cards, but foxes await in your deck as well, and as you reveal cards one by one, if you reveal two foxes, you must race back to your burrow to hide, so you don’t get to do anything else.

Getting chased by foxes isn’t all bad, though, because if you’ve been chased twice, you get to throw a new fox into someone else’s deck, making their life harder, too. (You can imagine yourself creating a trail that leads the fox to a neighbor’s burrow, as heartless as that would be in real life.) Once all the foxes in the reserve have been “claimed”, if you bust enough times, you remove a fox from your deck and give it to someone else — which will likely improve your lot in future turns, but that’s akin to celebrating one wall still standing after a tornado has torn through your house.

Carrots let you purchase more of what you start with, as well as better bunnies: a thief that steals a random card from an opponent, a pair of bunnies that will bless you with a baby, a sentry that will stop you from drawing the second fox, and a guard that will obliterate one fox…even if only for a single turn.

You get to press your luck constantly in Badass Bunnies to have more buying power, to get a new baby, to reach the ten bunny threshold, to steal cards from others to stop them from reaching that threshold, and so on — and thanks to you shuffling your deck at the end of each turn, all results are possible each turn. You can use the thief repeatedly, the couple will bless you with a cluster of kits, and you’ll bust more times than you thought possible, with foxes sometimes hitting the table one, two and ending your turn before it ever really started.

Yet another unattractive card game pic

While 999 Games could have published this game with a more serious look, the cartoonish graphics nicely convey the randomness of the game, letting you know that a 16-ton weight might crush your head at any moment. Ideally people who don’t appreciate that in their games will be dissuaded from playing, while everyone else can dig into the nonsense and bust out bunnies on their way to the finish line.

I’m in the latter group, having played a dozen times on a review copy from 999 Games and enjoying the game win or lose. Despite the “give a fox” compensation for those who bust, the game does seem to have a “rich get richer” progression since constantly adding good cards to your deck will maintain the initial fox-to-nonfox ratio, yet that’s not something I’d complain about. Instead, I recommend you keep that in mind when deciding whether to keep pressing your luck. Maybe you should make do with a carrot or basic bunny instead of reaching for a bunny+, but that’s up to you.

As soon as one player hits that 10+ bunny threshold, you complete the round, then whoever has revealed the most bunnies wins, with ties being friendly because you’ve thwarted the foxes’ efforts to eat you all and are cool with both fluffles surviving side by side…for now.

For more examples of gameplay and player interaction, watch this video:

Youtube Video