Poker of the Living Dead Bunnies
Last night was another rousing success at Little Shoppe of Games's Family Game Night.
We started by just hanging out for a little bit while Lane took a quick break for dinner. A couple other guys where there when I arrived, including Gene (the Iron Kingdoms guy from last night). Matt wandered in briefly, but went off to deliver food to a sick Liz after buying a few miniatures. Once Lane finished eating, we decided to open with a round of Dead Money, inspired by last week's Gimme the Brain.
Dead Money is a strange cross of Give Mehe Brain and poker. Instead of requiring an object to represent the brain, there are eight brain cards in the deck, two for each suit. The goal, as usual, is to be the first person to run out of cards. Each card is either a one or two-handed task, like before, and some of them require a brain to play. Things get interesting when a brain gets dropped, however. Instead of using bid cards, each player bids a poker hand, with the highest hand winning. While the losing bidders all get to simply discard the cards they bid, the winner must draw a number of cards equal to the number of coins shown on his bid. For example, Lane dropped one of his seven brains last night. The player on his left bid something like a jack of spades, which had a single coin on it. I could have beaten his bid with a pair of twos, discarding two cards in the process, but each of my twos had two coins, so I would have had to draw four more cards if I had won.
Lane managed to pull out a win with perfect timing, as Jess and James arrived, bringing the complete set of Killer Bunnies and all of the expansions. That's one of Lane's all time favorites, and he's even managed to collect all of the extra promotional cards. So while one of the Dead Money players opted to head out, Jess took a seat at the table and we started in.
The goal of Killer Bunnies is fairly simply. At the end of the game, be the player in possession of the Magic Carrot. It's getting there that can be a wild and complicated ride. I'm not going to even attempt to explain it, I'll simply direct you to the Teaching Killer Bunnies page at the official site. Jess came prepared with a printout of that, but between her and Lane it proved unnecessary. As always seems to be the case, the player newest to the game winds up doing the best (at least for a while). In this case it was Gene, who picked up the basics pretty quickly and went on to run rampant on everyone else. Early on, he abducted all my wonderful bunnies and sent them on a trip around the board. He threw cards requiring us to feed our bunnies several times, as often as not on people who didn't have any cabbage or water to give the poor things. The stack of dead bunnies in the store grew ever larger, and he managed to amass the largest pile of carrots by the end of the game.
Fortunately, last night's game was won by pure luck, instead of the skill of the first-timer. The magic carrot was revealed to be the Elvis carrot I was holding, so I won despite the persecution my poor bunnies endured. It was tons of fun, but we would up running a bit later than planned, so we had to pack up and let Lane close as soon as we finished.
I can't want to see what we pull out to play next week. I see there are other games related to Give Me the Brain and Dead Money on the Cheapass Games site I'd love to try. And I think I might have to pick up Kinder Bunnies to get Brianna started. Plus, there are all those others in Lane's game closet. So many choices!
Technorati Tags: Gaming
We started by just hanging out for a little bit while Lane took a quick break for dinner. A couple other guys where there when I arrived, including Gene (the Iron Kingdoms guy from last night). Matt wandered in briefly, but went off to deliver food to a sick Liz after buying a few miniatures. Once Lane finished eating, we decided to open with a round of Dead Money, inspired by last week's Gimme the Brain.
Dead Money is a strange cross of Give Mehe Brain and poker. Instead of requiring an object to represent the brain, there are eight brain cards in the deck, two for each suit. The goal, as usual, is to be the first person to run out of cards. Each card is either a one or two-handed task, like before, and some of them require a brain to play. Things get interesting when a brain gets dropped, however. Instead of using bid cards, each player bids a poker hand, with the highest hand winning. While the losing bidders all get to simply discard the cards they bid, the winner must draw a number of cards equal to the number of coins shown on his bid. For example, Lane dropped one of his seven brains last night. The player on his left bid something like a jack of spades, which had a single coin on it. I could have beaten his bid with a pair of twos, discarding two cards in the process, but each of my twos had two coins, so I would have had to draw four more cards if I had won.
Lane managed to pull out a win with perfect timing, as Jess and James arrived, bringing the complete set of Killer Bunnies and all of the expansions. That's one of Lane's all time favorites, and he's even managed to collect all of the extra promotional cards. So while one of the Dead Money players opted to head out, Jess took a seat at the table and we started in.
The goal of Killer Bunnies is fairly simply. At the end of the game, be the player in possession of the Magic Carrot. It's getting there that can be a wild and complicated ride. I'm not going to even attempt to explain it, I'll simply direct you to the Teaching Killer Bunnies page at the official site. Jess came prepared with a printout of that, but between her and Lane it proved unnecessary. As always seems to be the case, the player newest to the game winds up doing the best (at least for a while). In this case it was Gene, who picked up the basics pretty quickly and went on to run rampant on everyone else. Early on, he abducted all my wonderful bunnies and sent them on a trip around the board. He threw cards requiring us to feed our bunnies several times, as often as not on people who didn't have any cabbage or water to give the poor things. The stack of dead bunnies in the store grew ever larger, and he managed to amass the largest pile of carrots by the end of the game.
Fortunately, last night's game was won by pure luck, instead of the skill of the first-timer. The magic carrot was revealed to be the Elvis carrot I was holding, so I won despite the persecution my poor bunnies endured. It was tons of fun, but we would up running a bit later than planned, so we had to pack up and let Lane close as soon as we finished.
I can't want to see what we pull out to play next week. I see there are other games related to Give Me the Brain and Dead Money on the Cheapass Games site I'd love to try. And I think I might have to pick up Kinder Bunnies to get Brianna started. Plus, there are all those others in Lane's game closet. So many choices!Technorati Tags: Gaming
