Killer Bunnies and the Towering Draw Pile

There was a hackathon Friday night, and a write-up is coming soon, but first a bit of random chatter.

I have, for a few years, been collecting the various pieces that make up Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot. For Christmas, I received the Stainless Steel booster pack, leaving me one short (Ominous Onyx) of completing the game's many many expansion packs. In total, my game had over 650 cards and was disturbingly fun to play. Yesterday, I was surprised upon reaching my friend Eric's apartment to be greeted with not just one, but two new expansions, one of which I didn't even know existed. I am now the owner of not just the Ominous Onyx booster pack, but also the mysterious new Chocolate pack, adding in many of the hard-to-find promo cards that Playroom has put out over the years.

We put together the full game, now consisting of 770 playable cards, 11 dice, 9 pawns, a large cardboard ball, and various plastic tokens and stands to help try and make sense of all the nonsense. The draw pile stacks over a foot high thanks to the thick card construction, and shuffling amounts to little more than a best-effort situation. The game is frankly insane and a blast to play, with a breadth of randomness not normally found in such games. While strategy is important, one can switch freely between winning and losing with a few short turns, and often quite frequently does. The game is long enough to be satisfying, but not so long as to drag on, (as long as people are paying attention) and the variety and humor in the cards keeps the game fresh play after play.

Still, my game is not quite complete. One more add-on remains, though not really a necessary one. A spin-off game called Kinder Bunnies also exists, aimed at a younger audience with streamlined rules and simplified gameplay. It is also completely compatible with the main Killer Bunnies game, with a few cards directly referencing Kinder Bunnies from Killer Bunnies. it also would add another ten "Magic Carrots" to the game, which are a sort of victory point mechanism, where once all the Magic Carrots have been picked up, the game ends. Thus, the addition would extend gameplay a bit more and provide new challenges for longtime players (not to mention many more dice to play with).

So that's how I spent my weekend apart from coding like a superstar. But don't worry, I'll get to that soon.

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