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ndinepschneider's Exploading Kittens (Other)
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| [January 31, 2017 10:26:34 PM]
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Exploding Kittens, games 1 and 2 (31 Jan 17).
Exploding Kittens is a card game for 2-6 players. Half a modified form of Russian Roulette, half a vehicle for The Oatmeal (Matthew Inman)’s wacky drawings, this game blends luck and skill, and is a fun way to spend half an hour in friendly competition.
Players:
2-6 normal humans. This is not a role-playing game, so players are themselves. Each player has a hand of cards to play or not, as they choose. Play goes around in a circle.
The Deck:
The deck consists of many different kinds of cards. The most important is the Exploding Kitten—the equivalent of the non-blank bullet in Russian Roulette. If you draw the Exploding Kitten, you lose. There are other cards, though; extending the analogy, imagine if you could skip your turn (Skip), rearrange the bullets (Shuffle), look at the next three bullets (See The Future), wear a temporary helmet to deflect a bullet (Defuse), make another player give you one of their options (Favor, Pair), force another player to take your turn as well (Attack), or prevent another player from using an option (Nope). Each card is illustrated by The Oatmeal, and they are almost more of a draw (pun intended) than the gameplay itself. For example, one of the Skip cards is titled “Don a portable cheetah butt,” with accompanying illustration.
Rules:
Each player is dealt four cards from the deck, and one Defuse card. (Number of players – 1) Exploding Kittens are shuffled into the deck. Play goes to the left, and each player’s turn consists of 1. Playing a card and resolving its action, 2. Repeating this step for as many cards as they wish to and can legally play, and 3. Drawing a card from the deck to end their turn, unless a card has ended their turn in some other way. Cards are played onto the discard pile. If a player draws an Exploding Kitten and has a Defuse, they must play the Defuse and privately put the Exploding Kitten back in the deck wherever they choose. If they do not have a Defuse, they are out of the game. The game continues until only one person is left. That person is the winner.
Playing The Game:
First Session: I played both sessions with three other people, one an old hand and two new. It got off to a slow start, as I had to explain the rules several times, but it was mostly due to the players, not the instructions. I went first, to demonstrate.
We started pretty conservatively, mostly deciding to draw without playing any cards; this is a strategy that most people seem to adopt, as it helps you amass cards in the early game. After the first several rounds, though, things started to heat up. The experienced player quickly began using See The Futures, Skips, and Attacks to avoid drawing potentially dangerous cards. This spurred the rest of us to do the same thing, and it quickly devolved into a tit-for-tat free-for-all.
The new players were the first to go out, being less experienced and more easily nudged into picking an Exploding Kitten, and then I miscounted where I had put a card back in after using a Defuse and the other experienced player won. Some notable moments were a quadruple skip, resulting in the first player having to draw anyway, and one of the new players laughing so hard at the illustrations that she had to go and lie down. Altogether, the game took about a half an hour.
Second Session: We played the second game immediately afterwards. This time, we got off to a much faster start. Everyone was more cautious, though, and there was much less of the indiscriminate card-slinging of the first session. Players tended to go more for stealing cards from others, and there was more talking and joking.
One of the new players ended up winning this round, due to good luck and maneuvering on their part. One flaw in this game, which I had not noticed until this assignment, is that people have nothing to do except sit and watch once they are out of the game; in other games, the winner is not determined, and all players keep playing, until the very end. With this game, however, there is the opportunity for people to wander off before a rematch.
Overall:
Exploding Kittens is a quick and easy game. It could handle exploded players better, and the images eventually lose their novelty, but overall it is a good way to kill some time.
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ndinepschneider's Exploading Kittens (Other)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Tuesday 31 January, 2017
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