“Put that thing back where it came from, or so help me!”

Summary
From the same insane geniuses that brought you Exploding Kittens we now have a brand new game! Nestled in its hairy box comes another card based game with familiar art work and humour.

The aim of the game is to build monsters with the cards in your hand in order to defeat baby armies. Whoever has the most points from defeating the babies, wins.

Like its predecessor, the title pretty much says it all in terms of what to expect from gameplay and again it comes with regular and NSFW packs. The particular brand of humour in the NSFW pack is “phallic based” as you’d expect if you’ve played Exploding Kittens NSFW pack, though seems to have a disconcerting fixation on “wobbly sausages” (if you don’t know that reference, you need to a) play the game and b) watch more youtube).

Game Play
This game is played using a handy mat that not only displays the basic rules, but has space for the various decks of cards to be placed.

In the starter and NSFW pack, you’ll find three types of cards:

● Monster cards – these include heads, bodies, legs, legs and bodies together, arms and tools.
● Action cards – these include:
o Mask – lets you disguise your monster head so no one knows what type it is
o Dismember – allows you to lop off a limb from someone else’s monster
o Swop – you can swop your monster head for someone else’s
● Baby cards – there are three types – air, sea and land

The heads of the monsters can be air, sea or land based (like the babies), but the bear heads are wild cards – they can be attacked by and can attack any element.

At the start of each game, the dealer should separate the bear heads from the rest of the pack, which should then be shuffled. A bear head should be dealt to each player along with 4 each from the shuffled pack. Any babies that appear in your hand at this point, should go facedown onto the relevant baby army position on the gaming mat and replaced until you have no baby cards in your hand.

On each players turn you can choose to:

● Draw two cards from the deck
● Play two cards from your hand (or more if you have a card in play that allows you to do that). If you’re starting to build a monster you must start with a head – no random floating limbs please.
● Play one card, draw one card
● Provoke a baby army – choose an army to provoke. Each army attacks monsters of the same element and all bears. For example, if you have 3 monsters – one has a bear head, one has a sea element head and one has an air element head – the provoked army is the sea baby army. The army will attack the sea element monster and the bear (because it’s the wild card and can be any element), but not the air monster.
● Dumpster dive – pick one card out of the discard pile

In a baby vs bear/monster battle, the babies in the relevant deck will be revealed and each will have points on them. A baby army attack effects all players who have relevant monsters played in front of them. The affected monsters (ie: the bear and the sea element by my earlier example) must have a combined points total that exceeds that of the baby army in order to win. If you win, your affected monsters and those of other players are added to the discard pile and you keep all the baby cards as your points. If you lose, the babies and the monsters go into the discard pile and no points are given.

Remember: only two cards can be played at a time, so even if your monster is just a head, it can still fight in a battle.

When building your monster, it’s important to pay attention to the cards – you must match the number of stitches in order to attach a body part. If your head has three stitches and your legs/body has four, you can’t attach it. If your body card already has arms on it, but instead has an orange symbol, this means you can add tools to your monster. These often give advantages, like playing an extra action on your turn.

Game play continues until the last card from the deck is drawn. Then each player is given one more turn. Whoever has the most points from the baby cards, wins.

Why should you play?
The artwork is the same standard as Exploding Kittens – fun, colourful and very … descriptive (NSFW pack is certainly enlightening!).

It’s quick to pick up, even for kids. After one game and few foolish provocations that ended up with people getting points, rather than being destroyed as the provoking player had hoped, we had it nailed. Although someone still managed to make the same mistake the second time we played, but that’s what not paying attention does for you.

What might get on your nerves?
Some players ended up with hands full of just heads or just bodies, which proved frustrating at times as they couldn’t build anything, or very little. A house rule “hand-dump” option might be a good idea if this happens a lot.

Appropriate Age to Play
Provided you’re playing the normal deck, you could easily play this with children 8 and over. The monster building will very much appeal to young imaginations and the monsters are not scary, unless you’re using the NSFW deck. There’s a creative element to this game which reminds me of a game we used to play as kids with paper and pencils.

If you like … you’ll like this
Fluxx
Gloom
Exploding Kittens

In closing …
Another winner from the minds of Exploding Kittens – a simple concept with basic rules that let you play straight out of the box. And the box is fun on its own! How many games can you say that about?

PIC OF BOX