Killer Bunnies is shooting fish in a barrel. Popular, yes, but I suspect you’re preaching to an audience who, like you, can see its faults. (Killer Bunnies has faults like the Grand Canyon is a hole in the ground.)

I’d rather play Munchkin - and that’s on my “never again” list.

I’m with you on Crokiniole--it’s always seemed kind of silly to me that it has an entry on BGG. Heck, if crokinole is a board game, why not darts too? A dartboard is still a board, even if it’s vertical. And if darts is a board game, then why not lawn darts? And if lawn darts, then why not croquet? And if croquet, then why not tennis? The next thing you know people are going to be arguing about shill ratings for the hundred meter dash.

Maybe this is exactly the controversy that the organizers at Origins were trying to avoid by calling them tabletop games. They’ll let you in with a crokinole board under your arm but they reserve the right to turn you away if you try to put together a pickup polo match in the convention center.

Actually, a rather legendary poll on a mailling list once put you as the most likley to reccommend a good game, and *ME* as the raving lunatic minority.

The problem is not your sentiments on the games, but your tone and choice of words.

Consider a few memorable past Greg S. quotes:

“...Just a flicking game.”
“It isn’t really a game, but rather a pastime.”

The tone implies that these are bad things, and that the only good things are the holy grails of board games.

I’m PRETTY sure that this is not your intent, but that I’m pretty sure that I personally will be able to harass you about “Just a flicking game” for years more.

Moo,
Frank

Frank Branham writes:

I’m PRETTY sure that this is not your intent, but that I’m pretty sure that I personally will be able to harass you about “Just a flicking game� for years more.

***

I wouldn’t have it any other way, Frank!

While I don’t really consider Crokinole a board game, I am forever grateful that others do or I may have never been exposed to it.

Flickingly Yours,

Greg,

I think that part of the reaction you get from things like Killer Bunnies is when you make assessments like you did in this column, which are just plain false. To say that if someone has all but one carrot at the end of the game, their play through the entire game was meaningless is absurd. True, it is possible that the one carrot they don’t have has a small chance of being the winning one, but that doesn’t render the entire game “boiling down to who got lucky.” Yes, there is a decent amount of luck in the game, but that is by design and some people like that. Personally, I can take it or leave it.

Every game where an unlikely random event can spell success or failure (such as Struggle of Empires) could get the same pan. Personally I find the trait far more annoying in Struggle of Empires, as the randomness seems to intrude far more than in KB (chit placement, combat rolls, sea movement) in far more crucial ways. There are often key points where good luck allows a player to move on while an unlikely roll or pull can spell defeat.

There. That’s my own “swimming aganst the tide” example.

Paul Sauberer writes:

think that part of the reaction you get from things like Killer Bunnies is when you make assessments like you did in this column, which are just plain false. To say that if someone has all but one carrot at the end of the game, their play through the entire game was meaningless is absurd.

**

The statement is FAR from false ... it occurred in one of the Killer Bunny games I played.  We played for an hour or so, and one player had gathered the vast majority of carrots.  Another player had one ... EXACTLY one.  When revealing carrots—you guessed it—that player had the magic carrot.  He did virtually nothing during the game, yet won by getting completely lucky.  It’s like drawing a “You Win” card from a deck of cards.  I call THAT absurd.

Greg,

I am not saying that having a player win with one carrot is impossible. However, just because it can happen does not mean that all of the play of the game up to that point is meaningless. The fact remains that the player(s) who played “better” had a far better chance of winning than did the player who had one carrot. Also, such a quality of having an unlikely random event provide the margin of victory is far from unique.

In Settlers, it is quite possible for a player to be in the position where he needs to roll 2 in order to win, otherwise an opponent will claim the victory. If the player rolls that 2 (which is a smaller chance than a player having the lone carrot out of 20), does that also mean that all games of Settlers are “maddenlingly luck-based?” Does everything that goes on before the final roll “ultimately matter little?”

Can someone with end up in a position in KB where they have one carrot and still win? Yes. Can someone end up in a position in Settlers where they need to roll a 2 and still win? Yes. In either case, is it likely that they will win? No.

If the mere possibility of an unlikely random result giving the margin of victory makes game play meaningless, then there are a lot of titles, likely most that include random elements, that there is no reason to play.

Now, there are certainly valid reasons to dislike KB. But there is a difference between panning a game because it just doesn’t jive with personal preferences and making a statement that the game itself is flawed. It is OK to say, “I just don’t like it because its characteristics are not to my taste. I don’t like games where superior play can ever be cancelled out by chance.” Saying, however that a game is objectively flawed goes a step farther by implying, “I don’t like this game and neither should anyone who appreciates quality games. This isn’t a matter of taste but of objective analysis.” Going that extra step requires such an objective analysis that holds up. Equating, in essence, KB with LCR doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

Paul Sauberer writes:

In Settlers, it is quite possible for a player to be in the position where he needs to roll 2 in order to win, otherwise an opponent will claim the victory. If the player rolls that 2 (which is a smaller chance than a player having the lone carrot out of 20), does that also mean that all games of Settlers are “maddenlingly luck-based?� Does everything that goes on before the final roll “ultimately matter little?�

**

Ahhh ... but in Settlers, it would have taken quite a bit of skill and planning to put yourself in position to possibly win.  You would have had to work diligently and skillfully in order to accumulate 9 victory points, and be on the verge of winning.  All of your efforts to that point were not meaningless (which is probably a poor choice of words on my part).  Indeed, they were building to a point to give yourself at least a small chance of victory.  This same holds true for many games.  Your final chance at victory may well be small, but you had to do a lot of work and planning to get yourself to the point where you at least had a small chance for victory.

In Killer Bunnies, you can do virtually nothing and get lucky by drawing that one magic carrot.  In fact, that is EXACTLY what occurred in one of my games.  VERY unsatisfying and, in my opinion, a significant flaw.

Greg Schloesser Writes:

In Killer Bunnies, you can do virtually nothing and get lucky by drawing that one magic carrot.  In fact, that is EXACTLY what occurred in one of my games.  VERY unsatisfying and, in my opinion, a significant flaw.

**

So because in an extreme case (5% of games where a player were to almost purposefully play just poorly enough to only one carrot but not zero) a player can end up with a victory that makes the entire game meaningless in all other plays of the game.

Sorry, that just doesn’t cut it. Going back to Settlers, it is possible for a player to be practically handed a victory (or eliminated) entirely through chance. The roll of the dice can be such as to continually make one player flush with resources and the others starve. A player under such conditions can still win despite inferior, and in fact, poor play. If KB is objectively bad because of the slight possibility of a poor player getting handed a win due to chance, then so is Settlers. Settlers is significantly flawed.

Just because the highly improbable result happened to occur in a game that you participated does not make it common. It is easy enough to run approximate numbers on that. In fact, having such an obviously extreme result should be cause to withhold final judgement because it is so obviously out of the norm.

There are plenty of places where KB can be criticized based on differing tastes of different gamers. However, the game play is not meaningless to the outcome and that is not a fair or accurate criticism. Better play = more carrots. More carrots = better chance to win. Does chance play a role? Yes. Is there a guarantee that the best play will result in a win? No. However these same two questions can be asked and answered identically for many, many games.

Let’s just say we disagree, Paul.  I’ve played Killer Bunnies twice, and both times the player who won did little to deserve the victory.  In Settlers, I find that skill wins the vast majority of time.  Indeed, of the probably 30 or so games I’ve played of Settlers, I cannot EVER recall a player winning who didn’t deserve it.

As you say, though, there are many other reasons that I dislike Killer Bunnies.  Obviously, though, many folks enjoy it, and I’m happy they do.  I’m just not one of them.

I see Killer Bunnies vs Settlers (or whatever) as follows:

In Settlers, your actions (in general) are directly tied towards winning the game.  Each thing you do brings you closer (or not).  Luck can favor you, but you still have to do things (and you are able to do stupid things to be sure you lose.)

In Killer Bunnies, your actions will increase the odds of your winning (more cards = more chances) but it really boils down to ONE action in the game that will determine if you win.  The action you take to draw the winning card --> that’s when you won.  Sure, you can increase the chances of winning by drawing more cards, but some boil the game down to what I described and find it somewhat unpalatable.

All that said, I’m not a huge fan of Killer Bunnies, but would play it with less experienced folks if I had somewhat limited choices.