Hello Everyone!
Today, I will be reviewing a card game from the creators of Exploding Kittens, the first game I reviewed here (if you have not had a chance to see the review and would like to know more about the game, click here).
Just like Exploding Kittens, this game is a bit off-beat, with a wacky sense of aesthetics and a bizarre premise. A prime example of this would be the box the game comes in.
Also similar to Exploding Kittens, the name of the game is misleading.
At first glance, one would think, "Bears vs Babies?! That's horrible! How could you subject innocent babies to vicious bears?!"
In reality, this line of thinking would be justified and correct. However, in the context of the actual game, it couldn't be further from the truth!
In this game, your goal is to build an army of monsters in order to fight the armies of babies (and eat them). That being said, the "babies" in question are wicked little devils that are more abomination than human. Many of them are more vicious than the monsters you are creating, thus (sort of) justifying the whole thing. Whoever is able to eat the most babies by the end of the game wins!
While Bears vs Babies is predominantly a card game, it does include a playmat that more or less serves as a game board. This can be seen below:
After laying out this mat, make sure to pull out the Bear Heads from the deck. There should be 5 of them total. Shuffle the rest of the cards well. Then each player gets one (1) Bear Head. If there are any left, they get shuffled into the deck as well. Finally, each player is dealt an additional 4 cards, giving them 5 cards in total.
Once all the players have 5 cards in there hand, including the Bear Head, the remaining deck is split into 3 approximately equal piles and placed on the 3 draw pile sections of the playmat.
From here, all of the players must look at their hands and play any Baby cards face down on the playmat. They should be placed on the locations that correspond to the color of the Baby cards.
For example, a green Baby would be placed face down on the Land Baby Army slot, a blue Baby would be placed face down on the Sea Baby Army slot, and a red Baby would be placed face down on the Sky Baby Army slot.
Some of the different Babies are shown below. As you can see, they are easily identified as Land, Sea, or Sky babies. In addition, you can see the numbers on each card. These will add together to dictate how strong each baby army is. For example, if you have 3 land Babies face down on the playmat with values of 3, 1, and 1, when you fight that army, it will have a strength of 5 (3 + 1 + 1 = 5).
Once all the Babies have been played out of the players' hands, they draw to replace the cards. This process repeats until there are 5 non-Baby cards in each player's hand.
Now it is finally time to begin the game!
When taking a turn, the number of players actually affects what you can do. This is because the total number of "Actions Per Turn" is directly affected by how many players there are. For example:
- 2 Players: 4 Actions Per Turn
- 3 Players: 3 Actions Per Turn
- 4+ Players: 2 Actions Per Turn
An action consists of either drawing a card from one of the draw piles or playing a card down to begin building your monster armies. However, be careful. If you choose to draw, but accidentally get a Baby card, not only do you have to add it face down to the corresponding baby army, but that also counts as one of your "actions" for the turn. If you get unlucky and draw 2 Babies (or more if you are playing with less than 4 people), then basically your turn is wasted and the baby armies become more powerful.
You can also choose to Dumpster Dive. When you do this, you are not allowed to take any actions (so no drawing or playing cards down), however, in return you can choose a card of your choice from the discard pile and place it in your hand. This option can make a huge difference in the game when used correctly, as it can provide you with whatever card you need, so long as that card is in the discard pile.
The final choice you can take on your turn, other than Taking Actions or Dumpster Diving, is to Provoke a baby army. If you choose this option, you are not allowed to take any actions or to use Dumpster Dive. More on this in a bit.
When building your monster armies, you must always start with a "head" card. You can add a body, then arms and legs afterward, but you MUST start with a head. Fortunately, these are incredibly obvious, so this should not be an issue, unless you just don't draw any.
From there, you can attach a body to the head. The bodies will vary in that some of them allow for arms and legs, some only allow for arms, and some don't allow for either. You just need to look at the body to see if there are any "stitches" on the sides or the bottom. If you see them, that means the corresponding body part can be attached. If you do not see them, then it cannot be.
Below is an example of a couple of monsters. One of them has a body that cannot have any arms or legs attached to it (the Pomeranian), while the other has a body that can have both arms and legs attached (the (Handsome) Salmon).
If you look closely where the cards are lined up with one another, you can see the "stitches" I mentioned earlier. This is an easy way to tell if you can or cannot attach cards. Just look for the stitches and remember that there are 3 between the head and the body, 2 between the arms and the body, and 4 between the legs and the body. When we first played, there were a couple mistakes where someone tried to line up legs with a head, or arms with a body that cannot have arms. The stitches will show you the way!
Also note that the monsters have a color designating their army and a numerical value as well. For example, A Pomeranian of Light and Wonder is a land monster with a power of 2, which can be seen in that it has the green land marker and a 2 at the top of the card. Likewise, A (Handsome) Salmon is a sea monster with a power of 2.
When determining the total power of your monster army:
- First look at whether they are a land, sea, or sky monster. Since these are separate armies, they cannot be added together. However, monsters of the same type can be added together (i.e. 2 land monsters).
- Add up the total values on the monster. If your monster has a value of 2 for the head, 1 for the body, 2 for the legs, and 1 for each arm, the total power is 6 (2 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 1 = 6).
NOTE: The Bear Head cards are the most powerful, with a value of 3 each. They will count toward all three armies, making them extremely versatile, but it also means you have to be more careful when playing them. More on this shortly.
There are also some other cards that perform certain actions. For example, there are various "hats" that will double the strength of a monster they are attached to. There is also a card that will allow you to swap any 2 monster heads on the table. This could be used offensively or defensively.
In addition, there are also various "Tools" that will provide you with extra actions per turn. The only downside to these is that they subtract 1 from your monster's power. Just remember that these can only be attached when the Tool Icons match up. See below for an example:
FINALLY WE CAN GET TO THE FIGHTING!!!
When you decide your army is sufficiently strong and want to battle the babies, you yell, "PROVOKE!" You then choose which army you want to fight, land, sea, or sky. Remember that your monster armies will fight the corresponding baby armies.
Now this is where things get interesting...
While it is true that you are trying to eat the babies to earn points, and in order to do this, your army has to beat their army, your true enemies are actually the other players.
When an army is Provoked, the corresponding army for each player competes against that army.
For example, if I were to provoke the land army, then players B, C, and D (everyone other than me) would also have to fight that army. Among the 4 of us, whoever has the most powerful army will be the one to keep the Baby cards. However, if none of us is strong enough to defeat the Baby Army, then nobody will get the cards.
At the end of the turn, all armies, both Baby and Monster alike, that participated in the battle, get discarded to the discard pile. This opens up the "Provoke" action to many strategic possibilities. Obviously you need to defeat baby armies to earn points and to win. However, you can also provoke weak baby armies just to force your opponents to discard their strong monster armies so that you don't have to compete against them later.
In addition, you can "Provoke" a baby army whether or not you have a monster army of that type. For instance, let's say I do not have a sea army at all. On the playmat, there is a weak sea army. My opponents have massive sea armies and are just waiting for more sea babies to be added before they go in for the kill. I can yell "PROVOKE!" and provoke the sea army, even though I do not have one myself.
This will force my opponents to discard their powerful armies while getting little in return. However, this is also the reason you must be careful when using your Bear Head card, as it will count as any army and will be lost in this case.
The game is over once all the cards in the draw piles are gone. After someone draws the last card, everyone gets one more turn (including the person that drew the last card). When the last turn has been taken, everyone adds up the values of the baby cards they "ate" during the game. Whoever has the highest score wins!
All in all, this is a pretty fun game, though not without it's issues. There are 107 cards in the deck, which seems like a lot, but when you consider a significant portion of them are babies, some are special cards with various effects, and most of the rest are body parts, it leaves very few monsters that can actually be made.
If you are unfortunate enough to not draw any "heads," you may end up getting stuck with a fist full of worthless cards. Likewise, you may have several "heads," but no "bodies." This would also severely limit your options. You can certainly use the Dumpster Dive action to acquire new monster cards from the discard pile, but this replaces the rest of your actions, so it should not be used on a regular basis.
Playing with less than 4 people may help these issues, as you would have more actions and there would be less competition for the same cards.
I believe this game would benefit greatly from an expansion pack, especially if it focuses on the monster cards (more heads and bodies especially).
Overall, this is still a fun game and worth playing. There is a fair bit of strategy involved in it, which adds to the excitement and makes it a bit more skill based than the last 2 games I have reviewed (this isn't to say that luck isn't still a large part of it though).
Based on my experience with it, I would give it a 6.5 / 10. However, since we forgot about Dumpster Dive when we played it, which certainly could have helped to resolve some of the issues, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and round up to 7 / 10. If an expansion comes out for this game, providing more monsters, I could easily see my rating going up to an 8.
Summary:
Genre: Card Game
Number of Players: 2-5
Difficulty: Medium
Score: 7 / 10
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