Unexploded Cow

25 Apr 2016

The What

A quirky card game for 3 to 6 players by Cheapass Games. It is free to print and play, but there’s also a boxed version available to people to purchase.

The Summary

Components

• Main deck cards consisting of Cows and Events
• City Cards
• A dice
• Money

Setup

1. Shuffle the two decks, dealing three cards to each player. Place the top city card face up on its respective deck.
2. Give players 5000 currency, in the denominations listed.
3. Each player then places 500 currency into the pot, this is the bank for the rest of the game.
   • The rest of the money is considered to be out of play.
   • Whenever a player pays the price of an event or a cow, the spent currency goes into the pot.
   • Whenever income is gained from the killing of cows or the effects of city cards, this is placed into the pot.
   • The pot does not accrue debt, you only receive currency equal to the currency available.

Turn

Players do this each turn:

1. Draw two cards
2. Play any number of cards from your hand
3. Make a bomb roll

Players at the end of a turn make a bomb roll.

• The bomb roll will explode one or more cows, the cow exploded is determined by counting from your tableau from the left to the right and continuing onto the player sitting on your right
• When a cow explodes you earn income equal to the value on the top right, this income can be negative meaning your pay that amount to the pot.
• The player who’s cow the bomb roll landed on gets the top most city card, revealing the next city card.

End Game

After the last city card has been awarded to a player players start going on Sudden Death.

In Sudden Death players just roll bomb rolls in the order of city points from highest to lowest. This continues until all cows have been exploded or the pot has been emptied. The order is determined by highest city points rolls off first (ties are broken by the names of city cards alphabetically).

After the sudden death round is over the players with more money than 5000 win the game.

The Puzzle

In essence the game is a game of attrition. Playing negative value cow cards in front of your opponent uses their income as well as will cost them more money upon explosion.

The randomness of the dice and the cards drawn will keep the game unpredictable, but makes strategic decisions harder.

The game is largely determined by who draws game changing event cards. There are plenty of event cards that allow you to take cards from the discard, from other player’s hands, and steal/trade cows with other players. Playing these at the opportune moment is the trick to the game.

Criticism

I am not a fan of these types of games, which will be made clearer below.

First off I find the Sudden Death round to be pointless. Why not just have the city cards determine the winner? The city card gives a definite end to the game by providing 12 turns. By having the winners of the game determined by income invalidates the conciseness of the game outlined above.

The Verdict

I would not play the game again. It seemed pointless and did not provide enough crunchiness to satisfy me.

Other Games

• Munchkin
• Killer Bunnies