The Original Bunny Kingdom is a board game from iello games that was released in the Summer of 2017. Bunny Kingdom in the Sky is a brand new expansion for the original game. You need the original version of Bunny Kingdom in order to play the new expansion. The original game, and this expansion, are both designed by Richard Garfield. The Pojo faithful will recognize Mr. Garfield as the man who created Magic: The Gathering. He also designed King of Tokyo, Hive Mind, RoboRally, Keyforge, and many other great games.
A Glance at the Original Bunny Kingdom Board Game
Bunny Kingdom might look and sound like a cutesy little kids game, but don’t let the bunny theme fool you. This game is not a children’s game, and is a lot fun for teens and adults. The original Bunny Kingdom is a game for 2-4 players, and is recommended for players’ aged 14 & up. This game mixes a lot of fun elements from a variety of games:
- Card Drafting
- Area Control
- Placing Miniatures
- A Well Designed Game Board
- Resource Management
- Great Artwork
The original Bunny Kingdom is probably my family’s most-played board game over the last 2 years. Bunny Kingdom is definitely my wife’s favorite game. Click here to read our Full Review of Bunny Kingdom from January 2018.
Bunny Kingdom in the Sky Expansion
I am not going discuss Gameplay of the Original Bunny Kingdom (BK) Game. As I said above, my wife and the rest of my family love the original game. And you can read our review full here.
So, let’s take a look at the expansion. I’m going to try to cover all the bases of what’s new in the Bunny Kingdom in the Sky expansion. You’ll need a rudimentary understanding of the base game to understand the jargon I’m using below.
Five Players!
Bunny Kingdom in the Sky makes it possible to play with 5 players! The original game had a maximum of 4 players. This 5th player addition could be worth the price of the expansion alone for many Bunny Kingdom owners. In addition to the Red, Pink, Yellow and Black Bunnies in the original BK game, you now get a big bag of Purple Bunnies! You also get a few small bags of the original colored bunnies.
A New Side Board – The Great Cloud Board
The new Bunny Kingdom Great Cloud Board is essentially a sideboard that is 13″ x 10″, and is placed next to the main BK board from the original game. The Original BK Board is 10×10 grid that and has 100 squares. The new sideboard in not symmetrical and adds an additional 31 squares to use.
The new Great Cloud sideboard is essentially an additional area to place bunnies and get additional resources. But your bunnies and new resources are up on a cloud, and you have to figure out a good way to use them with your fiefs on the ground.
The grid on the new Great Cloud Board is not square. It has 5 rows. Rows vary in width from 5 squares to 7 squares.
New Cities
You get 7 new City figurines, and some of these have pre-fixed positions on the Skyboard. The most bizarre new city is the Carrotadel.
The Carrotadel is a 5 tower city – with a catch. The Carrotadel is a 5 point-tower that cannot be added to the value of other cities in your fief. It is basically designed to be an all-encompassing condominium that you can add resources to, but not other city towers.
New Buildings
There are 20 New Building Tokens. These also mostly have pre-fixed positions on the skyboard.
14 of these Building Tokens are new farms. Twelve of the new farms introduce new luxury resources called “Wondrous Resources”. These new Wondrous Resources are strange items like Bunny Snowmen, Rainbow Birds, Golden Pineapples, Golden Feathers, Stars, Ice Cream, Lightning, Etc. The wondrous resources act just like luxury resources from the original game when determining your wealth. There are 2 new “Luxury Farms” as well. A “thread farm” and a “chicken farm”.
This expansion introduces 2 new “Rainbow” building tokens. The Rainbows act similarly to Sky Towers from the original game, except you are connecting a fief on the main board to a fixed location on the Cloud Board.
And then there are two “Chimneys”. During each Harvest, you get to select a basic resource present in the Fief that includes the chimney on the skyboard, and rain that resource down on all your fiefs below on the main board.
New Cards
The expansion adds 50 new Exploration Cards:
- 29 New Territory Cards
- 2 New Territory/Building Cards
- 7 New Building Cards
- 10 New Parchment Cards
- 2 New Action Cards
You simply add all 50 new cards to the original deck, and shuffle them in at the start of the game.
Coins
Coins are probably the biggest change in gameplay from the original game. Coins give you Golden Carrots at the end of the game. You can obtain coins two ways.
- One is from the Tax Collector action card that simply awards you two coins
- The second is by creating a “District”. Districts are two-territory fiefs. Every time you create a new “2-Territory Fief” you earn a coin. Expanding that Fief that does not award new coins, nor does merging existing fiefs.
Trade
And Trade is one additional way of scoring Golden Carrot points at the end of the game. You score all your points the old-fashioned way from the original game, and then add in your Trade points.
Trade Score = # of coins x [# of Luxury Resources + # of Wondrous Resources]
Example: Let’s say,
- You have 7 coins.
- You have 2 luxury resources (Pearls and Gold Nuggets)
- And you have 3 Wondrous Resources (Pineapples, Feathers & Ice Cream)
7 x [2 + 3] = 35 Trade Points, which adds 35 Golden Carrots to your final score.
Card Drafting Changes
The number of cards dealt to players each round depends on the number of players:
- 2 players – Deal 12 cards, And form a 12 card Reserve. (Similar to the rules from the original game, except you now deal 12 cards instead of 10)
- 3 players – Deal 15 cards and draft 3
- 4 players – Deal 12 cards and draft 2
- 5 players – Deal 10 cards and draft 2
Pros & Cons and Final Thoughts
You already know that I love Bunny Kingdom, but what about this expansion.
Pros:
- 5 Players – This is the best part of the expansion in my opinion. Being able to add in one more player can really make this game more accessible on game nights.
- More Paths to Victory – Coins, Trade Scoring, and Wondrous Resources open up new ways to win the game.
- The box is well designed, and holds all the components nicely. Actually, we were able to fit the entire expansion in the original Bunny Kingdom box, which is awesome!
- Great Rulebook – The Rulebook is gorgeous, 8-pages long, in full-color, and very easy to understand.
- Great Artwork – The artwork on the cards and the boards looks great. The new Cloud Board almost has a Chutes and Laddera feel to it.
Cons:
- Is there too much going on now? – This is one I wrestle with. I think this expansion will really appeal to Seasoned Veterans of Bunny Kingdom. I think there is too much going on here now for new players. New players should start with the Base Game, and play that for a while before adding this expansion in.
- Is the expansion necessary? – Sometimes expansions smooth out problems from the original game. The original Bunny Kingdom game is pretty flawless in my opinion. This expansion adds more things to do, but I’m not sure it’s an absolute necessity. Let’s call the expansion a “Luxury and Wondrous Resource”.
- More math! In the original Bunny Kingdom game, scoring can become a crazy affair in the 3rd, 4th and Parchment Scoring Rounds. Adding in a 5th player, and more ways to score points adds even more math into this game.
- Everybody’s Shuffling! – The original game had 182 cards. The new expansion adds 50 more cards. So now you have 232 cards to shuffle. And you really do need to shuffle, because at end of the game, the Parchments usually get grouped together. You might want to invest in a 6 deck automatic shuffler to help out?!
Final Thoughts on Bunny Kingdom in the Sky
I received this Bunny Kingdom expansion as a Father’s Day gift from my daughter. We were planning on testing this with 4 players (me, my wife, my daughter, and my son-in-law). But then, one of my son-in-laws gaming buddy’s stopped by, and we were still able to play Bunny Kingdom. This is something that we could not have done in the past.
At first, this expansion appears a bit daunting and overwhelming, but after a playthrough or two, the Great Cloud Board expansion is fairly simple concept to grasp. Gameplay does change a little, but not as much as you might expect. There are some new ways to victory, but the old ways to victory can work just as well for you.
I think the original game might have intended for people to try to make little fiefs all over the board as a path to victory. It seemed in our games, more often than not, players tended to build one large fief and cram a lot of resources into it. The “District” Coins now offer a new path to victory, by rewarding players for building small fiefs in several places on the boards.
I know that I listed a handful of cons above, because I think you should be aware of them. To me, the Pros outweigh the Cons. All in All, Two Big Bunny Ears up for me! I highly recommend this expansion to Seasoned Bunny Kingdom Players. It breathes some new life into a game you might have played like crazy over the past 2 years.
