Exploding Kittens

After a holiday gathering with the annual Gift Exchange/Steal, we sat down for a few hands of Exploding Kittens, which I have never actually played before.  I've seen the cards, but the grotesque art was not my cup of tea.  Sure, there are some funny puns in there, but there's also a guy barfing in another guy's mouth.  But what's important is the gameplay, and it was devious and hilarious.

It's so simple ... the deck is seeded with enough Exploding Kitten cards for all but one player, and if you draw an Exploding Kitten card, you're out of the hand.  You can defuse it with a Defuse card, otherwise, the only way to survive is to avoid drawing cards.  Use the Skip card to skip your turn, or an Attack or Targeted Attack card to make another player take two turns.  You can See the Future to look at the top 3 cards but not rearrange them, so you can plan a better move.  Or use Alter the Future to actually rearrange those cards and give yourself a safe card to draw, and put the bad cards where you want them.  But of course, if you put a bad card on top, the next player might play Reverse and send it right back to you.  You can Nope any card played by anyone at any time (except for Exploding Kittens and Defuse cards), even someone else's Nope.

All players start the game with one Defuse card and 5 other cards.  Early on, the chance of drawing an Exploding Kitten is low, but the Russian roulette effect is more pronounced -- the percent of game-ending cards goes up -- and in one of our games the last three cards were all exploders, so it came down to who had the most defenses left.

Looking at the icons at the top left of the cards, there are more moves: Two of a Kind will let you take a card from another player.  Three of a kind will let you ask for a specific card from another player.  And 5 different lets you take any card you want from the discard pile, but as we found out that is probably going to be a Defuse card, you're probably going to get a Nope thrown at you, AND don't forget that all the players now know you have a Defuse card they can steal.  There are a bunch of cat card that had no actual effects and were meant to be used in these combinations.

There were a few other cards in there, like the Atomic Blast that pulls all Exploding Kittens to the top of the deck, and is best followed by a Draw From the Bottom card.

We had two hands with 8 people each time.  It was confusing at first, but fell into place easily.  There was a lot of bluffing and funny business.  Definitely a party game to try again soon.