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Ahhh babies, little cute pudgy balls of gurgling joy!
Well not these infants, these are horrific, terrifying, monstrous children who will no doubt grow up to be the kind of people who don’t re-fill the empty toilet roll holder or use the same knife in the butter AND the jam – just despicable! But fear not the bears (and friends) are here to defeat them, and they’ll need your help to take them from dismembered heads to a grizzly bear wearing a prom dress on squid legs, it’s the only way!
Bears vs Babies is from the makers of exploding kittens, a game for between 2 – 5 players where you’re competing against the other players to win the most points by successfully defeating the dreaded babies!
These babies are going down… for nap time!
The babies that appear will be one of three types, land babies (green), sky babies (red) and sea babies (blue) – side note, my youngest used to call seaweed, sea babies naaww. All the babies have a number on them representing their strength which ranges between 0 and 3 but will remain napping face down until provoked. You will need to build monsters of the same type with a stronger strength to defeat the relevant baby horde. The only exception being the actual bears which are wild and can be used to defeat any type of baby. Whilst this makes the bears all powerful, it also makes them so much more vulnerable too.
You’ll all start with a bear in hand (it’s better than two in the bush!) then be dealt an additional 4 cards, any babies dealt out are instantly put face down in there relevant piles and you draw back up to 5. On your turn you’ll be able to take a number of actions, the number will depend on the amount of players, the more players there are the less actions you’ll be able to use. Those actions will consist of any combination of either playing a card or drawing a card from and of the three draw piles. When you play a card more often than not you’ll be using it to build on your monster army but there are also special cards to be used along the way too.
Monsters must be built starting with a head and then follow in the same way with a body, arms, legs etc. with each body part also having a strength value, just like the individual babies. The more you build your bear or monster the stronger they get in the hope of besting the gangs of babies.
Bears are wild, in fact they’re positively livid!
So how do you actually start a fight with babies? You provoke them, that’s how. Do you do this by taking away their dummy or bottle? What if you try and change your nappy while there happily playing? Or perhaps you take away their mobile phone… no wait, that’s how you provoke a teenager!
It’s obviously none of those, when it’s your turn instead of taking any actions there are two other things you can do and one of those is to say provoke, then you choose which pile of babies your calling to the fight. All players who have the right type of monster and any bears in play (as remember these are wild) must fight the babies, the winner of this rumble is the player with the highest score which also beats the babies score. They then get to keep the babies, but all other cards used by all players in this particular battle are placed on the discard pile. If the babies are victorious then all the monsters AND the babies involved in the scuffle end up on the discard pile. Then play resumes as before.
Speaking of the discard pile, let’s talk about dumpster diving. The other thing you can do instead of taking actions is dumpster diving, where you forego gaining new cards or fortifying your monster army by taking any card you wish from the discard pile. This is particularly handy if you’re in need of a head or other specific body part, or even to pull out a baby to add back into a baby army, which can be beneficial for so many reasons.
There's so much going on in Bears vs Babies, tools for your bear to hold (if it has arms…. Or bat wings?) that give you extra turn but reduce your strength, natty party hats to double strength, brutal dismemberment cards which… well… de-limb-ify. And so much more strategy than you could ever imagine. You’re not only trying to strengthen your monster military, your also trying to sabotage your opponents front line all whilst trying to keep track of how many babies have been added to each army. And then theres always a chance you draw a wild provoke, and if you do it has to be played instantly, this means one of those infant infantries (see what I did there!) is going to attack whether you’re ready of not!
Bears vs Bairns
Bears vs Babies not only comes in a bonkers fur covered box but has a nifty fabric play mat showing you where all the cards go and giving you a reminder of your possible actions. This reduces any chance of confusion as to which pile’s which and what you can do on your turn. The cards come separated into two packs to help you learn the game by only using some of them while you get used to the flow, but it’s so simple to get to grips with it won’t be long before you’re ready to open the next pack. Like most exploding kitten games the rules are well laid out with a frequently asked questions sheet to clarify any sticking points.
Although the game states from ages 10 plus we’ve played this with some our kiddos from around the age of six-ish, but as always this will vary from child to child, but it’s totally plausible. I’d say the only caveat to that is younger kids might get grumpy as the game can be quite cut-throat, having said that my 12 year old still gets the mards on now if I decapitate one of her creatures (in the game not real life you understand!)
I really have a soft spot for this game, we’ve had it so long now it tends to get forgotten about in our house, then every couple of months or so we’ll pull it out and really enjoy playing it – amazing. I wish there was an expansion for it suitable for us as a family but currently theres is only a NSFW expansion. Imagine if they expanded with a bears vs toddlers, or bears vs teenagers.
On second thoughts bears vs teenagers would be far too terrifying.
**shudders**
