Rascally Rabbits – Board Game Backerkit Preview

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Rascally Rabbits – Board Game Backerkit Preview

The Cardboard-Based Characteristics

Trick-Taking, with No Deck? A Write ‘n’ Trick?

Why do I hear Elma Fudd when I say Rascally Rabbits? Who knows? Something perhaps to do with my love for Looney Tunes cartoons when I was a kid. Rascally Rabbits is a small trick-taking game with, well, no cards. Weird, I know! Hitting Backerkit this year, Rascally Rabbits is a write ‘n’ trick game, a trick-taking game where you cross off your choices on a small card, rather than playing cards into the centre of the table. Novel indeed.

Rascally Rabbits is a trick-taker where players will be playing crops, becoming Rascally Rabbits and hoping to finish the game with the most points.

Trick-Taking

Trick-taking games are going through a bit of a surge at the moment, a renaissance, if you will. They are all over the shop and I think for one to truly stand out, it needs to have a ‘hook’, something unique and feel a bit different. Rascally Rabbits certainly has that.

For anyone who does not know what a trick-taking game is, it’s a card game where all players play a card from their hand into the ‘trick’ and whoever played the highest card of the ‘led’ suit, set by the first player of the trick, wins it. There are loads of variations of bidding, trump suits and all sorts of shenanigans and the stand-outs in the genre are The Crew, Skull King and classics like Whist or Hearts.

A Unique Breed of Trick Taker

Rascally Rabbits, as I stated above, ditches the traditional card deck for a set of grid-based cards that each player has one of. Instead of playing a card into a ‘trick’, players will follow normal trick-taking rules but instead cross off a number from their card and write it, along with its suit, on a wipe-clean card, using a dry-erase marker. Laughing at my friend’s drawing of an aubergine brought me more joy than it should have.

The grid that you are working from, in itself, is very unique. Each number is in a grid that usually has 2 suits, depending on its column and row placement. This gives you a lot of movement and choice when choosing what number and suit to play. Along with this, you also slightly edit this card at the start of each of the game’s 3 rounds, crossing off certain numbers and suits, changing your hand to suit your needs. It’s very different to every trick-taker I have played before.

Bids and Points

As with many trick-takers, Rascally Rabbits uses a bid-based system. The majority of your points will come from successfully bidding on how many tricks you will win. This is massively helped by the grid, with numbers having multiple options and your ability to adjust your grid at the start of every round. I found these 2 things alone massively make this trick-taker feel more controllable and forgiving.

Trump, Matching and Rascally Rabbits

At the start of each round a trump suit is chosen, the trump or ‘favourite crop’ as it is known in this game will beat any ‘standard’ crop. However, players still have to follow suit, so you can only play these when you do not have a crop of the led suit.

In Rascally Rabbits, unlike normal trick-takers, you have a bit more control over both your starting hand and also what you can play. As I stated earlier, with your hand being a grid and with you having the ability to manipulate it at the start if the round, you have breadth to give yourself more crops of the trump suit or even void yourself in a certain crop. It not only gives the game some strategic depth but It’s also, rather tasty.

Zero Bids and Rascally Rabbits

With this game having a heightened chance of players to match suit and number, due to it’s card selection mechanism, a player who matches the exact suit and number of someone already in the trick is declared a Rascally Rabbit and can circle a rabbit on their dry-erase board.

If a player bids zero during the bidding phase, there points are calculated depending on the number of Rascally Rabbits they have circled. This mechanism creates a ever increasing temptation to bid zero as the amount of points you would get increases. Be wary though, bidding zero in this game is a dangerous path to take but rewarded well if you manage to pull it off. As soon as players work out that you are going for zero tricks, they normally try to make you win a trick on purpose. It’s all rather tense, I have been there and successfully bagging a zero trick round is both exciting and fruitful.

In the Box

In this small box there are very few components, in fact, when I first opened the box I was quite confused. This was before I realised it was a trick-taker with no cards. What is in there is lovely though; it has sort of an indie-feel to it. Bright coloured graphics, a nicely designed shield that shows the round steps and scoring mechanics, some dry erase markers and a chunky first-player marker.

I did initially struggle with the rules until I spotted a QR code on the back of the box for a more extensive ruleset. It may be worth printing those off, at least until you are more experienced with the gameplay.

In Conclusion

Don’t get me wrong, Rascally Rabbits is not the best trick-taking game I have played but I have played A LOT. Rascally Rabbits does something different in the genre and even now, I still wonder how it works. I have never played a write ‘n’ trick game before and it certainly opens up the possibilities within the genre.

We found a lot fo the fun in this game came from laughing at each others drawings of vegetables, stealing tricks from each other and becoming Rascally Rabbits. All in all, if you like trick-taking games or even roll ‘n’ write games, this one certainly has something going for it. It’s a very unique and entertaining experience.

You can back Rascally Rabbits on their BackerKit page here.