Bears vs Babies – a deranged card game from the Exploding Kittens creators
It’s got bears. It’s got babies. It’s got a worrying amount of deadly weaponry
Bears vs Babies? That doesn’t seem like a fair fight.
It’s OK. These aren’t normal babies. This is an army of freaky mutant babies, including a giant sea-based stinging Man O’ Baby, the devastating Baby Torpedo (a torpedo shaped like a baby – not a tiny torpedo), and Butterfly Axe Baby.
Butterfly Axe Baby?
A baby with a crazed expression, axes for limbs, and giant red butterfly wings, snarling CHOP at anyone stupid enough to venture nearby. Obviously.
Uh, righto. Now I feel sorry for the bears.
Well, don’t – they’re pretty nasty too, with bat wings, robot parts, chainsaw hands, incredible underpants, and giant crab claws. Some of them aren’t even bears: they’re sharks and eagles.
So why Bears vs Babies, then?
Presumably because the creators wanted a catchy name for their card game, rather than ‘Bears, Eagles, Sharks and Various Other Deadly Creatures vs Babies’. That would never have fitted on the box.
I’m slightly relieved to discover this is a card game, and not, say, the next Pixar movie.
And it’s not just any card game. This is by two-thirds of the people behind Exploding Kittens: Matthew ‘The Oatmeal’ Inman and Elan Lee.
I loved that one. Russian roulette with detonating cats. Simple. Fast. Is this more of the same?
It’s a wee bit more complicated, judging by the promo video. You draw cards, which include babies or parts of creatures. Babies go to the centre of the table, forming an army to overcome with the bears and other weird monsters you build.
Your aim is to interrupt nap time by provoking babies at the moment when other players’ armies are outnumbered, but yours are not, whereupon you eat the babies. You can also use weapons and hats to, respectively, duff up other people’s creatures and strengthen your own.
So a bit more strategic than ‘avoid the explosive moggie’…
Yep, although Inman notes he wanted a deck-builder like Hearthstone, but without the complexity – a “monster-building game you could easily play at a party”. So it should be possible to learn within a round or two, each of which takes about 20 minutes.
Although regarding the party bit, you might want to hold back on inflicting the NSFW pack on guests, if they have delicate sensibilities regarding cartoon nudity and gore.
If they do, I shall simply hurl a bear with bat-wings, piloted by a robot squirrel, at them. I must have this game!
That’s the spirit. Grab it now from Kickstarter, at $25 for the core deck, or $35 for the core deck and NSFW booster pack. Shipping’s extra (although free in the US and cheap in the UK, at $3).
The Kickstarter’s already funded (to the tune of a staggering two million dollars of a ten grand pledge), so this one should also be stretch-goal-tastic. Regardless, you’ll get your cards in June, assuming a massive mutant carnivore (or heavily armed baby) doesn’t eradicate humanity.
I can’t BEAR the wait, BABY!
OK, we’re done here.
Craig Grannell
Contributor 
