Badaboom (2005)

Badaboom is a humorous card game for 3-5 players. The 30-60 minutes of game play feature loads of explosive action, a high level of player interaction, a non-sequential order of play, fabulous contraptions, numerous chances to stick it to your opponents in nasty ways and stunning graphics from the artists behind Spank the Monkey and Kablamo. The game contains 64 cards, 50 Gold Coin markers, 2 Bomb Armed markers and a rules folder.

The players of Badaboom take on the roles of wretched goblins in penal servitude under the cruel High Necromancer. Their task is to sit in an explosive-proof dungeon and try reverse engineering, tinkering style, on various explosive contraptions manufactured by their master’s enemies. But the task to gain hands-on personal knowledge about what makes the devices go off and what damage they can do is no picnic, and not even a lifetime supply of resurrections can change that. The goblins want out, and the only way to succeed with this is to earn the gold coins needed for bribing their greedy guards.

The fundamentals of Badaboom are quite simple, but there are lots of tricks and tactics that add depth. Basically, the players take turns holding and tinkering with the bomb while striving to do three things:
• Remove valuable mechanisms from the bomb.
• Change the nature of the bomb in a way that is favorable to the current player but not necessarily to the others.
• Make damn sure to stay away from the explosion when the bomb goes off.

This may sound straightforward, but things are made complicated by the fact that any player can steal the bomb during other players’ turns. And it’s very tempting to steal it. Not only do players get to tinker with the bomb when holding it. They may also draw a card from the deck, and as the deck is placed face up revealing the next card, the players know what they can gain by stealing the bomb. This makes the bomb skip and turn a lot during the game, keeping all players on their toes.

To win, players need to perfect their timing, make every card count and, of course, avoid losing their heads.

Reimplemented by

• Big Badaboom