‘Star Wars: Bounty Hunters’ Card Game Review
Another day, another Star Wars game – and this time, it’s a small box card game that promises simultaneous card drafting for between two and six players. This brief overview makes Star Wars: Bounty Hunters quite a versatile prospect, especially when you consider that it’s quite cheap, and designed by the same man who brought us the Timelines series of games. But Star Wars: Bounty Hunters isn’t perfect, so the question you should be asking yourself is – are these the cards you’re looking for?
In Star Wars: Bounty Hunters, each player will begin the game with four cards – one from each of four different decks. These decks are colour-coded and organised separately, with the standard setup placing them in a specific order from left to right. The decks are organised into Bounty cards, Bounty Hunter cards, Contract Cards and Droid Market cards. I’ll explain each of these in a moment, but needless to say, each group of cards has a specific function and players will need to balance the use of the right card at the right time in order to win.
On a turn, each player simultaneously draws one card from any of the four decks (to bring their hand up to five) and then they either play a card or sell a card. When playing cards, different things will happen depending on the card played – so let me explain that in brief now. Bounty cards can be played in front of the player at any time – and when played they simply sit on the table face up and positioned upright. Contract cards are similar – and I’ll explain those later. Droid Market cards can be played either upright (if you can pay for them) or sideways if you wish to save them for a later turn (which you might do if you wanted a card but couldn’t afford it.)
Bounty Hunter cards – unsurprisingly given the name of the game – are what really drive Star Wars: Bounty Hunters forwards. When a Bounty Hunter is played, it must be played alongside a Bounty card – with the blue, red and green “values” lined up to one another. This begins what the game calls a confrontation, and basically, when a player has placed enough Bounty Hunters on a single Bounty to meet or exceed each of the coloured values printed on the Bounty (their shields), then that Bounty is captured and can be scored.
Contract cards add some interest to this, with certain combinations of Bounty’s shown, or even a Bounty and then a small number of crates (which can be found in the Droid Market deck.) This gives the player something to aim for, allowing them to score not just the points on the Bounty card itself, but also the points associated with completing a contract that effectively allows them to score the same card twice. The Droid Market cards are often used to “assist” Bounty Hunter cards, and there are many very powerful droids in the deck that can damage the shields of a Bounty significantly – albeit at the cost of a few credits.
As a brief side note, if a player chooses to sell a card, then all they do is place it in the discard pile for the deck it belongs to and then they take one credit. As above, credits will most often be used to buy Droid Market cards – whether they be crates which just sit in front of the player (adding points in their own right and contributing to contracts), or droids, who will assist in resolving a Bounty card. Once each player has either played a card or sold one, the four cards in their hand will be passed to the left, beginning the next round with the draw step once again.
Star Wars: Bounty Hunters ends after one player has captured four Bounty cards, at which point the game ends in the current round (bearing in mind that all players act simultaneously, which ensures everyone has an equal amount of turns.) There are a few nuances (such as bonus points for the player who finishes first, and lost points for Bounty Hunters that are in confrontation but who have not captured their Bounty) but in the main, points are awarded for Bounty cards, completed Contracts and surprisingly enough, simply for having tons of crates.
Star Wars: Bounty Hunters is actually quite enjoyable, with very fast-paced gameplay that isn’t too complicated to teach or to learn – even for relatively young players. At face value, it all makes sense as well, with the Bounty and Bounty Hunter cards working together in an obvious way, and the Droid Market acting as a bit more of a support deck just in case you don’t feel you can get what you need from the Bounty Hunter deck. Contracts feel less rewarding initially, but can make the difference between a narrow loss and a big win, due to their high points value. Players will draw a lot of these int he mid to late game, hoping to get one that matches the Bounty cards they are closing in on.
In terms of what I didn’t love about Star Wars: Bounty Hunters, there are two things. Firstly, the way points are awarded feels a bit out of keeping with the theme of the game. Winning Bounty cards and linking them to Contracts can be very powerful, but actually leaving a confrontation open with say two or three Bounty Hunter cards on it can result in a big loss of points. On the other hand, playing a safer game of selling cards and then investing in, erm, crates from the Droid Market is a very safe and stable tactic. When you balance this with the risk of repeatedly drawing Contract cards and not getting what you want, sometimes people playing a very safe (and very dull) game based on the Droid Market will simply win.
If you don’t game it too hard though, Star Wars: Bounty Hunters is a fun and enjoyable game that can easily fill a twenty or thirty minute gap, including the teach and allowing for a fairly high number of players. For me this is a game which can’t be taken too seriously, and is never going to be a classic, but over time I could imagine it continuing to make an appearance given its versatility. Relative to its simplicity, Star Wars: Bounty Hunters is also fairly “involved” with fairly crunchy decisions that most core gamers will find just as satisfying as younger or casual players.
