Description

Bunny Kingdom solomode variant, created by Ben Huber as part of the 2020 Solomode competition.

Background

Your father, the King of Bunnies, has tragically died before you were ready to ascend the throne. But to be truthful, with the amount of time and effort you expended on your princely training, you would never have been ready.

But the time is now and there is a kingdom to govern. You are becoming aware that you cannot govern it alone. Well maybe you could, but that seems like way too much work. Instead, you have selected four courtiers (hereafter referred to as haretiers, pronounced “hare-tee-ers”) to do the work on your behalf. You have picked the most capable subjects to make your kingdom as rich as possible. But you also don’t want any one of them to be too powerful, so you’re going to try your best to balance their responsibilities. After all, you don’t want to have your throne overthrown.

But there’s a catch – you’ve never taken your schooling seriously and have managed to conceal from your tutors that you cannot read or write. Being unwilling to admit such deficiency now, you have determined to remember all assignments and delegations, a task that may prove to be difficult.

Overview

You will be playing the new Bunny King. You will play through the standard four rounds of play, however instead of accumulating fiefs, territories and titles for yourself, you will be allocating them to your four haretiers (courtiers).

Your score at the end of the game will be based on two factors: the lowest haretier score and the highest haretier score. The formula is “lowest haretier score minus (highest haretier score minus lowest haretier score)” – or in other terms – the lowest haretier score less the difference in the highest and lowest scores. You want to be as rich as possible, but not have any one haretier to be too powerful.

To complicate things there is one wrinkle, based on your writing and reading deficiency. Once you assign parchments to a haretier, those parchments are placed face-down on the haretier’s playmat. Once face down, you are unable to look at them until the last scoring round. You also are prohibited from making notes about such. So, there will be somewhat of a memory factor to the game. (Best to remember who the Treasure Hunter is, and the Master Fisher, and who did you give the Surveyor to…)

Since you are playing this game solo, there likely is no one around listening. Feel free to majestically and loudly assign territories, titles and treasures on your subjects. Fancy titles, especially those that are rabbit, hare, and bunny related are encouraged.

Once all scoring has been completed, you are encouraged to embellish the titles given to your haretiers, to project out what happened to your kingdom (based on your score), and how long your rabbit reign endured.