Jungle Brunch

Players: 2–5 players
Play time: 20 min
BGG rating: 6.0

In the card game Jungle Brunch, everybody is very hungry, so what food can you ﬁnd for your animals? You need to ﬁnd the tastiest food, but watch out for dangerous predators that hope to eat you! Play your cards carefully, escape from the tigers, and keep an eye on the sky in case a vulture is watching you – after all, little animals make a great dessert! Each player has an identical deck of 22 animal cards; at the start of the game, players shuffle their decks, then draw six cards as a starting hand. Someone shuffles the plant deck, then lays out plants until at least one (regular or famine) card is available for each type of plant and at least 3-7 plant cards are available (with the number depending on the number of players). Each turn the starting player lays down two cards – one face-up and the other face-down – then each other player does the same. Players then reveal all their cards and work their way down the food chain: Bats attack herbivores, weakening them and making them eat more slowly; snakes scare away the strongest animal; elephants, tigers, buffaloes and monkeys then eat (one card) in order of their strength, from high to low; elephants eat nuts, or bananas if no nuts remain; tigers eat the highest-valued buffalo or monkey; buffaloes eat herbs, then bananas; monkeys eat anything but prefer bananas; warthogs eat last but consume two items; the animal young copy the animal they're played with and eat at the same time; vultures feed on buffaloes and monkeys that are forced to eat famine cards – or any such animal that fed. (They're not that choosey, really.) Animals can also be played in matching pairs, which prevents them from being eaten but restricts them to only one food card. After the round ends, each player draws two more animal cards from his deck, the plant selection is replenished, then a new round begins, with the player who ate first in the previous round playing first now. As soon as players have only four cards in hand or the plant selection can't be refilled, the game ends, and the player with the most food points wins!