If you thought Mos Eisley is a “wretched hive of scum and villainy,” you haven’t played this card game yet. Whereas Mos Eisley’s cantina attracts a lot of villainous characters, this game is all about the scummiest scum out there: bounty hunters!
In Star Wars Bounty Hunters, players crawl into the boots of the bounty hunters of a galaxy far, far away and hunt prominent targets such as Qira, Kanan Jarrus, Grogu (“Baby Yoda”), Padmé Amidala and Glup Shitto, You might even catch a glimpse of a furry Wookiee and his scruffy-looking nerf herder.
In Bounty Hunters, players have four cards in hand each time, and each round they take a fifth card in hand from one of four available stacks: target cards, bounty hunter cards, contract cards and the Jawa market full of droids and crates. Players choose a card from their hand to sell or play ear themselves. If they sell a card they get an imperial credit that they use to buy their droids or crates.
The game revolves around capturing targets. These are cards that players can play for themselves, but to capture them, you must meet a condition: play enough points by placing droids and bounty hunters. Once you complete the condition, the target is captured, and once a player has captured four targets, two more rounds are played and the game is over. The player with the most points wins, and in addition to targets, you also collect points for crates and contracts (which contain targets you can complete for points).
A bounty hunter in the Star Wars universe wouldn’t be a bounty hunter without hiring others, so that’s what players will do. Completely inspired by (Nerd Alert!) Sheev Palpatine in Attack of the Clones who asks Count Dooku to take down Padme Amidala and who enlists the bounty hunter Jango Fett to do so, who in turn engages a whole other bounty hunter, the shapeshifter Zam Wessel, to do the dirty job who in turn uses a robot with some kind of bug.
In Bounty Hunters, players can hire very well-known bounty hunters such as Black Krrsantan, Zuckuss, Bossk, Aurra Sing and lesser-known hunters such as Boba Fett and Din Djarin to help with a job. These bounty hunters you can madly hire without credits, but they do earn minus points. By the way, this makes for interesting dilemmas during the game. You don’t get the most points, but you can bring in a target a lot faster.
Another plus to Bounty Hunters is smooth gameplay. It is a drafting game where all players perform their actions simultaneously. The game is fast, short and clear. The ideal filler with a fun theme and an interesting edge. Do you shoot first?
