JunKing is a light, gateway filler game that can be played in 20 minutes or so. For what it is, I’d say it’s a pretty good time. However, for JunKing to be fun, it’s important to understand how it’s intended to be played. I’m not going to lie–my first playthrough of JunKing was not very exciting. We just kind of sat around, playing cards one by one, thinking, “is this it?” However, as the deck got smaller and smaller, the point of the game became a lot more clear–you want to push your luck to give yourself the highest odds of drawing the crown.
In a way, the game feels like an inverse version of Exploding Kittens. In Kittens (check out our review here), the object of the game is to not draw an exploding kitten, which will instantly make you lose the game. As a result, everything you do is done with the intent of limiting your card draws or avoiding your turns altogether. In JunKing, you WANT to draw the crown. The Junk Crown is JunKing’s veritable Golden Snitch–it ends the game and gives a nice point boost to whoever drew it, which usually results in a win, but sometimes doesn’t if the other players have stacked up enough points (just like that infamous Quidditch world cup…). As a result, you’re trying to draw more cards and decrease the odds of your opponents finding the crown.
The similarities to Exploding Kittens and JunKing end there. The general concept of the latter is like an inverse version of the former, but other than that, JunKing has its own special flavor.
Gateway Appeal

I had a good time with JunKing when I started to see the strategy in it. Ultimately, this IS a lighter game, and it’s meant to be playable with children, so if you’re going in expecting something remarkably deep or complicated, you’d better stop there, because JunKing probably isn’t that game. That being said, JunKing does a great job at capturing the light, simple nature of casual filler games, but provides just enough strategic depth for it to feel satisfying to play.
This is why I’m referring to JunKing as a gateway game; it has the quick playtime of any other filler card game, say, Uno, but gives you interesting choices and consequences that reward intelligent strategy. A player with no tabletop experience who plays JunKing might feel satisfied from the strategy that’s required, and look into playing more games if they had a good experience. Gateway games are one of the best ways to introduce newcomers to the world of tabletop gaming, so JunKing might be a great title to pull out when you have friends over!
A derelict fashion show

This imp is riding on a unicorn with metal legs, sporting a can o’ beans, a Magic 8 Ball, and wearing an old radio as a hat. It’s fun to see that visualized on the table.
Another aspect I enjoyed was the satisfaction in decking out my little imp with accessories. I thought it was fun that your imp can hold things, ride on mounts, and wear cool helms, all represented by the cards you draw. I thought this was a very creative way to implement the traditional “draw and play” mechanic, and being able to have 4+ cards in play at any time ensures that there’s a great variety of strategy. In my Small World review, I praised the game’s race/power combinations as being extremely well-designed, due to the fact that, by having a combination of TWO special abilities at once (as opposed to one, which many games do), the game became infinitely more replayable. I get the same sort of feeling from JunKing, where you can really experiment with a lot of different possibilities when you have four cards in play at once.

You can have multiple cards in each “slot.” If you discard the top one, the card underneath will immediately start benefiting you. This would be useful for Ham, whose special ability allows him to discard several cards at once to his hoard.
However, the “accessory” nature of the cards serves more than just a mechanical purpose–it’s a nice visual treat to play your cards and “create” your character. One of the biggest things that card games lack (as opposed to proper board games) is a good visual representation of what’s happening in the game. Information is usually reduced to the artwork on the card and the text that gives a description; card games can often feel more abstract because of this. Playing cards over, under, and around your imp as accessories is a good visual representation of the game’s theme, and it makes the game just a little more fun.
This is also great for children, because it allows them to paint their own little picture. It’s fun stacking hats on top of your imp, while having him ride on a pig holding a Magic 8-Ball. It’s visually exciting in a way that many card games aren’t, and I really think it helps to make the game more approachable for younger audiences, while the action economy from multiple cards is something that older players can have fun with.
Strategic Depth
Once you figure out where JunKing is going, you can start to have fun with the strategies. For such a simple game, I appreciated the options that I had for JunKing. There are three different objectives you can have going on at once–stacking your imp with good cards, building a sizable junk hoard, and using actions to increase your odds of drawing the crown. You can focus on one of these, a few of them, or all at once, using one to help advance another.

Some cards give you passive boosts, like the Can O’ Beans which allows you to draw a card every time a player plays a helm. If you stack your imp with these types of cards, you can significantly increase how often you draw cards, thus increasing your likelihood of finding the crown.
JunKing feels overly simplistic the first time you play, but opens up in a big way when you experiment with it. The end-game scores in our first game were way lower than they ended up being in subsequent sessions, because we found out how to play the game as it’s meant to be played, and it really does have meaningful choices for you to make. One big one is the junk hoard. By taking special actions to discard your cards, you can add them to the junk hoard; they’re worth one point each at the end of each game. It’s easy to avoid doing this, because you don’t want to use up the good cards on your imp. We found, however, that cards get replaced all the time, and that building a hoard allowed for huge points in the end, usually making it worth the sacrifices you made to get there.
Event cards also throw an interesting wrench into the mix–most event cards are negative, so overzealous players who are constantly drawing from the deck can be punished for their actions; you have to find the right balance to draw enough to help your odds, but not so much that you’re constantly punished by events (which also happen to help other players).

The event cards usually hurt you, but some of them are good. I see events as a way to curb players from being too greedy, but it also feels odd sometimes that you are punished for trying to win the game.
There’s also the choice of if you’ll use your imp’s special power. Every imp has a unique ability that can be used once, which also nullifies the points that the imps themselves are worth at the end of the round. Do you want to burn those points for an action that will give you bigger payoff now, or is it too much of a risk? These are the kinds of questions you’ll be asking in JunKing, a game that SEEMS extremely simple, but will surprise you with its variety of meaningful choices.

Ham, after using his special ability, is a very sleepy imp.
A Variety of Variants
In the retail version of JunKing that’s available now, you’ll get the version that includes the Kickstarter’s stretch goals, which includes a mini-expansion that adds characters, events, and variant scenarios.
The first scenario you can add is the “collections” cards, which introduces pairs into the game. If you end the game with both items from the pair, you get a nice little point bonus. I like this a lot, because it helps to add some more tactical options into the game.

I’m Peanut Butter and you are Jelly, and we’re so happy on our little piece of bread…
The other expansionary item worth noting are the alternate crowns. Indeed, the came comes with two alternate crowns, worth less points than the big daddy crown that usually wins the game. You can play with multiple crowns in the game, or simply replace the 10 pointer if you feel like it swings the game too much. Although I’ll discuss this more in the “problems” section, I felt like there were some problematic issues surrounding the normal crown, so I was extremely grateful that these were included.

A 5 point crown encourages players to build up more points in their hoards and on their imps, because it won’t swing the game nearly as much as the 10 point crown would.
David Gerrard, the creator, has said that one motive behind designing JunKing was to teach his children about the values of long-term planning. I would argue that he’s done a fine job, because if you do plan for the future and employ strategy in this game, you will invariably earn more points.
Overall, JunKing is simple and light enough for newcomers and children to enjoy, but packed with enough strategy to keep experienced gamers satisfied.
Comments
Really great review. Thank you for your honesty! I know many players who never made it past the idea that “That’s all!? Just drawing the crown?!?” and chock it up as a failed card game that looks nice. It IS so much more than that! My gaming group also had the same complaint of that ten point swing being too strong until we started playing a number of games equal to the person. That third game after one person has grabbed the crown in the first two tries can be quite the nail biter. Keep up the good work, and thanks Zach!