JunKing Review

JunKing is a game that plays very simply, and it should take any group around five or ten minutes to learn it. The object of the game is to have the most points at the end of the game. Points can be earned through the cards that you play in your area (placed above, below, and to the sides of your imp as to represent accessories), and through items in your “junk hoard,” which are cards that you can put into a personal discard pile that amount to one point each during the game.  At the start of the game, you shuffle The Crown into the bottom half of the Junkpile. Once the crown is drawn, it rewards ten points to the player who drew it and immediately ends the game.

As far as what you do, it’s very simple. It’s basically a draw n’ play card game, but there’s a little more you can do than just draw cards and put them down. The turn structure is as follows:

–Draw card

You’ll draw a card from the “junkpile” (aka the draw deck) and put it into your hand. Not much more to this, except for that you might draw an event card, which will require you to draw an “event” from the event deck. Events are random occurrences that typically affect all of the players in some way.  Most events aren’t favorable to the person that drew them, but some of them are.

-Play card

The cards drawn from the junkpile are referred to as “junk items,” and can be attached to your imp character. You can equip your imp with a helm, a mount, and two accessories–one for each hand. Each card either grants you points, or affords you some kind of special action (or both). In the case of helms and mounts, there are certain “stackable” cards that allow for multiples to be added to your character. These do nothing in the way of actions, but each one adds a precious point.

If your character is “full,” you can put your junk card on top of an existing one that’s attached to your character. The card underneath becomes inactive (actions and points cannot be used), but will become active again if the card on top gets discarded. By having a stash of cards in each area, players can always have something up their sleeve, should they choose to frequently discard to their hoard.

Play an action

You can play exactly one action every turn, and this is where you’ll find most of the game’s depth. Most cards have actions that are available to play on this phase, and these are what allow you to employ creative strategy. Many cards, for instance, will allow you to look through several cards on the top of the deck–this would be a crucial skill for players looking to draw the first crown. Other actions allow you to draw more cards, or discard current ones into your hoard, which, again, will grant you one point each at the end of every game.

Gameplay continues on until somebody has drawn the crown. At that point, points are counted, and whoever has the most wins! Points come from the accessories on your imp, the number of cards in your junkpile, and of course, the crown, which grants a whopping +10.

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

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

JunKing supports two to six players, though it’s one of those games where I can’t really see a reason why you wouldn’t be able to play with more if you wanted to. There’s nothing that really binds JunKing to its advertised player count, and there’s plenty of imps to go around.

I found JunKing to be pretty enjoyable at every player count, though I would say it excels at three or four. With a smaller count, it’s easier to keep up with other players, and keep track of the actions they can play and so forth. This is not super essential, but it helps if you’re trying to play the game strategically. There can be a lot going on at once in a five or six player game, but it never really reaches the point where the game feels broken.

One thing I will say is that there’s more of a pressure to draw cards in a higher-count game, because when you have five players that will go before your next turn, that’s a lot of cards (and thus, potentially, the crown) that can be drawn before you’ll have another shot. These games can get really interesting as players try to milk as many cards out of their turn as they possibly can.

JunKing works as a two-player game. I don’t think it performs particularly strong or weak as a two-player game. It’s kind of just there, and doesn’t feel all that different from games with more players. JunKing can work with two players, though I had a bit more fun with three or four.

In the visual/tactile department, JunKing receives full marks. This is a really nice looking game, and everything about its aesthetics is just well-designed.

Before I even opened up JunKing, the first thing that came into my mind was, “this feels like a game that was professionally made by a well-established publisher.” Honestly, if you were to see JunKing on the shelves of your local game store, I would bet that you’d have no idea that it was a Kickstarter game. The box is thick and durable, and sports a nice smooth matte finish that just makes it feel nice. The visual design is (in my opinion) excellent, with catchy cover art and a simple, yet stand-out logo.

The quality carries over into the game when you open it up. The first thing you’ll see is the game’s instruction manual, printed in full color and in book form. The manual itself is also laid out well, teaching the game rather clearly, with plenty of pictures and graphics to keep it interesting. The cards came sealed in plastic wrapping, and upon being opened up, have the same type of texture that you’d find in Bicycle playing cards, albeit slightly thinner.

As far as the cards themselves, the artwork and visual presentation is incredibly well-done. JunKing is a game that’s fun to look at, and I often found myself pausing to admire the quality artwork that can be found on each and every card. That’s right, nearly every single card has its own unique artwork. I don’t have an exact count, but I would guess that JunKing is packing anywhere between 200-300 cards, and the vast majority of them, probably in the 80-90% range, each have their own unique picture. While this is expected from heavier games like Living Card Games, it’s something I see less common in casual games such as JunKing.

Justin Hillgrove’s artwork really helps JunKing to feel like its alive; his artwork adds a sense of whimsy and childlike creativity that’s missing from many modern games. I appreciate JunKing’s theme because it’s profoundly original, and this is made possible by Justin’s artwork, in which he creates his own little original universe. JunKing’s art reminds me of the kind of art that I’d see in a well-written children’s book. It’s simple and fun and whimsy to be fun for children, but not overly so to the point where it’s excessive or off-putting.

Overall, I was very pleased with the aesthetics and tactile feel of JunKing. Prospective Kickstarters would do well to take notes.

Currently, the only place (that I’m aware of) that you can find JunKing for sale is from its official site, which can be found here. The game retails for $24.99, though you’ll also have to pay a flat rate shipping cost of $5.95. This brings JunKing up to about $31, which is a little steep, but will be worth the asking price if it’s a game you end up enjoying.

I usually feel like, if you end up spending $25 or less on a filler card game, you’ve made out with a decent deal. Sure, some card games are cheaper, but most of those ones also have the benefit of being hooked up by an experienced big-time publisher. I’m willing to give a pass to most Kickstarter games because it’s harder for them to get away with charging cheap prices, but with even that being said, I wish JunKing was a little bit cheaper–I think a $5 markdown (or free shipping) would put the game in a much better range in terms of value.

I enjoyed JunKing enough to recommend it to anyone who’s looking for a game of its weight, but there are some criticisms I can throw in its direction:

The Problem With the Crown

One major criticism I have about JunKing is the way the Junk Crown works, which happens to be one of the game’s most fundamental mechanics. Simply put, the crown is worth too many points. Just like Harry Potter’s golden snitch, the crown isn’t guaranteed to win a game, but it most likely will due to the ten points that it affords to its discoverer. JunKing is a game where players usually earn less than 20 or 30 points, so a ten point bonus is absolutely huge.

And yes, I did mention how the strategy comes down to mitigating your odds to be the most likely to draw the crown, but I don’t know, for how much the crown offers, that doesn’t feel like enough. You can increase your odds and draw tons of cards, but in the end of the day, it’s still usually going to come down to a lucky draw. In other words, while the game does give you some power over your odds, it still doesn’t feel like enough power, given how much of a game-changer (and ender) the crown is. If the crown was worth a little less, I feel like the design would be justified. Fortunately, there are still ways to change the flow of the game. The event card pictured above can flip the crown over so everyone can see it, and there are also cards that give you points for not drawing the crown, so you might base your strategy around that.

Aside from that, there is a built-in solution, and that comes in the form of the game’s variants, which were a result of Kickstarter stretch goals being met. There are two more crowns that are included in the game, and these “alternate crowns” pack different, lesser point values. This is nice, because if you find yourself bothered by the crown, you can just sub it in for a weaker one. Not only that, but this can actually change the nature of the game. Instead of being about maximizing your card draws and improving your odds, now the focus is on building your junk hoard and improving your imp’s equipment. Not only that, but you can apply variable rules, such as playing with multiple crowns, which can really spice things up.

While I DO think that the crown mechanic wasn’t designed as well as it could have been, it’s nice that the game includes some alternative options.

What’s the point, again?

Another problem JunKing has is that it takes longer than it should for players to “see” the strategy. I mean, at the end of the day, whoever draws the crown wins, right? If this is all the players understand, then most of the other actions in the game feel meaningless. Even in my first game, I didn’t really know why I was playing cards. Like, yeah, I wanted to increase my score, but everyone was earning points at such a glacial rate that it seemed abundantly clear that whoever found the crown would win the game, even though it’s not (necessarily) a guarantee. When you feel like the crown is your only shot to victory, it does kind of downplay the importance of the rest of the game.

The thing is, the game DOES work. You CAN earn enough points to balance out the crown, and you CAN be clever and greatly increase your odds, but these things won’t be super obvious the first time you play (depending on the group, anyway), and that’s the problem–if the strategic potential isn’t obvious, JunKing feels like a meaningless game. Nobody wants to play a meaningless game. To avoid this, it’s good for somebody in the group to be aware of how JunKing “should” be played, and that they convey that information to the other players.

Incidentally, most of the problems here go back to the crown card mechanic, which, once again, either needed some more tweaking, or I just haven’t “gotten” it as well as I should. Oh, and just like in the last point, these problems can be potentially mitigated by the crown replacements.

Be Gentle, Please

This problem isn’t related to the gameplay, but to the components. I mentioned that I love just about everything about JunKing’s look and feel. This is still pretty much true, but I wish the cards were just a tad thicker. They’re made out of some nice textured stuff, but my finger slipped during one of the first shuffles and severely bent two of the cards. I’ve handled a lot of cards in my time, and I couldn’t help but feel like it wouldn’t have ended that way with normal cards. This is a minor issue, and one you might not even notice, but it’s worth mentioning so that you can be just a little more careful than you normally would.