Exploding Kittens: Recipes for Disaster

The game underneath is Exploding Kittens: draw cards, avoid the kitten, and use Defuse, Skip and Attack cards to stay in until everyone else has blown up. What this box adds is a set of recipe booklets. Each recipe tells you exactly which cards to put in the deck, and each one changes how the game plays, from a plain beginner deck to more than a dozen variants that bring in the best cards from the game's expansions. This is the version we would point a first-time buyer toward: it has a gentle starting recipe for a family with kids, and enough different modes to keep a group of friends busy over many game nights without buying expansions. It does not raise the player count though; for a table of eight you want the Party Pack.