BUNCO! A Bunco Birthday

 This year we decided to do a BUNCO birthday party. It was my 27th birthday and I wanted to play games.
So what’s the only game you can have 20+ people playing at the same time? BUNCO! My mom used to play as a kid and I have distinct memories of being sent to bed (listening in on the stairwell) to the dice hitting the tables and hearing BUNCO! yelled every so often. I had never played until my cousin recently hosted a Girls Only Bunco Party!
It was so much fun we settled on it for this year’s birthday celebration. After a rocky start (I had 5 dice on each table and since it was my first time explaining the game I had a hard time keeping on the rules in order in my head – plus there were only 3 of 20 who had ever played and nobody had played recently.)
We did prizes that all began with B: Bunco Booze (2 wine glasses and some wine), Bunco Beer (a beer stein, bottle of beer, peanuts and pretzels), Bunco Bath (a basket filled with spa items), Bunco Bucks (a mug and $5 gift card), Bunco Bonus (an envelope with an unnamed amount of cash in it), Bunco Bars (6 different candy bars), and a Bunco Bakin’ Basket (filled with baking treats).
We gave prizes for:
The Most Buncos
The Most Wins
The Most Losses
Highest Score
Bunco Prize (last person to get the BUNCO dice)
Losers Lottery
What fun it was! Everyone brought snacks to share and we got a HUGE ice cream cake from DQ. We just had them write BUNCO! on it and added the dice ourselves. It was just too cute.
The hard things with BUNCO are that you need sets of 4 to play at each table and with people arriving late or needing to head out early that can complicate things but it’s just too much fun no matter what!
Hope you enjoy the inspiration and that you dare to try a BUNCO party yourself.
Find the rules here!  I sure needed them on hand.
MY MISTAKES….  I made a few mistakes when explaining the rules so people were a bit lost. Here are some reminders to help you along the road to your first BUNCO party.
At the end of each round (when the head table rings the bell again because they reached 21 points) the losers stay at the table (one has to change chairs so they are not on the same team in the next round) while the winners move up a table. (If they were at table 4 the move up to 3 – Table 1 is the ‘head table’ that is the most desirable location). BUT the winners at the Head table do not change tables. They stay in place and the losers then move down to Table 5. Hope that helps!
We also forgot that each player keeps rolling the dice and earning points until they roll the 3 dice and no scoring dice appears. That will help the game move along. When they roll the 3 dice and no dice land on the target number then they pass them to the next player.
3 of a kind – of the target number is a BUNCO! and earns you 21 points.
3 of a kind – of another number is a Birdie and earns 5 points.
(and you roll again shooting for the target numbers)
Each dice rolled of the target number earns you a point. Roll until you roll all three without a target number appearing.
Here is another great site for learning more and one for getting free score cards!
Inspired yet?
 (That also lead to another party idea that we will either do for my husband’s birthday in October or mine next year… or maybe a “just because” party…. We are going to do a Settler’s of Catan Party next. Dress as a settler or a resource 🙂 Should be a blast! It’s still in the evolutionary process…)
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