Favourite Boardgames: Munchkin

I recently acquired a new edition of one of my most favourite board/cardgames, Munchkin. Going through the hilarious cards of Munchkin Booty, I realised it might be a good idea to introduce my favourite boardgames on this blog, starting with Munchkin itself. So read on, it might be something for you as well

Munchkin is a cardgame by Steve Jackson Games that “captures the essence of the dungeon experience… with none of that stupid roleplaying stuff” . It was first released in 2001 (the German version came out 2003 and is published by Pegasus Spiele) and it took me a while to discover it, as my first game of Munchkin must have been somewhen in 2005 or 2006. It's playable by 3 to 6 players, but – to quote the package – “two can play¹⁾”, to which I can definitely agree thanks to having mostly played it as a two player game so far.

The game basically captures the experience of a dungeon crawl, with fighting monsters, finding treasure and building up your character to Level 10 (everyone starts out as a Level 1 Human). The cards are divided into two types: dungeon cards which contain monsters (who drop treasure when killed) or curses, and treasure cards which may be new races (human, elf, dwarf or halfling), classes (warrior, wizard, thief or cleric), items or other boni, e.g. instant-levels. On each turn, the player first kicks in a door by drawing a card from the dungeon deck. If it is a monster, a fight begins. Combat in Munchkin consists of very basic number crunching: Each monster has a level and maybe boni, so do you. If the sum of your's is greater than the sum of their's, you win. You may also add additional boni from your hand during combat – so do your fellow players, who want to see you fail and therefore may enhance the monster. If you can't win, you have the option of running away (success depends on dice rolls, if you fail the “bad things” as written on the monster's card will happen, which can mean basically anything from lost items to your death) or talking one of your fellow players into helping you out (that usually results in much bargaining and broken hearts ). Once the monster is dead, you gain a level and loot it's body by drawing a number of cards from the treasure deck. That basically sums up most of the rules (for a more detailed view, take a look at the downloadable PDF of the ruleset as available on the game's offical website – also with nice illustrations) and as you can see they are quite simple.

What makes the game an awesome load of fun: it doesn't take the fantasy genre (or role-playing for that matter ) very serious. Among the monsters you'll encounter are the Potted Plant (Level 1), the Unspeakably Awful Indescribable Horror (which has Level 14 but a bonus of ”+4 against Warriors”) or the Net Troll (Level 10, “He has no special powers and he's really mad about it”). Itemwise, you can gain the Really Impressive Title (+3), the Bow With Ribbons (which is only usable by Elves and gives you a Bonus of +4), the Stepladder (+3 Bonus only usable by – and probably useful for – Halflings) or – one of my personal favourites – the Chainsaw Of Bloody Dismemberment (+3). Regarding curses, you might be struck with the Duck of Doom (pictured above), a Chicken on your Head (which gives you a -1 on all your dice rolls and is a PITA to lose again) or the Income Tax (where you have to discard one of your items and all other players have to try to match the value of that one with their own). There's a lot of cards, all of them wonderfully illustrated by John Kovalic like the rest of the game as well, and I have spent several hours simply going through all of them over and over again and laughing my ass off

Since playing it for the first time, I've acquired not only the core game but also three add-ons, “Unnatural Axe”, “Clerical Errors” and “Need for Steed” and will probably also get “De-Ranged”, “Demented Dungeons” and “More Good Cards” But besides these add-ons to the fantasy-themed Munchkin, there were also released spin-offs trimmed to other genres, e.g. Munchkin Fu (which makes fun of eastern action), Munchkin Bites (which takes on the horror genre) and the aforementioned and yet-to-test-out Munchkin Booty (which brings the pirate flick genre into the world of Munchkin), so everyone should find something for his or her taste There's also a boardgame now, and I'm very tempted to give that one a try as well.

So, to sum it up, regarding Munchkin: Full hearted recommendation