Munchkin Card Game Lookback Review

Munchkin is a game I played a lot when I got into the hobby but I didn’t give it the blogging attention it needed.

Now is the time…

Go down in the dungeon. Kill everything you meet. Backstab your friends and steal their stuff. Grab the treasure and run.

Admit it. You love it.

Munchkin Game Play

This is a brief look at the rules, mostly focused on the base game and not including additional rules from expansions or the other versions of Munchkin.

There are two decks, the Door deck and the Treasure deck. Both are shuffled and each player gets 4 cards from each deck.

Now, the goal of the game is to get to level 10. The player to do this first will win.

The first thing you do on your turn is to kick down the door! In other words, reveal the top card of the Door deck. There are several cards you could encounter here; Monster, Curse or Other.

Fighting

Monster: Fight! Win by having 1 more combat point than the monster.

Your combat level is your current level + bonuses from equipped items + bonus from played allies + bonuses from played one-use cards from hand + bonuses from class skills. If you can’t do it on your own you can negotiate with other players to help you by adding their combat value.

Also, other players can help the monster by playing cards to increase its combat value. There is also a card called “wandering monster” that lets a player add an extra Monster to the fight making it more difficult.

If you win you gain the number of levels shown on the defeated monster as well as the number of treasure cards shown.

Should you lose you, and any player that agreed to help you can run away on the roll of a 5 or 6 on a d6. If you don’t, you suffer the bad stuff shown on the Monster card. Or, you can discard your Ally as you push them in front of you to take the effects of the bad stuff.

If you die, you discard everything and draw a new hand, start again on Level 1.

If the door card is a curse you take the penalty shown on the card and discard it. Any other card goes into your hand.

After this, if you didn’t encounter a Monster you either loot the room or pick a fight! If you Loot a room you draw a door card into your hand. If you pick a fight you play a Monster card from your hand and fight it!

Charity

The final step is charity. Play or Discard cards until you have 5 or less in your hand. After this, if you have more than 5 cards in hand the excess is given to the player with the lowest level.

Cards have a value and if you sell 1000 Gold worth in one go you gain a level. You can also trade cards with other players if you wish.

There is a limit to the cards you can have in play. A player can only wear 1 headgear, 1 piece of footwear and 1 armour and only have up to 2 hands worth of items.

You can also only have 1 Race of Class card in play as well as 1 Ally.

Any curses in hand can be played on other players.

Play continues clockwise until a player reaches level 10, then they win.

Theme

This is set in the unique Munchkin world. I like the silly humour and artwork so it all works for me.

Setup & Rulebook

Shuffle two decks and deal cards from each, not bad.

The rulebook is dated now with big blocks of text and very few examples. I’m not sure if the newer versions of the game have updated it or not.

Components & Artwork

The cards are OK, they’re that half American size but it works fine. Standard size cards would take up a lot of table space.

The art is a lot of fun and a massive attraction for the game. John Kovalic has a great cartoon style that really fits with the Munchkin world.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

So the basics are easy to teach but the fiddly bits are fiddly.

The game is obviously accessible but as with any card game, hands of cards are hidden so players will need to know the options before the game starts. They may even need to be prompted occasionally.

Munchkin Summary

Poor Munchkin. It did so much for the hobby in 2001 and onwards and got so many people into board games but now, it’s crapped on so much. I wonder who many people playing games today got started in regular gaming groups because of this game. Same for Monopoly really.

Do I play it now? No. But I don’t think out of the MANY times I’ve played it I’ve ever played it properly.

The point of the game is to kill your opponents if they’re on the way to winning. You need to keep everyone down at lower levels so they can’t run away with it.

But the group that I played with kept helping each other. “I’ll help you with that Monster for 3 treasures”, “OK”. Boom, both players get better. Eventually, all players are level 8 armed to the teeth and roll over any baddie they meet.

It’s not supposed to be like that.

The game I play now that’s closest to it is Looterz. This is a game where you have zany characters and you fight the other players. It also suffers from a similar problem that players need to reel in the leader and not JUST focus on winning themselves.

So what I’m saying is Munchkin is a good fun game… But has to be played in the right spirit.

Jesta ThaRogue