Roll for Perception, wait this isn't D&D!

Imagine if you will you are an adventurer in the High Fantasy lands of Dungeons & Dragons. You spend your days questing, looting, smashing monsters and rescuing the Princess, or Prince, of the week. Now imagine you've been ripped from the High Fantasy world you know and love and shoved into a world of satire and dirty jokes.

Grab your Boots of Butt Kicking and bring your Singing & Dancing Sword as we kill the monster, steal the treasure and stab our buddies just for good measure

Welcome to Munchkin

Story

You are a munchkin, a parody of all good dungeon explorers everywhere. You're job is to kick down the door, slay the monster, and rob it off it's treasure. Along for the ride are other munchkins, if you're smart enough you can get them to help you before you bury your bad ass battle axe in their back

Game Mechanics

Hand Management

Take That

Variable Player Powers

Number of Players

3-6

Play Time

60-120 mins

Down Time

Character building, how best to equip your munchkin for the journey ahead. Basically anything that isn't kicking down the door or taking treasure as most fights end up being about negotiating with fellow players

How does it play?

Munchkin is an incredibly easy game to learn and play. There is nothing difficult about this game, the only difficulty is deciding how best to set up your munchkin. The game is played over a series of turns starting from the starting player and moving left. First player to Level 10 wins. From start to finish the game progresses as such: -

Set Up - Card Game Version

1. Shuffle and deal four door cards to all players and stack the rest in the playing area.

2. Shuffle and deal four treasure cards to all players and stack the rest in the playing area.

3. The player's gender defines the character's gender

Set Up - Deluxe Version

1. Place board in the playing area

2. Shuffle and deal four door cards to all players and stack the rest on the board in the door area

3. Shuffle and deal four treasure cards to all players and stack the rest on the board in the treasure area

4. Each player takes a figure/standees (some versions have plastic munchkin figures whilst others have cardboard standees)

5. The player's gender defines the character's gender

You may perform these actions at any time:

Discard a Class or Race.

Play a Go Up a Level or Hireling.

Play a Curse.

You may perform these actions at any time, as long as you are not

in combat:

Trade an Item with another player (the other player may not be

in combat, either).

Change which Items you have equipped.

Play a card that you have just received (some cards may be

played even during combat; see above).

You may perform these actions on your own turn:

Play a new Class or Race card (at any time).

Sell Items for levels (except when you are in combat).

Play an Item

The turn sequence is as follows: -

1. Kick down the door by drawing a door card face up

A. If it's a Monster, you have to fight it.

B. If it's a curse you must apply it to your character

2. If it's not a monster or a curse then you can carry out the following: -

A. Look for trouble by playing a monster card from your hand

B. Loot the room by drawing another door card

3. The active player keeps the cards they want and gives the rest to the player in the lowest level. The maximum hand limit is five cards

Combat

Combat is simple in this game all you have to do is make sure your level is higher than that of the monster you are fighting. Of course if you're on Level 5 and you're up against the Level 20 Plutonium Dragon the maths doesn't work in your favour. Fear not weary dungeoneer, all your weapons and armour give you bonuses. For example, my character has the Meat Sword which gives him +3, Armour of General Studliness which gives him +2, the Helm of Wonder giving him +1. This would bring my character's level up from 5 to 11, I would need to ask for help from other players as I am 10 levels short of beating the Dragon. (No items here are actually in the game)

The maths of combat is really simple

Player Level>Monster Level=Win

Player Level<or=Monster Level=Bad Stuff

If you beat the monster you get treasures and you go up a level.

Your level and the monster's level can always be temporarily changed by use of items such as potions or spells. Be careful, you're opponents can also change the outcome of your fight, so when your on level 9 and you've spent the game stabbing your opponents in the back beware. They'll make sure you don't make it to level 10.

If you don't have a level and no one wants to help you, you can always try to run away. To run away the player must roll the die, to escape the monster you need to roll a 5 or a 6. If you roll less than a 5 then bad stuff happens.

When you die, if you die, fear not. You get to keep your level, class, and race. You also get to keep any Super Munchkin and Half-Breed cards as well as all curses you picked up along the way. When you die you must place all your cards face up in front of you including cards attached to your character, your opponents then Loot the Body by selecting one card from your mangled corpse the rest get discarded to their respective discard piles. When you start your new turn you get 4 new door cards and 4 new treasure cards.

Game End

When a player reaches Level 10 on the board (or other form of tracking the game) that player wins. You can only go up a level if by beating a monster, or by selling enough gear to earn 1000 gold. Sometimes you will come across a card such as 'Mutilate the Bodies' which lets you go up a level, and if you're really lucky you will be a Cleric and get Divine Intervention when you're on Level 9.

Components

1x rule sheet

1x six-sided die

95x Door cards

73x Treasure cards

The Deluxe Version includes the above and the following: -

1x Game Board

6x Player Cards

6x Player Pawns

Some Deluxe Versions replaced the Plastic Player Paws with Cardboard Standees, 2 of each colour for both sexes

Theme

A satirical high fantasy dungeon crawler where the aim of the game is to win by any means necessary

Replay Value

The base game itself doesn't have a lot of replay value but when you include expansions the game's replay value increases.

Favourite Part

The satire and subtle dirty jokes

Least Favourite Part

The expansions. Due to the age of the game many are out of print and some can be a tad expensive

Expansions

A ton of them. Clerical Errors, Unnatural Axe, Need for Steed to name a few. There are also a number of spin-offs such as Munchkin Cthulhu, Munchkin Legends and Warhammer Munchkin

The Bottom Line

Munchkin is a marmite game in the board game community, they either love it or hate it. My family love it as it is easy to play, fun and doesn't take an age. I would recommend any avid board gamer keeps a copy in their collection, even if only to use as filler material

Insert Score Here

+10 Munchkins

Game Designers: Steve Jackson

Game Artists: John Kovalic, Alex Fernandez, Edwin Huang , Ian McGinty , Heather Oliver , Philip Reed , Gabby Ruenes

Publishers: Steve Jackson Games

Images courtesy of BoardGameGeek