Munchkin Quest
Munchkin Quest takes the basics of the popular card game and adapts it to a board game format, familiar enough to seasoned Munchkins but with enough new elements to keep things interesting.
Players: 2-4 Playing Time: 60 mins Aprox.
Components
Munchkin Quest comes in a large square box, slightly taller than most other board games, with plenty of room for the inevitable expansions. Within, you’ll find:
200 Cards – These are broken down into 3 categories, Treasure Cards (83), Monster Cards (41) and ‘Deus Ex Munchkin’ Cards (76). The cards are slightly wider and thicker than normal Munchkin cards, and have full colour throughout, with pictures on the back to differentiate them, and different background colours on the front; green for monsters, Yellow for treasure and Blue for Deus Ex Munchkin (normally referred to as DxM cards). The main picture and text of the cards has a thick black boarder, with extra space on the bottom to make space for the addition of Keywords that interact with other cards or places in the dungeon.
The first two decks (Treasure and Monster cards) are pretty self explanatory, but the ‘DxM’ cards cover all of the areas of the traditional Munchkin Dungeon deck that were traditionally mixed in with the monsters, such as monster enhancers, Classes, Races and other such cards.
27 Health Tokens 69 Gold Pieces 12 Dropped Item Tokens 15 Move Tokens 12 Search Result Tokens – These tokens are on thick card, full colour and double sided. Mostly they serve the purpose of keeping track of your Munchkins health, gold and moves. Both the health and the Move tokens have different colours on the flip side to show if you have used your movement or taken a Hit of health.
4 Level Counters 4 Munchkins 12 Monster Bases 8 6-Sided dice, two for each player – These are the player pieces of the game. The Munchkin figures are coloured plastic in either green, Red, Yellow or Blue. The figure is of the traditional Munckin from the cover of the Card game and indeed the Box of the board game. Each Colour has a wheel like level counter with movable window to help you keep track of your current level, and three monster standee bases for keeping track of which monster is controlled by which player. All these are study enough, and it’s nice to have the solid miniatures for the Munchkins, when they could have quite easily have gone for cardboard standies like they have for the monsters. The dice are similarly colour coded, and are a nice slightly larger than normal size.
24 Room Tiles 1 Entrance Tile 73 Links – These make up the ‘board’ of the game, and are used to build the dungeon fitting together jigsaw like in a grid like pattern. All the rooms are square, the same size and have a single exit point in each side. Each Room Tile is double sided, making a total of 48 rooms to explore, each with it’s own illustration, special rules and arrows at each door that direct monster movement. The Links are the placed between each room (except when I forget and get told off by my wife…) and likewise have two sides. The links show open passageways, Doors, Hidden doors and Walls, each costing a different amount of movement to pass through, and impede the movement of different types of Munchkin and monster. The entrance tile is single sided, and is the only really safe spot in the dungeon. The Links and the dungeon rooms fit together quite well, but they do sometimes need a bit of force to get them to clip into place. I have a small worry that may start to become damaged after a while, but for now when they are in place they do stay together pretty well.
38 Monster Standies – Each of these corresponds to one of the monster cards in the monster deck. They are made of the same thick cardboard that all of the other pieces of the game are made out of. Again, full colour and double sided. They also come in 3 sizes, small (like the potted plant), Medium (King Tut) and large (reserved for the toughest monsters like The Plutonium Dragon). They seem to be of slightly varying thickness, as they don’t all fit snugly in the bases, but this could be the plastic of the bases themselves, it’s a minor point, and again, they do all stand up when in place.
1 10-Sided die 1 six-colored Monster Die – The D10 is black, and fairly standard. The Six coloured Monster dice is a D6 with a different colour on each side, one for each player colour and two more for the expansion for 5-6 players (Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and Purple).
1 20-page rulebook – Explains the rules! Well written and clear, peppered through with the standard level of Munchkin Humour from the Steve Jackson Games puns department.
In case it wasn’t clear, the whole of the game is Illustrated in colour by John Kovalic of Dork Tower fame.
The Gameplay
In essence, the game play is very similar to the Munchkin Card Game. Get to level 10 before the other players by fighting monsters, using every opportunity to stab your buddies in the back and steal their treasure.
There are a number of differences that add a touch more depth to the dungeon crawling experience. Each Munchkin starts with four health tokens. These are lost when defeated by monsters, and when they are gone, you are dead, and forced to start back at the entrance room on your next turn, loosing valuable progress and treasure. The Munchkin also has three movement tokens. They can use these to explore the dungeon (uncovering new rooms), searching empty rooms for treasure and activating the special features of the rooms. Both of these can be increased, by treasure, races, classes and other such things. You also start with three Treasure cards and Three DxM cards. These give you a much needed boost when you start, or your average level 1 Munchkin, may meet his match against a goldfish or lame goblin. Each of the treasure cards will be either an item that gives you a permanent bonus to your effective level in combat (like the Chainsaw of bloody dismemberment or the Adamantium armour). The DxM cards will give you ways you can change your character, like a class or race, make the monster that others are fighting more powerful or weaker, or ways you can break the rules in a number of creative ways.
Many of these cards will be familiar to seasoned Munchkin players, but each of them has quirks and changes that fit the new format of the game. For example, The Chainsaw for Bloody Dismemberment (a personal favourite) can be used to destroy doors, as well as giving you a 3 bonus. The class and race cards are also changed to fit their new environment, like the warrior gaining an extra health point. All the classes also have a powerful ‘D10’ ability that can be used once per combat, but only if the Munchkin in question rolls lower than his level on the D10. This adds a nice random factor to combat, which makes it far less predictable to tell what side is going to win (along with other factors, but I’ll come to those in a moment).
The Game Turn.
Starting with the player whose colour is rolled on the Monster Dice, the players set off to explore the dungeon. Each link out of a room has a number of moves that it takes to go through them: passageways and doors both cost 1 move, and Locked and hidden doors both cost 3. Walls as you may imagine, cannot be passed through, except with some of the treasure cards. Once a player has moved across an open link they draw a dungeon room at random and place it on the table. They then Draw a DxM card as a reward for their exploration, and draw links at random and attach them to the room. A monster card is then drawn at random and placed in the room. The monster dice is rolled, and the player whose colour comes up gets to control the monster, and gets a DxM card to help them even the odds.
Combat.
The part of the game that every true munchkin lives for. It’s as relatively simple as the other Munchkin games. You compare your level, plus any modifiers from treasure to the level of the monster. You also roll a single D6 as does the monsters controller (some monsters roll more than one) and add it to your total. If you win, you gain a number of levels (normally one) and treasure cards as stated on the monsters card. If you lose, you take one hit of damage, and attempt to run away by rolling 5-6 on a D6. If the monster catches you, you get ‘bad stuff’ happen to you as described on the card. This can be as varied as loosing a level to having to speak in a high-pitched voice until your next turn (Because a psycho Squirrel has gone for your nuts…).
Things get more complicated, though as the other Munchkins may attempt to help you defeat a powerful enemy when bribed with treasure, or they may spitefully use their treasure to help the monster to defeat you. This is slightly less common in the board game as it is in the card game, as any Munchkins who wish to do this must be in an adjacent room. If they are further away, they cannot help you, or hinder you, but they may still be able to use their DxM cards to make the monster more powerful. Fighting in certain rooms may also give you (or the monster) an advantage or a disadvantage based on the room in question based on your class, race or the monsters Keyword. This is normally signified by an Icon in the corner of the room tile or the description of the room and either puts you at 1 or -1 Dice to add to your total.
Once the monster is defeated, then the player can search the room for additional treasure (though they may find another monster instead). If they do this, they roll a D10 on the treasure table and get the listed reward, from 200 GP (1000 GP = 1 level) to three treasure cards. The better they roll, the less chance there will be for other Munchkins to find rewards from that room, and if you roll too well, then the room may be looted out completely.
If the monster is left alive at the end of the combat, then it will stay on the board, and at the end of each Munchkins turn, that player rolls the monster dice, and all monsters move in a direction indicated by the coloured arrows next to each entrance to the room. Some monsters can go through any type of door, others can walk through walls. This creates an interesting environment, where your movement and exploration has to be tempered by the knowledge that you could be moving closer to that monster that you just can’t beat yet, but a down side is that it tends to create rooms where lots of monsters will gather together, and then stick together, making certain areas of the dungeon unassailable until some-one does something to break up the pack. I’m pretty sure that this was intended, as it has shown up in most of the games that we have played. It can have a detrimental effect on play if it happens early on, especially when you are in a two player game, and have limited numbers of monster bases (the rules say, when the players run out of monster bases, no-more monsters).
Ending the Game
Once a player has made it to level 10, they must journey back through the dungeon to the entrance room, and defeat the ‘boss’ monster to escape. This monster is specially drawn from the monster deck and is always level 20 (yes, this can mean that the boss of the dungeon is a Lv 20 potted plant). Obviously the other players will attempt to hinder this as much as possible.
The Game Design
If you’re familiar with the original Munchkin card game (in it’s many incarnations) then Munchkin quest will be a breeze to pick up. Even if you’re not, it will be relatively easy learn how to play. The couple of times that I’ve played it with people who haven’t played Munchkin much (or at all) before, then they have been able to show a grasp of the rules by the second game around, and even more importantly, they have grasped the Munchkin philosophy that is essential for play. The games differences are enough to provide a deeper level of strategy to the game, with such questions as ‘do I stick close to the other Munchkins so they can help me out or go off on my own so they can’t interfere?’ or ‘should I use my monster enhancers slowly through the game or save them till some-one fights a boss?’ having a great effect on the experience of play. The game has managed to be very fresh each time, with no two dungeons being the same, and there is plenty of devious fun to be had by making life more difficult for the other players.
Some of these choices will make the game a bit more appealing to those who don’t get on with the rather adversarial nature of the Munchkin games, as there was a great deal less interference in the combats than in the card game. Also, The fact that no-one can interfere in a combat once the dice are rolled, means that no one can take that victory away from you once you’ve got it Well, normally. This is Munchkin, after all. It does put and end to some of the ‘bidding wars’ that you get in the card game.
It can also be surprising how quickly some of the characters can level up. In a number of games we’ve had, players have already made it to level 4 by the end of their first turn, but this helps speed up the pace of the, and it’s been quite common for players to all be close to hitting level 10 by the time the game ends, even if some-one has taken an early lead.
There are a couple of niggles that I have with the game though. The first is that there are a number of Items in the game that give the player extra movement tokens. These Items are incredibly powerful, conceivably allowing a player to explore and search two rooms in their turn. Luckily these Items are generally all ‘footgear’ so they don’t stack, except when that elusive ‘Cheat’ card is played. All the same these particular Items can lead to the players that have them dominating the slower players.
As I mentioned above, in a two player game, we seemed to run out of monster bases very quickly, ending up surrounded by monsters that were too high level to defeat, and with no ability to get more monsters. As a two player house rule we are going to try having the other colour monster bases in play, and when they are rolled on the monster dice, they are ‘neutral’ monsters, controlled by whichever player is not taking their turn. We’ve not had a chance to try this yet however.
Final Thoughts
Munchkin Quest is a great dungeon crawl style board game, the simplicity of the rules make it more accessible and faster than games like Decent or Tomb, and its very quick to learn, especially if you’ve played the other Munchkin games. The game it’s self is relatively expensive, but you definitely get your monies worth, and the components are definitely going to last a good long while. There is also plenty of space for the inevitable expansions, but for the sake of my wallet, I hope there are not too many...
