Munchkin Unnatural Axe

There is an old board game, that is back out for buying, called Dungeon, made originally by TSR and now sold by Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast. It is a simple game of players going around a dungeon, kicking in doors, facing monsters and if victorious winning their treasure. The first to reach a certain amount of treasure, dictated by their class, and return to the great hall at the centre where all the players start, wins the game. The game is not co-operative, but neither can the players do anything to impede or harm the other players. Its a race to the finish. The game is designed for younger players but for the whole family to get a taste of dungeoneering. Why do I bring this game up? because in many ways Munchkin is a parody of Dungeon. In essence the goal is the same. Explore a dungeon, kick in doors, defeat monsters and get their treasure. First to tenth level wins the game. But whereas Dungeon is a fun light game of players racing to be first, Munchkin has players actively aiding other characters when its in their best interests and also aiding the monsters when it suits their purposes as well. Where Dungeon allows for no player on player interference, Munchkin not only allows for it it actively encourages it. The game is at its heart a card game with cards depicting monsters to be faced, along with various traps, items, and special effects. Races and classes are also included in the game for players to become as the game progresses if they choose to. The cards in themselves are all incredibly humorous and its clear that the creators know the sorts of games they are parodying and leave no stone unturned for a bad pun. The artwork is of a high quality and evocative, in other words, the pics are damned funny. If you want a light, easy, very tongue in cheek game of dungeon crawling and backstabbing, then this is the game for you. Egos need not apply and should be safely left at the door while the rest of you just accepts the madness within. Go forth, quest and may you find the chainsaw of bloody dismemberment.

Munchkin is a great Dungeons and Dragons parody game, full of quirky humour and adorable graphics on the cards. This is a must game for any would-be geek/nerd. (Please note that the base game can be bought without the deluxe version, it just depends if you want the extras or not.) This version of Munchkin provides the base game card deck with character cards, 6 coloured plastic character tokens and a very simple 1-10 board to illustrate game progression. As mentioned you can buy it without the board or extras but play is a little more straight forward with them. There is space in the box to add in expansions but it could get messy. Thankfully each expansion to Munchkin is identifiable on the cards (you might have to scan through the deck to check). The game is both simple to dive into and great fun with great replayabilty. If you are a stickler for rules they come with the game and are dowloadable from the official Munchkin website. You play as a "Munchkin", who for all purposes is a generic treasure hunting Human character. Equip him/her with armour and weapons, change them into a thief or a cleric or wizard etc and even change their race from Dwarf to Elf and so on, using cards you have from your hand. Then "knock" on a door to find out what is in the next dungeon. The aim of the game is to get your character to level 10, simply by battling and defeating monsters. Of course it isn't as simpe as have more power than said monster. Find a monster who is too powerful to defeat and you can use potions/spells or abilities or even call on a friend (who may or may not help). Or maybe you can easily defeat the monster, in which case your friend could chose to help the monster defeat you. Things get ugly as you get closer to winning and it's never as straight forward as have the most powerful character. What I love is that even if someone is miles ahead they can come crashing down very easily. Game times can vary from 10mins to 1 hour. The more people you have the more competitive and longer the games can last. My experience has been that the various add ons are well worth a look and don't forget to checkout forums and other online stuff for variant rules etc. Buy this if: 1) You like quirky role playing games that make fun of the genre 2) You have more than 2 friends as above 3) Even if you don't like the above but want something different from Monopoly or Trivial pursuit 4) You may be willing to lose hours playing and replaying Don't buy this if: 1) You have no sense of humour 2) You really don't have more than 1 other friend 3) Monopoly is you favourtie game ever and there's nothing to beat it...

Great fun. I picked this up after purchasing Munchkin Quest and finding that a little difficult to get going (rules wise) and long running (3-4 hours a game). Munchkin is the polar opposite. With pretty much two sheets of rules, you're up and running very quality. The basic concepts of the game are easy to grasp and crucially the turns move very quickly - whereas munchkin quest could leave the other players sitting around twiddling their thumbs for an age. Artwork and flavour text of the game is great and amusing after multiple play throughs. A core concept of munchkin is 'doing over the other players' by 'being a munchkin'. In this game it feels part and parcel of the system, expected. When playing Munchkin Quest it felt far more vindictive, possibly as a result of how long it had taken you to get anywhere. On average, a 3 player game of Munchkin seems to come in at 35-45 minutes for our group of backstabbers :D One thing not clear to me initially is that you only really need the Munchkin cards to play this game. The Deluxe set comes with a board, munchkin figures and a set of cards (treasure and doors), and a dice. Whilst they figures and board aren't required, they certainly add a nice touch to the game, and keep things nice and organised. However, I thought it worth mentioning that it's pretty easy to play munchkin as a travel game by discarding the board etc and just using the cards and something like a dice to keep track of your level.

Me and my girlfriend and some of her friends are really into this game. It's a good laugh. This expansion has proven sufficiently entertaining to justify the additional expense. Our only gripe has been that it's a bit unbalanced. Where it adds a race, it's added a few of the old race cards - so the chances of finding each in the bigger deck are not affected - but they haven't really done this with low level creatures. There's loads of cool high level creatures here - but we've had a few games where nobody can level up for ages, because all the creatures are too difficult - even for two players to tackle. We've only got this one and the base game however, so perhaps some of the other expansion might remedy this?

This is a card game that pokes fun at Dungeons and Dragons and similar role-playing games. The game takes the format of a dungeon crawl where you bash down a door by turning over a 'Door' card to reveal a monster, curse or other cards you can play. And with the slaying of monsters, you gain treasure by turning over 'Treasure' cards which are usually helpful items such as 'Sneaky Bastard Sword' or 'Yuppie Water' for elves. You have cards that allow you to be various character classes such as cleric, thief, wizard or warrior, as well as races such as elf, halfling or dwarf, each with their special abilities. Your gender also has an effect too, as the Amazon will not fight female players, instead giving them treasure. And you can change these cards almost at any time, so that in the middle of combat you can say "Forget being a dwarf warrior, I'm now an elf thief!". The great thing about this game is that even when it's not your turn, you have plenty of oppurtunities to play, since you can help somebody fight a monster (for a cut of the treasure of course, unless you were forced to fight by a magical item), steal from somebody else or curse somebody else. It's simple to learn and play is fast. You don't have to be a Dungeons and Dragons veteran to enjoy the game either, although you will understand the many in jokes if you are. I played the game with my wife and a friend who wouldn't go near a Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook with a barge pole +5 and they both enjoyed the game. It says a game lasts an hour. The games I have played usually last longer, but that's probably because we spend so much time laughing at the amusing illustrations on each card as they are revealed. Highly recommended.

My eight year old learnt how to play this game very quickly from friends explaining to him. I read the rules which required a lot of cross referencing with other rules, re reading and evetually I drew a flow chart! So it loses a star on 'educational' for the complexity and length of the official rules if they are intended for a novice ten year old. However kids just seem to get it, it was just the grown ups that had difficulty. The game takes about an hour to play, especially when you are all learning so set time aside and a few games to get to grips with it. Once you understand what you are doing it is fiendicshly good. In fact spend an evening reading all the cards so you can get the measure of it and see what kind of stuff can happen, who can do it and when they can do it. There are simply two decks of cards, treasure and door. You are human and yourself to begin with, but may get class e.g.cleric, wizard, thief...and a race e.g. dwarf, elf, halfling.....by picking up a card that will give you the advatages and disadvatages of being that race/class. There are items which may be articles of armor, one shot potions, and cards that give you a fighting advatage. There are monsters and curses that can work for or against you depending on when they are played. You have to battle monsters to go up a level, you can buy your way up a level, and sometimes you get a lucky card. You can't buy a victory though. On a turn you Kick Down the Door, deal with what you find. You can then Go Looking for Trouble if you have a monster in your hand you think you can battle, or Loot the Room and take another card, but it might be a really big monster. You can negotiate, sell or trade items but not while you're battling a monster. The real fun starts when you can't battle a monster with your current fightin points and have to ask for help or try and run away. The negotiations on how much of a share in the treasure you get if you 'help' a fellow is very telling, and just when you think its all roses some else can lay a curse or more power on the monster and Bad Stuff happens....The winner is the one who gets up to level 10. unlike most games where adults tend to have an advatage, so either patronise the kids and let them win or take delight in beating eight year olds..., this game is level playing field. So adults beware, life experience and a PhD in rocket science will get you nowhere! Your little Halfling Thief can back stab you, curse you and steal your level! They can also help you when you need it. A brilliant game that I would recommend for a fun or possibly explosive evening or rainy day. Hell we've played it on sunny days its so good. And it doesn't matter if ltiile ones try joining in at the start then walk off after five minutes, those cards just get put back in the pile and everyone else carries on.

I bought this after playing a few games of Munchkin using just the original (deluxe) set, and can safely say that this set really, really should be included with the original. Don't get me wrong, the original set is fine, great fun and perfectly playable on its own, but this set really does up the level of fun. Included in this set are enough extra treasure and door cards that you won't need to worry about running out on a 3-4 player game. Because of these extra cards, you'll find you have a lot more items to play with, and a lot more variety in terms of monsters, enhancers and curses to play against each other. This set also works out some of the kinks in the original game (it makes everything a bit more balanced and as such, a lot more tactical), and definitely makes it a lot more enjoyable; you won't any longer find one person way ahead just because they got all the good cards, now there are more good cards for everyone, making for much more interesting combat (and sneaky Munchkin thievery, cursing and general back-handedness). Definitely recommended.

My kids are 12 and 9 and I've been looking at this game for a while after seeing it on Will Wheaton's Tabletop YouTube show. I was worried my kids were too young and it would be too complicated and when we first tried it, it seemed that was the case. We still had a fun first game though and I put a bit of effort into reading the rules through properly and played a couple of practice hands. The next time I played with the kids was much better - I think you pick up quite a bit each time you play and by the 3/4 game we were feeling like experts, moaning as we pulled the duck of doom card that we know means we drop 2 levels and thrilled if we grab the doppelgänger card that doubles our combat strength. We've had this game about a week and played it 2/3 times a day. Video games have been (I'm sure temporarily) shunned and visiting children as young as 7 have been dragged into the obsession. One of those games you just play to learn rather than being taught. You do have to be quite tough on each other at times, playing curses and attack cars to try and stop the leader from winning. My kids are getting better at this but my 9 year old can still take it all a bit personally. :) All in all though it has been the best money we have spent on a game in ages and I would thoroughly recommend it. We were climbing the walls a bit before it came and it has really perked up our holidays.