Munchkin CCG: Review

Munchkin CCG: Review

Information:

Mechanics: Head to head, Bluffing, Collectible, 

Player Age: 10+

Player Count: 2 Players 

Time to Play: 20 - 40 Minutes

Game Designers: Eric Lang, Kevin Wilson

Game Artists:  Katie Cook, Lar DeSouza, John Kovalic, Mike Lucas, Ian McGinty, Tom Siddell, Shane White

Publisher: Steve Jackson Games

Release Date: 2018

BGG Complexity: 2.5 / 5
Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.

The Game:

Objective:

The objective of the game follows traditional collectable card games (CCGs) where you either want to deplete your opponent’s life (represented here as a hero) or to make it so your opponent cannot draw a card. 

Card Anatomy:

There are multiple card types that are a perfect blend between traditional munckin games and typical CCGs. These are monsters, loot, location, hero, ally and mischief. For this current explanation the colour of the cards don't matter, More on this in deck building.

Monsters:

These cards are used to attack your opponent. At the top of the card is the cards name and cost to hire. At the bottom of the card is the cards ability, attack (power) and defence (life). 

Loot:

Loot follows the same attributes as the monster card, expect for two factors:

- the loot has defence instead of life, meaning loot doesn't die like monsters and allies.

- Instead of a gold cost, loot has a rank.

You can equip the loot on your turn if you are equal or above that rank and you can have any amount of loot given that the combined rank doesn't exceed your level.

Location:

Each player can have one location in play. These will give ongoing effects to one or both players.

Hero:

This is who you are and if their life (shown at the bottom right) reaches zero, you lose. There is also an ability on every hero that will let you ‘zap’ the card to perform a special ability. To zap you turn the card 90°, similar to tapping in magic. 

Ally:

These cards follow the same traits as the monster cards. However, these cards are not used to attack, they are instead hired on your turn face up and will remain on your field (horde) until they are destroyed (squished) once their life reaches zero.

Mischief:

Mischief cards are cards that can be used at any time for an instant effect by paying the required gold.

Deck Building:

Once you have played this game a bit and invested in some boosters you may want to start characterising your deck.

There are a number of rules in order to do this:

- Keep one hero outside of the 40 card deck (no heroes are allowed in the deck)

- No more than three cards with the same name in the deck

- No limit to the neutral (grey) cards that can be in the deck, think of them as mercenaries

- The rest of the cards you have in this deck have to match your hero's colour.

Setup:

Each player shuffles their deck and places their hero beside it. Each player will receive a run away token and a level counter (set to level 1). Place the dice and tokens in a communal pile off to the side. Each player will draw six cards from their respective decks (if you don't like this hand you can re-deal your hand, but only once). Player one will receive one gold and player two will receive two gold.

How to Play:

There are three phases on your turn warmup, munchkining, and cooldown.

Warmup:

In this phase you are going to unzap all your cards (return them to their upright position) then make sure your run away token is on the run away side not the limp away side.

Any abilities on your cards that say during “the reckoning step” will now happen.

Lastly return all the cards in your stash pile to your hand (removing any tokens on them) and draw one card from your deck. 

Munchkining:

This phase will take up the bulk of your turn and it is also the most flexible. You can do any of these actions any amount of times you want:

- Play Loot: Play any amount of loot, as long as the value of your combined loot does not exceed your own level.

- Play Location: You can play any location from your hand, however each player can only have one location in play at a time.

- Squish Loot or Location: It can be annoying to have these limitations on how much loot and location a player can have on the field. This is where squish comes in, squish lets you destroy any location or loot you control that is unzapped.

- Play Ally: By paying the required gold you can play any ally onto your field.

- Start a Fight: We will go into further details for this at the end of the how to play section.

Cooldown:

During this phase no cards or abilities are allowed to be used other than those where the ability triggers during cooldown. Then level up your counter by one level (if you are at level 10 then you do not get to level up anymore) and refresh your coins to equal your new level. Additional coins cannot be added if you already have equal or more than our level.

Fight:

Time to explain the most important part, fighting. This was saved for last because, unlike other CCG's where you build up your army and send them out at once, Munchkin CCG does not work like that. Instead, you can attack as many times as you want on your turn as long as you have the gold required. This implements a bluffing mechanic for players to explore.

The first thing that happens when fighting is that the active player declares an attacker and places the card face down (this could be anything, not necessarily a monster card). Then they have to place an amount of gold from your reserve (purse) of 0 or more to represent the cost to hire that monster (you can bluff by paying or less than more than required amount). The defending player now has two options, run/ limp away or face the monster.

Run/ Limp Away:

In doing this, the attacker’s committed gold returns to their purse and the attacking card is moved to a stash pile face down. This is the end of the attack. Now there are two caveats; if the defenders token was already on the ‘run away’ side, they take no damage but must flip their token to the limp away side. However, if it the token started the battle on the ‘limp away’ side, the defender must take two damage (remember the opposing player can attack again so their onslaught may not be finished). 

Facing the Monster:

When facing the monster, a number of steps occur:

1. The defender may designate any unzapped weapons or allies to the attacking card (these cards zap to do this)
2. The defender states that they are ready to reveal the attacking card
3. Reveal the attacking card (check for cheating)
1. There are two methods that the attacking player could use to cheat. Firstly, by using a card other than a monster to attack, and secondly, if the attacking player was cheap and did not pay the correct gold cost to hire the monster (the gold amount spent can be manipulated by either player abilities or mischief cards).
2. If you were caught cheating the attacking player takes one damage, moves the committed gold back to the purse, and moves the cheating card to players stash. There is one bonus though, any cards the defender zapped to retaliate then remain zapped.
4. So let's say your not a cheater and the monster is now hired for attack. Any abilities of said monster will now activate and the gold committed will now be spent and return to a shared stockpile
5. Now the combat begins. Firstly,  committed weapons defend. Place a tokens on the monster equal to the damage of the weapons (If these tokens equals the monsters health then the monster is squished and placed in that players discard pile). The weapons will also soak up damage from the monster equal to the weapons defence.
1. If the monster survived the onslaught of weapons it will retaliate against the allies. Allies and monsters attack and defend against each other at the same time. However, there are two exemptions the defending player will add damage tokens onto the allies depending on how much damage the monster delivers. (If these tokens equals the allies health then the ally is squished and placed in that players discard pile). Secondly, the defending player gets to determine how the damage from the monster is divided between the allies.
2. If there are no allies committed then any leftover damage is delivered to the defending players hero.
6. Any end of battle abilities will now activate, and any during battle abilities will end.
7. All surviving committed allies and weapons will return to the defending player (keeping the same orientation of zapped or unzapped). If the monster survived, it will move to the attacking players stash face up and keep any damage counters that were previously placed.
8. The attacker can attack again.

Final Thoughts:

Pros:

- Fans of bluffing will excel at this game

- Whimsical art and cards

- Deck construction is streamlined

Cons:

- Some of the rules can be fiddly for new players

- Blocking with loot and allies can be clunky

If you are a fan of CCG's and bluffing games then this game is a no brainer. Munchkin CCG combines both of these mechanics in a fun and eccentric way, with the added bonus of the fantastic art characteristic to Steve Jackson Games’ Munchkin. It will be exciting to see how far up the ladder this game can go. We all know the excitement of opening booster packs, now imagine that with hilarious munchkin cards! With the fresh perspective on bluffing, Munchkin CCG will have you running to the shops in no time.

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