The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Essner wanted to play Munchkin. So much that he bought Munchkin Cthulhu, and we went at it.

Munchkin is one of those touchstone games that I feel like anyone who gives a shit about board and card games should know about. Yet, I had never played it, and really didn’t feel the need to seek it out. Still, I was looking forward to trying it, just to have the knowledge of how the game works and what its systems are seeing that, as I said, it is just one of those games that everyone knows and refers to.

My initial feelings? A fun game, but certainly one that deserves the criticisms it deserves. Will that stop me from enjoying it in the future? Hell no. But I see where everyone is coming from.

Basically, there are two decks, Treasure and “Door.” Every turn, you flip a door card. If it’s a monster, you fight it. Fighting is a pure numbers game with no real dice rolls. If your “level” is higher than the monster’s, then you win. Equipment and such from the treasure deck gives you additional levels so you can fight more powerful foes. Kill a monster, and you gain a level, and get to draw as much treasure as the card says from the treasure deck. Get to level 10, and you win.
Of course, this is a backstabbing game, so it’s not that easy. From the Door deck, you can also get various curses or monster buffs, which you can throw into the mix to fuck up other players, causing them to use their one-shot cards or to bribe other players with treasure or favors in order to bring them into the combat, where they can party and use their combined levels to beat a monster.
Other mechanics include classes, which are basically buffs you put in play that change your playstyle a little with different benefits, and being able to sell off items to buy levels (but not the winning level.) But that’s basically it for mechanics.

Yeah, so it’s a very, very random game, and not a very deep one. Honestly, there are rarely any really significant decisions that you are making throughout gameplay. It’s all just luck of the draw kinds of things, and “do I fuck him over now, or later?” From a pure gameplay standpoint, it’s not going to dazzle you with Options, Options, Options.
And honestly, that’s okay, because this is a social game. It’s all about trash talk, screwing people over, being screwed over, and plotting revenge. It’s the social interactions that make the game fun. The jokes on the cards help the first time or two around as well, but really, it’s all about the personalities of the people you’re playing with. It’s about being pointlessly vindictive just because it’s fun, or wasting all your cards on something minor because the humor of the situation demanded it. That’s fun as shit.

Honestly, the weirdest thing about playing the game was that it was a game that I didn’t know the rules of, but Droid and Essner did. That never happens. I’m always the person who knows the rules. I mean, it’s not a problem that they had more information than me. It wasn’t a big deal. A fun time was had. It was just interesting having Droid explain game mechanics to me, I guess. It’s a rare occurrence.

Yeah, I had a lot of fun playing Munchkin Cthulhu. I’d play it again. Apparently everyone kind of wished that Essner had gotten the original, because they liked the races as well as the classes. You can mix all the decks together, though, so maybe that’ll be picked up at some point. Either way, I’m down for another round or two. It’s good times.