Munchkin

Expanding on the Friday theme of video games, I'm adding board and card games to the collection of posts. And how can I talk about card games without mentioning the geekiest of games: Munchkin. Kill the monsters, steal the treasure, stab your buddy. That's honestly the main quote of the game. And it is incredibly accurate.

The core goal of the game is to take your character from level 1 to level 10. The first person to do so, wins. The first few levels of the game are fairly friendly, asking other players to help you have a higher total than the monsters that you have to fight. Once players start getting closer and closer to level 10, the friendly helping turns into calculated backstabbing. You tweak monsters to be just high enough to prevent your friends from winning, while trying to keep enough of the cards that modify fights to help yourself.

The cards are all jabs at various gaming and geek culture cliches, like how bribing the GM lets you go up a level, a person with the Thief class can't use the Dancing and Singing Sword (it's too loud), or Amazon enemy won't chase a female player if they flee (And has a massive bonus to fighting male players).

I apologize for the quality of this photo

Another wonderful feature of Munchkin is that there are TONS of expansions and alternate cards. You can add the expansions onto any of the alternative decks, or just play the alternatives as a standalone. Some include Munchkin Fuu (A martial art theme),  Munchkin Zombies, Munchkin Cthulhu, and many more.

If you've got a couple of super geeky friends, and want to have a fun night yelling, betraying, and laughing, try a game of Munchkin. It's a lot of fun.

Toodles!