Munchkin Deluxe

This is a great game, and can be played with just 2, or a bunch of people. It can get very competitive! Beware the sneaky backstab for the win. :)

I just finished playing this game for the first time with my mom and my nephew, and I can't wait to get some friends together to play it again! Munchkin is a rather simple game to learn. While the rules seem a bit long, that's part of the joke. My 10-year-old nephew hadn't read the rules, but after a few turns he was figuring things out for himself and even reminding me of things. (My mom... not so much. But she'll be the first to tell you that she has no imagination, and fantasy isn't really her favorite genre anyway.) However, there's actually quite a bit of strategy to it. Between the humor and the gameplay, I can already tell it has LOTS of replay value. The first thing my nephew asked when we finished the game was "That was awesome! When can we play this again?" I do feel the need to point out a few things. First of all, while this Deluxe version does come with a board, Munchkin is a card game, not a board game. The board is just a (very) convenient way to keep track of each player's progress and to help keep the stacks of cards a bit orderly. (One of my mom's complaints was that we didn't seem to be moving the pieces around the board fast enough. My nephew's response was "Well, it's really a card game.") It's entirely possible to play the game with a few counters (such as 10-sided dice) or a few sheets of scratch paper, and the only real difference between the regular and Deluxe versions of the game is the addition of a board and tokens. Also, if you're going to be playing the game regularly, you'll probably want to buy one (or more) of the several available expansions. With three players, we went through half of the cards in a single game. Since part of the fun of the game is wondering what cards are going to show up next, more is definitely better. Fortunately, there are currently about 7 major expansions (of about 100 cards each) and about a dozen minor expansions (of about 15 cards each), in addition to the different variants. So it will be easy to spice things up a bit if the game starts feeling a bit repetitive. Finally, Munchkin is a parody of fantasy roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons. If you've played those kinds of games before or you just like the fantasy genre, you'll probably have a lot of fun playing this game. If not, you might want to look into one of the several other versions of the game, such as Star Munchkin (sci-fi), Munchkin Fu (martial arts movies), Super Munchkin (superheros), Munchkin Bites! (vampires, werewolves, and etc.), Munchkin Zombie (self-explanatory), Munchkin Booty (pirates), The Good The Bad And The Munchkin (westerns), etc. There's a Munchkin for just about everyone. And it's fairly easy to combine different versions of the game if you want. I play a lot of card games and board games with my friends. In the past year (and that I can remember), we've played Apples To Apples, The Game of Things, Trivial Pursuit, Clue, Say Anything, and good old-fashioned poker. But I think Munchkin is going to be a new favorite, and frequent part of game night.

Played it once in a bobba shop and thought about it often. Finally bought it and got fully immersed in the game! Highly recommend, very fun and simple once you understand all the components. The board is nice, but not necessary. Can't wait to purchase expansion packs!

Best card game.

As a long time Gamer I found this game to be quite enjoyable. The term ‘Munchkin’ harkens back to the days of old when meeting younger new players at gaming club meetings. They always over-read the rules and found any loophole to take advantage of. Hence, they were dubbed “Munchkins”. That spirit of crazy do-anything-no-matter-how-illogical-to-win spirit is captured herein. I originally bought this game to play with my daughter. She won't play serious dungeon/adventure board or card games, but after reading a few cards of this game she eagerly agreed to a simple two player learning game, and now we are hooked! This game is written with good humor, which we both enjoyed. As an old school player myself, I found the humor of the Steve Jackson Games Team welcoming like an old friend. My daughter just thinks the cards are fun; Boots of Butt-Kicking, the Duck of Doom, etc. These are great fun! They are loaded with imaginative humorous puns! Some might find a card or two inappropriate for younger players. I feel you either have to be easily offended or think children should be raised in a bell jar until they are twenty one to find this game objectionable. If you are the kind of person who is offended by the terms “Sneaky Bastard Sword” (a play on words), “Horny Helmet” (A helmet with huge Horns), or “Kneepads of Allure” (Not explained), then don’t complain, simply DON’T BUY THIS GAME FOR YOUR KIDS! Yes older, adult players may get the subtext of the artwork on the “Leather Armor” card, but a ten year old probably won’t see it. Take a chill pill and let your kids mature a little. Now, the game play is simple, very simple. This is no huge strategy game. Gameplay is literally as easy as; Kick the Door in, Kill the Monster, Grab the Treasure, and Go up a level. Get to level 10 first, and you win. There is some strategy added with helping and hurting the other player. There are times when it is advantageous to both hurt and help an opponent in the same turn. (See my definition of Munchkin above). The final stages of the game almost always end very cutthroat, and pulling out all the dirty tricks you can to stop your opponent. If your kids or you can’t handle this; don’t buy! Playing time 30-60 minutes, 3 Players recommended, but 2 player games are possible just less fun. It will take several playing sessions before you experience all the cards, and should you find they get boring or predictable, there are eight expansions with new cards, new concepts and new variations on the game. I’ve already bought a few.

I am new to Steve Jackson's Munchkin universe and this is the only game in the set that I own (though the first expansion and apocalypse munchkin are in the mail). I would say that this is overall a great game. The game is very interactive with friends, and it's nice to help them one turn then backstab them the next. The titles of the cards are hilarious and John Kavolic did a great job on the artwork. While I do give the game five stars there are some downsides to it that may turn potential players off: 1) Though the game says three to six players I think the ideal size is 4. Once you start getting into the five and six the game becomes a lot of sitting around waiting for your turn and everyone complaining because there aren't enough classes, curses, enhancers, etc. to do anything significant when it's not your turn. I think this problem will be fixed with the expansions but for this one try to keep it at 4 (five if you have a group that loves to screw each other over every turn). 2) This may only be for my group of friends but I've noticed that everyone likes to hold on to their monster enhancers and other mischief until someone gets to lvl 9 (you win the game at lvl 10). This makes the game a little bit slow in the beginning and very long at the final level. It also makes it pointless to try and screw each other over early on because everyone is willing to help out for treasure even if the person in combat is in the lead. Also, saving all your cards till the end makes it almost impossible to reach that final lvl no matter your combat bonuses. I would highly encourage treachery throughout the game to ensure lvl 9 isn't where everyone is three quarters of the game. 3) This game is mostly straightforward but you will find different interpretations of what the cards allow you to do during the game. While most of these questions can be answered on forums or by the munchkin czar that is tedious and impractical in the middle of gameplay. I would suggest just reading the forums during some downtime after a couple of games when you know what to look out for, but you'll probably have to establish some house rules. I know I mostly talk about some of the flaws but this game is a lot of fun. I am an avid gamer of every kind and especially love board and card games. Munchkin is my favorite of them all despite its few flaws. I would also recommend the deluxe version over the standard because the deluxe includes a game board, avatar cards with both genders (important when you're declaring your sex or cursed to change your sex), and miniatures. It adds convenience to the game and minimizes "you're a ****ing liar" disputes.

I grabbed this deluxe version because it was on sale for less than the normal munchkin game. I got a little lucky in the price, but it is definitely worth the normal price for the game. I picked it up after having watched it on table top w/ my daughters. They got a kick out of the game and were very excited to get a copy of it for ourselves. The girls and I love playing (our house rules) but it took us a while to get there. We played through 3 games, well actually didn't even play through them...we couldn't finish the games we started because it was so boring. We even watched back the table top episode to see where we made mistakes each time, how was it that their game was so insanely fun and our games were so boring? Obviously we're boring people...so enter a little ingenuity and fun factor and we've got a great game that makes for fun, fast play, that can keep even my youngest (6) child happy and entertained. So why the 4 star review? Well there are a couple reasons, first off I felt like the game on it's own was a chore to play, even with my buddies, we get to the point where it takes too long for a game to play that we end up having to introduce modified rules. Therein lies another issue, those rules, wow...it took me a four or five read-throughs just to get a grasp on them...and that's after watching the rules on table top 3 or 4 times! The next reason I mark it down is just because of sheer petty disgust at how much this milking has been done on this game...there have to be 40 different expansions, in my opinion it made me lose interest in the game because I couldn't figure out if I should stick with this game or get some expansions, it was just too overwhelming. Overall though, the game is entertaining and worth the investment for a family game night or game groups. Just as a heads up...there are some inappropriate cards that some of the more mindful parents might not want their children reading...but they're not horribly inappropriate...and you can always pull those cards & still enjoy the rest of the game. As an aside...our 'house' rules essentially modify the gameplay in a few minor ways. We separate the races and classes, randomly deal one of each to each player, so everyone has at least one race & one class they CAN use (we then shuffle them back into the deck and deal out our cards), each hand we draw a treasure card at the start of your turn, and finally we allow trading. We genuinely try to help each other as much as possible, and I won't mess with my kids until they're 5 levels ahead of me, or at level 8 or above. But the trading is fun because it allows us to see other cards and learn what they can do and typically makes for more dialogue between us, so we can talk about what we want, why we want it, how it'd be awesome if we had something else to make an even better character. These modifications make the gameplay a lot more fun and fast paced. For my game group we use a little of the house rules the kids and I came up with...we allow for trading, we draw a treasure card each round, but to combat sell happy players, we limit the amount of levels a player can purchase (the trade in of over 1000 dollars of items for a level) to 2 per game, or if games are going too fast, 1 per game. We do not utilize the starting race/class modification. Overall, with these house rules added on, it again makes for a faster game and keeps people entertained and intertwined.

This is a great family friendly game of absurdity and fun. Lots of puns and innuendos and whacky art. It's one of those games where it's easy to go quickly over the basics of the turns, then learn as you play your first game. Almost everyone I've played with has gotten it pretty well after playing just once. There are some ambiguities when it comes to very specific quibbles over rules, and the rule sheet does try to address this slightly, but in the end it's a game where you play to have fun. I know that sounds standard but I think it's an important distinction. You can play this with a group of friends in a cutthroat, "You're going down!" manner, but it's by and far more for fun. While tactical, it's easy to just get screwed over with bad luck. While I can see this game being played in an hour, whenever friends and I play it seems more like a two hour game. Probably because of all the backstabbing and tactic discussion we have. Right now this is only $4 more than the "base" game. I highly recommend spending the extra four bucks and getting this Deluxe version. It comes with a game board and plastic colored figurines to track your levels (first one to level ten wins) and since you can have several level changes over the course of one turn I can't imagine playing without a visible tracker as it's important to know how close anyone one is at any time to winning. The bigger box, though not as important, is also nice because this is a game that just gets better and better the more cards (read: expansions) you have, and this gives you a way to keep all of them together. While Munchkins is certainly playable without any added expansions, almost everyone I know who's played or owns the game, it becomes a regular, and even just one expansion is a great way to increase the lifetime of enjoyment you get from the game.