Kick down the door. Kill the monster. Steal the Treasure. Stab your buddy in the back. Now in a board game with miniatures!!!
Then there is a box for the miniatures, and a tray for the cards and dice. It seemed strange to me that the tray had a lid that covered it, but the cards sit ON TOP of the lid, inside of inside of it (to, I don't know, hold them in?) These form fit trays are nice for the base game if that is all you want, but I almost always end up recycling them to get room to store the expansions in the original box - because I don't want to have to cart around 7 boxes of stuff in order to play the game!
There are three types of cards in the game - threat, door and treasure cards.
CMON does a nice job of packaging their games, with all the miniatures in vacu-formed plastic trays, that come in in a nice cardboard box. A great way to protect these during shipping (and immediately get tossed in the recycling bin :-) ). These are board game miniatures, and honestly are near the very bottom of my priority stack for painting (right above the hundreds of Reaper Bones that I can't seem to resist). Blue/gray are the heroes, brown are the monsters and red are the bosses (and here size does matter - the bigger the mini, the harder they are to fight and defeat.
This has more characters minis, with hero cards for each. It also includes the rules for PVP (which fit in a single card), allowing players to attack each other, when you really need to stab your buddy in his face instead of in the back! It also includes upgraded fame markers (the fame track is on the side of the board), and a "Mean" token - for the player who is currently the meanest. There are also some munchkin bookmarks (I love munchkin bookmarks!) Of course there are more cards and minis as well.
These cards are marked differently, so you can remove them if you want. To identify the set, look for the icon on either side of the card type (or next to the gold value for monster/room cards)
And then miniatures for them, and six more monsters
Of course there are instructions
This set has it's own counters - a cuteness track and markers to indicate your progress along it. You cuteness level can have an affect on loot and threat cards from the expansion, and at the end of the game your cuteness points convert to fame points (to help win the game).
Cthulhu adds it's own mechanic - madness, as represented by madness tokens. The various monsters, threats and treasure all will make use of madness - some getting better and others getting worse depending on just how mad you end up.
There is one 'unique' feature to this expansion - it is an "all or nothing" expansion - it explicitly says that to use it, you need to make sure ALL the monsters and rooms from the expansion are used. You then fill in the rest of the board from your 'normal' game.
The Crawling Hand was also a free exclusive if you purchased Board Silly.
Look for some close up pictures of all the miniatures (which, to be honest, is often what gets me to buy these games in the first place).
Last year, CMON did a kickstarter for Munchkin Dungeon, licensed from Steve Jackson Games, which did will over a half million dollars, and I just got mine. I went all in - with all the expansions etc, so I figured I'd do a bit of an unboxing. I will apologize - I got excited (or lazy) about opening everything and taking pictures are my hobby desk, so I didn't go downstairs to the light box.
Starting off with the base game:
First thing in the box is the obligatory add for Munchkin - which is the biggest I have yet seen - but then there is a LOT of munchkin out there.
Tossing that, there is the rule book. Straightforward and only 8 pages - much like the card game the complexity comes from the special rules on the cards, not the base game itself. It is nice that there is a quick reference on the back.
There are two sheets of double sided counters - these are the same front and back. Punch these out and recycle the scrap.
This is a board game, so then you have the obligatory board. The base game is a four fold board
Beneath that are the hero boards - these are where you keep track of your character and level them up, showing how many dice they have to attack, how much health they have, and special rules each different class has. There is also a Super-munchkin board - if you get that treasure you can switch out to an even more powerful character!
The game comes with 6 dice, and rings to put on the bottom of your figure to identify it. These are custom dice (you can see each side) - but being D6's you could always map them to boring 'normal' dice if you needed to.
Threat cards are used to make life for your opponents a little more 'interesting'. Each of them has a threat cost - when you enter a room it generates threat tokens that the other players spend to add threats. The deeper you go in a turn, the more threats you have to face.
Door cards are either empty rooms, or monsters. Each has a level. When you set up the game, you shuffle the rooms and monsters by level, then place them in the room spaces on the board, with monsters in the appropriately marked rooms. You also choose a boss to sit at the bottom of the dungeon (the base game comes with two - The Bullrog and the Plutonium Dragon). However monsters don't just stay in their rooms, they tend to wander around looking for adventurers for a nice little snack.
Finally are the treasure cards - because what is a dungeon crawl without lots of loot!
I'll try to get individual pictures of these for next time. They are cartoony, but this is a game based on a cartoon parody, so it makes sense.
Of course, no kickstarter (well, none of the really fun ones) is without special, exclusive stretch goals. They did a nice job of packing almost all of these up in the "Box of Holding".
Two new bosses, ten new monsters, and 10 more hero miniatures. Basically giving a male and female version of each class.
The one drawback is there is no indication on the cards to identify which are part of this set vs. the base game - it seems that these are intended as just part of the base game, and not meant to be separated out again.
After a bit, I decided to use the box of holding for ALL the miniatures (minus the vacuformed trays and cardboard boxes), and the main game box for everything else. You can't fit everything in one box, but this is close enough.
Then there are the expansions. The first is "Side Quests" - this is a major expansion and the box is almost the size of the other two. If you only get one, this is the one to get as it adds two more character classes and another mechanic (side quests - if you couldn't figure that our from the name).
There are instructions for the set
Then two sheets of counters. These are the side quests, and tokens to mark when a player has completed it (if you use these, then you randomly pick three and set them next to the board. When a player completes the requirements, they mark the quest and get the reward (which is always to go up a level). There are three of each colored marker - as each quest is doable once by each player. (I like that as a nice balancing mechanic - it isn't like one player can grab the 'easy' quest and make the others have to do a harder one - everyone has access to the same three quests during the game).
This adds the thief and ranger classes, so you get the player cards for them
After the big expansion, there are three smaller ones. These are small themed sets to add more fun to the game. In no particular order (i.e. the order I grabbed each box)
Cute as a Buton
This expansion is chibi versions of monsters, and adds a new 'cuteness' mechanic - you can earn extra fame for being cute. The monsters can be just as deadly however.
The expansion also adds pets, which are a new type of loot
Of course new mini's for the new monsters in the set. I think it is funny that this set as a "Chibi-thulu" as a low level monster, while the next set has the big guy himself as the boss!
I know Smashup already used the "Obligatory Cthulhu Expansion", so the next one is just "Cthulhu"
The third of these expansions is when you are just when the jokes aren't doing it for you any more, and you are simply "Board Silly". (If you don't like puns and 'Dad' jokes, you have no business getting ANY Munchkin game).
The new mechanic from this set is "Collection!" Each player gets a collector's shelf - and you earn fame points by putting loot on the shelf. This loot can then no longer be used OR stolen - but it can earn extra fame at the end of the game. You get bonus points for having certain types of loot in specific slots - however if you fail to fill up a shelf then you are penalized for the missing slots (this is ONLY if you tried to fill row and did not complete it - an empty row has no penalty (and no bonus)).
The boss for this expansion is a giant Meeple!
Last are the kickstarter exclusives. I'm not sure if these will be available anywhere else - but they do NOT have commercial packaging - so most likely they won't be available to purchase anywhere.
The first is an epic board - allowing you to play to 28 points instead of 20, with 2 bosses and a lot more monsters! The normal board is 4-fold - this is 6-fold.
Next is the Legendary Pack. While not required to be used with the epic board, it kind of goes hand in hand with it.
The rules are on a card, then are four treasure cards for each class (only one set per class - so each player has to play a different class). These legendary treasures are earned as the player advances in levels, getting one for levels 3, 7, 5 and 9. In addition, for each legendary item you unlock, you add a legendary die to your attacks (for up to 4).
However the set only comes with 2 dice, so you will have to reroll some at higher levels. It seems like you actually need two of these sets (so both male and female versions of each class can be played), plus there is only one set of card for a super-munchkin - but I believe there are three of these that can be gained in the game.
If you purchased the Cthulhu expansion from the kickstarter, you got a kickstarter exclusive Undead Horse (mini and card). It is interesting that while this comes with that expansion, it is NOT part of the expansion, and is in fact marked as part of the base set).
Cute as a button included more bookmarks. The interesting thing with those is they DID seem to have a 'cover' bookmark with a barcode - so they may be available later at retail.
In the previous picture are also the Colored Dice Pack - 2 dice of each player color. (I did not buy the Villain frost dice - I am able to (occasionally) resist something). 2 dice in each of the 5 player colors. So people don't have to pass around dice all the time. Except . . .
Ok, I'll be honest, I'm not one to read all the pre-release rules and try print-n-play games. So I assumed that this set was what was needed. Except you start with 3 dice, and go up to 6 (I think a super-munchkin can get 7!) - and you only have 2. Part of me wants to find two more sets of these (which also seemed to be commercially packaged, so I may be able to). The more practical part says to just share the other dice (of course that side is often told to sit down, shut up and stay out of things :-) ).
The rules look straightforward, and I look forward to giving this a try with my friends. It does not appear to have the main issue I have with the munchkin card game (in that the end game can drag on forever), as the game ends when EITHER one person gets 20 (28 if you are using the epic board) points on the fame tracker (this is NOT your total, as you have shame tokens (which lose fame) and additional fame from loot), or the boss is defeated the third time. Both of which are not conditions that can go backward. Yes, it may be harder to stop someone from winning the game like in the original, but on the other hand it is A LOT HARDER TO STOP SOMEONE FROM WINNING THE GAME and ending it. I've had a lot of fun with munchkin UNTIL until people start reaching level 9 - and then it becomes a game of who can get and save the right cards to stop their opponents but not be stopped by them ( and so much also depends on which final monster you draw to attempt to win.
Because it is all fun and games . . .
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