Munchkin. If you haven't played this game, you need to. The actual game description is “Go down in the dungeon. Kill everything you meet. Backstab your friends and steal their stuff. Grab the treasure and run”. It's a fairly simple and straightforward card game. And it has the most hilarious cards ever. Did I mention it is my FAVORITE game? Whenever I have a chance, I am twisting the arms of everyone around to play with me. Or even making up rules to turn it into a two-player game with my husband, despite it not really being made for that.
This Game Has It All
Munchkin is the hit card game that I am sure you have seen about 5 bazillion expansions for in every game store. Seriously… they have a lot of expansions. They also have spinoff games such as Munchkin: Disney, Munchkin: Critical Role, Super Munchkin, and so many more that I can't even begin to count them all. Munchkin even has its own comic book series, clothing line, and plushies. Why all the extras? Because… this game is awesome and deserves all the love.
So… What is it?
Essentially, Munchkin is a game where you and your friends race through a dungeon of rooms to see who can be the first to reach the tenth room. Each turn you open a door (turn over a card) and either fight an absurd monster or get to add a ludicrous card to your hand. You collect treasures and equip items such as the Kneecaps of Allure. Assist your friends and then backstab them when you all get to the ninth room. Lots of laughing is mandatory.
While the game itself is a simple design, it is the humor that rocketed it to the top of my list. Ever since the first time I played this game almost 20 years ago, I have loved it for the goofy, bizarre humor.
Card game? Or Board game?
You may be wondering why I keep calling it a CARD game when the images I am posting clearly show a BOARD. The board you see is actually part of the deluxe game. Original Munchkin is just the cards. You can download an app to help you keep track of the levels, or you can purchase a Level Playing Field board to go with the game if you just have the card version. Or, you can do what I did, and just get the deluxe edition for this board. But it's not necessary to play.
Not Really A Two-Player Game… but…
The game is listed as a 3-6 player game. However, as I have said before, I don't often have more than myself and my husband to play with. This created an obvious problem. So, we decided to try it two-player anyway. We each took two characters and created a couple ground rules.
- We had to keep our two characters completely separate. Therefore if I was playing as purple and green, I couldn't just keep swapping cards around between them for what worked best.
- If we needed to ask for help defeating a monster we had to get help from the other actual person's characters before our own could help.
- When one of our characters were at the final door, we had to play as though our second character was actually trying to stop them. For instance, when Purple got to the final door, if Green had a card that would stop Purple from winning the game, Green had to play it… even though I controlled both Purple and Green.
These rules worked out just fine for us, as neither my husband or I are competitive at all. We really just enjoy the silliness of the game. In fact, these limitations made the game more absurd in a way, which created even more for us to laugh about.
Final Thoughts
Munchkin is still my favorite game. I wish I were rich enough to buy all the extras for it. I also wish I had a bigger group here to play it with. The two-player variant worked out just fine for my husband and me. However, I can see how it could easily cause issues for people who may be more competitive in their gaming style. We will absolutely play it again using these rules though. And I will still twist arms to get people to play it with me wherever possible. Maybe one day we will all have a Geek to Geek Convention. You can bet your britches I will be bringing Munchkin to that event.
