Oh Munchkin, how we love thee. In November 2008, Steve Jackson Games decided to capitalize on their highly successful Munchkin card game line by releasing, to the glee of the world, Munchkin Quest, a board game/miniatures game/alternate card game adaptation of the original game.

Now, while this may seem a bit weird, just keep reading, cause it gets awesome.

It’s kind of hard to explain Munchkin Quest sometimes. By default, it falls into one main catagory: Board Game. When you take a deeper look however, its also still a card game which plays very similar to Munchkin, however, both sides of the coin tie together fairly well.

MQ tiles ( links not pictured )

The ‘board’ of the game is actually a modular board, made up of a series of tiles, and links. The dual sided tiles, as pictured above, make up the actual movable areas, with each one representing a room which is randomly placed at the beginning of one’s turn. Links are attached to the spots between tiles to connect them, and can limit movement for both players and monsters.

Wait, monsters can move? Yes, but don’t get ahead of me here.

The 3 MQ Decks

Munchkin Quest has 3 decks, similar to Munchkin. First, the Treasure deck we are all familiar with. Next, the old Doors deck has been split up into a Monsters deck, for drawing only the monsters which spawn in the dungeon, and the Deus Ex Munchkin deck, which essentially takes place of the doors.

Besides these, the game contains all the basic items you would assume a complicated board game comes with: Life counter2, player pieces, dice, health tokens, gold, movement markers, and a few more. At first glance it seems like a lot of overkill, visually, it IS a lot of pieces to deal with, but for the most part, it works.

From here, let’s take a look at gameplay.

4 player MQ game setup

The game plays as you kind of expect it would. You get your two Treasure and two Deus Ex Munchkin cards, and all characters start off on the entrance of the Dungeon ( the only tile in play at the start ). Player 1 plays a new, randomly chosen room and connects its links, then moves into that room. Once in a new room, a monster automatically appears and it is time to battle.

Battles go on mostly like they do in Munchkin. There are a few minor differences I won’t get into, but feel free to check the rulebook for the minor stuff. The battle ends one of two ways, monster dies, or monster lives. If it dies, great, if not, you take appropriate damage to your heart tokens and the monster stays on the board.

Now comes your movement tokens. Depending on the type of link, it can take 1, 2, or all 3 of your movement tokens to move to a new room. If you have any movement left over, you can choose to loot the room for treasure ( random dice roll chart ) or move to a new room and fight another monster/move to a previous explored room to try and loot it. Once your movement is all used up, your turn is over and its on to the next player.

After all players move, it’s time for the ingenious part of the game: The monsters turn. You get to roll a color coded d6, and then by similarly color coded arrows on the 4 sides of each room tile, the surviving monsters get to move around the dungeon based on the color patterns/movement rules for specific monsters. A nice way to mess up the game for the other Munchkins if their turn just happens to begin with them being forced to fight a monster who just busted into their room.

The endgame is also different from Munchkin. It’s still a race to level 10, however once you are level 10, the game doesn’t stop. You now have to race to the entrance of the dungeon ( along with any other level 10′s ) and once arriving, face a randomly drawn level 20 monster ( level 20 Gazebo FTW ). If you manage to beat it, you win the game ( if other level 10′s are helping you, they can win with you as well ), if you lose, the battle ends and a new monster is drawn next turn.

In the end, Munchkin Quest gets 4/5 from me. I love  Munchkin and it’s my primary “go to” card game, and Munchkin Quest is a fun adaptation of it. It did take us a few playtests to be able to get all the rules down as they can be fairly confusing at first, and we did find that the game does work a bit better if you throw in some of your own house rules instead of going by the rulebook 100%, but either way if you like Munchkin, Munchkin Quest will be a great compliment to game night.

Now on to another project..something involving..dice…and..maybe zombies..hmm..

A little music video from Nadia G and the Bitchin’ Kitchen gang:

And next up, the first 2 episodes of season 4 of The Guild!

Stay tuned for an, eventual, update.

Next, a look at The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword:

Killzone 3:

And finally, a little preview of the new Goldeneye 007:

More will come later when we have more news, like on the new 3DS which we’re all dying for.

Secondly, Portal 2!:

More to come in the next day or two!

June 29
LEGO: Harry Potter Years 1-4
Naughty Bear

July 6
Crackdown 2

August 24
Mafia II

August 31
Dead Rising 2
Metroid: Other M

September 14
Halo: Reach

September 21
Civilization V

October 19
Fallout: New Vegas

October 26
Fable III
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2

November 4
Kinect

November 16
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

Secondly, Fallout: New Vegas!:

Secondly, I never heard of the original Splatterhouse from 1988 from Namco, however taking a look at the trailer for the new 2010 remake, I must say I need to own this game now:

First up, Dead Space 2 gameplay trailer, looks better then ever:

Secondly, and epically, the new trailer for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2:

As always, stay tuned for more!

First to hit the wires this week, a mysterious Mortal Kombat video adaptation:

At first report, it looked like a prequel video for a new MK movie ( if not a new game ) with the likes of Michael Jai White and Jeri Ryan starring, however after Jeri tweeted differently, it seem’s it is just a pitch by a director to WB for his idea of a MK movie. Let’s hope it see’s the light of day!

Secondly, courtasy of Gamespot, here’s the new trailer for the actual new Mortal Kombat game:

Now on to Transformers: War for Cybertron. I’ve always been a fan of Gamestop’s random commercials regarding their preorder bonuses, and even though I do disagree on the idea of most preorder bonuses, this commercial just warms my heart enough to forget about it for a little while:

That’s all I have for now, stay tuned for more info as the week goes on.