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Old 11-12-2008, 04:43 PM   #1
kilnar
 
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Default Munckin Quest Review

As soon as I arrived home, I unpacked the awaiting Munchkin Quest, grabbed a keg of beer and headed to a friend's house. Here are the results.

First game: 2 players, both experienced Munchkin players. 3 beers each by the end of the game.

The game went smoothly and quickly even though we were learning the rules. We had to take quite a bit of time to look up the keywords on each monster to make sure we were not missing rules, and we still missed quite a bit. That's ok. We tend to do that with new games. We'll miss a rule, look it up later, and then start using the rule from that point forward without looking back. The glossary was wonderful and a great help. The fact the page numbers were listed on the items with more expansive rules was a great help. It was a glossary and index all rolled into one. A "glossex" if you please.


Second game: 3 players, the same two from the first game with the addition of a spousal unit. The spouse has zero Munchkin experience. 3 more beers each by the end of the game.

This game went even smoother, and ran quite quickly. However, with the addition of the third player, I found the wait times before my turns to be rather lengthy. I feel this is because of the three moves each. Either something needs to cost more move, or we're missing out on a rule somewhere that I cannot find. More on this later. Great hilarity was had, but we went a little easy on the newcomer, and we didn't "Munchkin all over" her as much as we could have.

Third game: This was the next night with SIX (yes, SIX, read on) players, all of us heavily experienced in the ways of Munchkin-kind.

Even though the game is for two to four players, we snagged some pewter miniatures, and devised the used of cardboard chits for extra health/move, and dove into the game. This is probably not a fair test since we were outside the prosribed rules, but this told us what to expect with the expansion set. The game ran slowly. Too slowly. It was forever between turns. The map was also explored rather quickly because of 6 players taking three moves. The poor people that went near the end of each cycle of the table had to spend all of their move just to reach the edge of the explored area. It was quite frustrating for them. The game took a great deal of time from start to finish. Granted, five of us were learning the rules from one of us (me), so that ate some time. The total run time for the game was five hours. Ouch. That's too long for a single game. It needs to speed up a bit. We could probably shave that down to three hours with some practice, though.

Here are some random comments I soliticed via email from my fellow gamers.

"The turns can take a long time and the other players can get bored if they don't have anything to do. With the random who is the monster if you hit a bad dry spell not only do you not have anything to do you fall behind in cards as well. Maybe limit the number of fights you can have a turn to 1. This way people search rooms more and speeds play." (I agree.)

"It is hard to see the modifiers for the room tiles should be easier to read." (Here he is talking about the red/green race/class icons, and I agree with this despite my 20/15 vision.)

"Wandering monster rules tend to clump monsters making the stacks untouchable until near the end game. I personally would make the monsters only travel 2-3 squares to try to stop that behavior." (I agree with this sentiment, or we were totally doing wandering monsters wrong. I would errata the rules to state the monsters move a single square and no further on each roll of the die.)

"Players should be able to attack each other, this leads to everyone competing and not wanting to let anyone get too far ahead of the rest. Of course then when someone does get ahead they could "pick on" the lowbies so not sure if that would not be worth it." (Adding this as an option to the expasion would be a great idea!)

"I thought that the speed was getting better the more we played, but when you look up and realize that it seems like you have been sitting there a long time and game play is only 1 or 2 players to your left, that is a problem." (I agree.)

"I think the wandering monster thing is really broken. We ended up with way too much "clumping" of beasties." (See above for my comments.)

"There should also be more dungeon changing cards. The dungeon is a central aspect this version of the game and there are only a few cards that switch the dungeon, or at least it seems that way." (Perhaps an idea for the expansion or for MQ3?)

"It seems that getting a DxM card every time your color comes up seems excessive. From personal experience, winning is difficult. If this is the intent, ok, but it seems like it takes a lot to actually drain people of modifier cards to make a decent attempt at winning. And I can see that having a game where you are getting no bonus cards(as we have all had in munchkin) and very few single use items can make the game even less fun because you are constantly running from stuff and taking damage. In munchkin, at least the game is shorter so you get to start over." (I do agree with this comment. With the addition of the belt/pack, it's easy to hold five really potent DxM cards in hand for that moment when someone reaches The Boss and then gets pounced on. Fewer DxM cards would be nice, or forcing all DxMs to be played from the same or adjacent rooms would be nice.)

"I do like the dice aspect of combat. It was interesting to see how people would reserve cards that I think they would have normally played because there was the random dice part of combat." (I agree. We're thinking about adding dice to our normal Munchkin card games to see how it works out.)

"Yep - everything they said." (This email came after the ones from the above comments, so this is a second voice echoing what has already been said.)

"It seems like in both versions (card and board), there's always one (or two) people who have a hard time getting past go. When the games go quicker, it allows things to be shaken up and everyone gets a turn to be craptastic." (I agree with this. If you have a bad Munchkin card game, just wait 20 minutes, and you'll get to start over with everyone else when there is a winner. Most of our Munchkin card games last, on average, 30 minutes.)

"I'd be willing to give it another go if we/they fixed the big issues (like limiting combat to one per turn, cutting back the DMX card gains, and wandering monster clumps)." (I agree.)

"How about at the end of a players turn, they roll the color dice and only those color monsters move? It would probably keep things spread out a little more. It would mean that sometimes a monster would get stuck (like a red monster ends up in a room where there's no red arrow. Hmmm....)" (I see where she is going with this. She is trying to avoid the "monster clumps" that crop up. If two colored dice were rolled it might work. The first for the color of the monster moving, and the second for the color of the direction they travel, this may work. The dice rolls would take longer, but fewer monsters would move, so there would be less to handle there.)

"I enjoyed it immensly because it is a visual game. I don't have much of an imagination, so I like board/card games better than other games."

"I will agree the the play was a little slow, if we could just limit it to one move per turn, I think it would help - or get a timer and give everyone like 3 minutes and when the time runs out (unless you're in combat) your turn is up no matter what." (I'm not sure I like the timer idea, but I do like the idea of giving fewer moves to start with, and then maybe having more ways to gain moves. This would make movement really vital.)

"I like the idea of the dungeon, but for 6 people it needs to be bigger, more tiles and rooms - I can see how with two it might take longer to explore, but with 6 of us all going in different directions, we lay out the tiles pretty fast." (The expansion should take care of this. I hope it does! This is an artifact of us playing with two more people than the rules allowed. How Munchkin of us!)

"I also agree about the wandering monsters. I think we should just only have them move one room regardless of what the rules say. The did tend to clump and it did leave a lot of rooms empty so it was pretty easy for us to manuever around the beasties." (This echoes previous sentiments, but I included it for completeness.)

We all said this one:
But overall, I like it. I would play it again.

My comments mostly echo those above (and are in the parens above.)

Great job everyone at SJG, and I can't wait to pre-order the expansion.

BTW: I bought "More Good Crads" and Munchkin Booty yesterday at my FLGS, and they were clueless about Munchkin Quest when normally they know about releases weeks or months in advance. I was surprised. You need a good MiB in Colorado Springs to keep them informed!
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Old 11-13-2008, 04:47 AM   #2
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Default Re: Munckin Quest Review

Did you take out all the locked door / hidden door connectors? They cost 3 move to go through.

Are you not searching in each room? That costs one move.
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Old 11-13-2008, 05:09 AM   #3
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Default Re: Munckin Quest Review

I'd also make sure you're paying attention to each Monster's movement issues. Many behave differently and some respond differently to different door types, causing them to stop sooner, move in different directions, etc., helping to keep massive mobs of monsters roaming about.
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Old 11-13-2008, 06:22 AM   #4
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Default Re: Munckin Quest Review

I just got to play my first game last night. Everyone who played had a blast, and all said they wanted to play again.

We also had a big problem with monsters clumping together, at one point we had a Mob of 5 monsters and another of 3 that ended up joining forces. I don't think we were paying enough attention to the special moves of each monster. This was everyone at the tables first game, and there was a lot of new cards cluttering up the table, not to mention the tiles themselves.

So, this was one of the first things I noticed to remember about during my scheduled demo's. Pay attention to special movement rules each monster might have.

One thing I could suggest though if you are having trouble with lots of Monster Mobs, don't use that rule. Instead of rolling one die for the entire group (which unless I'm wrong was how I read the rule for Mobs), go ahead and roll for each Monster. That should mean that all though some monsters will end their turn on the same tile, most will spread out.

For future demo's I think I will mention the Mob rule, but let everyone know that we won't be using it to avoid any large Mobs.
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Old 11-13-2008, 06:38 AM   #5
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Default Re: Munckin Quest Review

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheese8242
One thing I could suggest though if you are having trouble with lots of Monster Mobs, don't use that rule. Instead of rolling one die for the entire group (which unless I'm wrong was how I read the rule for Mobs), go ahead and roll for each Monster. That should mean that all though some monsters will end their turn on the same tile, most will spread out.
I think you've got something wrong here. You roll the Monster Die once on the monster turn and it applies to every single monster in the Dungeon regardless of whether or not they are alone or in a mob.
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Old 11-13-2008, 06:49 AM   #6
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Default Re: Munckin Quest Review

Quote:
Originally Posted by Progmode
I think you've got something wrong here. You roll the Monster Die once on the monster turn and it applies to every single monster in the Dungeon regardless of whether or not they are alone or in a mob.
That would simplify things a bit. I just re-read that section of the rules and I see where I got this wrong. The part on page 14 where it shows monster movement examples, each monster is in the same dungeon, but using a different color to move. I was assuming this meant for each monster have its own movement roll. Now I see it doesn't say anything to that effect. Good to know. At least I won't get that wrong in future demo's.

Thanks for setting me straight Progmode. :)
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Old 11-13-2008, 07:15 AM   #7
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Default Re: Munckin Quest Review

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheese8242
I just got to play my first game last night. Everyone who played had a blast, and all said they wanted to play again.

We also had a big problem with monsters clumping together, at one point we had a Mob of 5 monsters and another of 3 that ended up joining forces. I don't think we were paying enough attention to the special moves of each monster. This was everyone at the tables first game, and there was a lot of new cards cluttering up the table, not to mention the tiles themselves.

So, this was one of the first things I noticed to remember about during my scheduled demo's. Pay attention to special movement rules each monster might have.

One thing I could suggest though if you are having trouble with lots of Monster Mobs, don't use that rule. Instead of rolling one die for the entire group (which unless I'm wrong was how I read the rule for Mobs), go ahead and roll for each Monster. That should mean that all though some monsters will end their turn on the same tile, most will spread out.

For future demo's I think I will mention the Mob rule, but let everyone know that we won't be using it to avoid any large Mobs.
What you might also do to appoint a Monster Mover, so one charged with looking after the monsters on the board.

In certain games I had these roles:
[a] Map Maker
[b] Monster Mover
[c] Rules Lawyer
[d] Card Manager
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Old 11-13-2008, 09:20 AM   #8
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Default Re: Munckin Quest Review

My first game last night had the same problem. We even tried using cards to split them up a bit (sex appeal, etc)

Somehow we ended up with a group of monsters that all moved with the exact same rules, and was powered up to about 45 total power and like 5 dice.

not sure how to avoid that other then move roll for each base color or something..give u 1 group that goes 1 way and 1 group that goes another.

I'll check to make sure I didn't miss any movement rules. They were all hitting open passages and single doors, which all monsters can pass through without an issue.
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Old 11-13-2008, 09:54 AM   #9
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Default Re: Munckin Quest Review

Quote:
Originally Posted by mib2932
Did you take out all the locked door / hidden door connectors? They cost 3 move to go through.

Are you not searching in each room? That costs one move.
We were using the locked/hidden doors as well as the junky passageways that came as a bonus. There were enough items/classes floating around to make the locked/hidden doors "normal" to enough of the players that they didn't slow many of us down.

Or if there was a locked/hidden door that would slow someone down, they would just go a different direction to get the most of their moves.
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Old 11-13-2008, 09:55 AM   #10
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Default Re: Munckin Quest Review

Quote:
Originally Posted by mib2932
Did you take out all the locked door / hidden door connectors? They cost 3 move to go through.

Are you not searching in each room? That costs one move.
Grr.. Something I forgot to put in my first reply.

I don't have the rules handy, but my memory of them was that searching was optional. Most of our players would rather explore (DxM cards!) and fight monsters (Treasure cards!) than search for gold, and a chance at treasure.
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