Munchkin is a fantastically funny game for 2-8 players (four or five is best), in which you draw cards, fight the monsters you encounter while exploring and collect treasure items to protect your character with. There are also a lot of player to player cards that can render the games completely unpredictable.
Very basically, you are an adventurer, zombie or a vampire or whatever the theme is, exploring through a dungeon or a haunted house. Each player kicks in a Door card and finds out if they've walked into a monster or a curse, or just get another card for their hand. Killing monsters (or eating human brains, in the zombie version), levels you up and wins you cards from the Treasure pile. You can use these cards as items you are wearing (Weapons, armour, random objects with weird effects...), sell them, or just hang onto them until you need to lose some cards.
You 'win' fights by having a higher effective level, or fighting strength' than the monster (your level plus any bonuses from your items) and you can ask people to help by fighting with you or throwing cards at the monster - but people can also throw cards into the fight to make it harder.
There are a plenty of smaller details, and every card has its own text and exceptions, you can make up house rules or not worry about it too much, or stick exactly to the rule sheet. But essentially? It's fun, and it's a great game for groups to play together.
Number of players
The best number of players is 3-6, but Munchkin can be played with 2-8 people. Or more, if you have a large deck - the more players there are, the longer the game drags on, as someone always has one more card to stop the winning player, and the more fun it is, because of the unpredictability and the fact that someone's always willing and able to help you up the first few levels.
With two players it's much more of a straight card game, and much more dependent on luck of the draw, as with only two people there is much less incentive or ability to help each other, and much less chance of sabotaging each other.
Munchkin is a very easy game to jump into and catch up with - just take your starting hand and start asking for help until you reach the same level as everyone else! Of course, it's so unpredictable that a brand new player may draw the right cards to level up several times while another player is still sitting on level one!
Munchkin comes in a wide variety of themed games, each standing alone as a new excuse for different gameplay, terrible jokes, and fandom parody.
Munchkin is a card based game, which is why it has got so many expansions - you can just keep adding cards to the deck. The original version is a fantasy RPG parody, but there are a dozen other themed versions. Each card is either a Door card ('stuff that lurks behind doors, e.g. curses, monsters and random class/race type cards) or a Treasure card (items you can use or wear or sell). The exact details vary between the different versions, but the overall gameplay doesn't.
Each starting game comes with 168 cards, and the expansions usually contain 15 or 112 cards.
A few expansions add special types of cards, such as the dungeon hopping cards (various specific themes that can be mixed into a certain deck) and the general booster packs that can be added to any version of Munchkin (e.g. Fairy Dust, Munchnomicon). These generally sit in their own pile.
You can combine the games, but unless you are a very keen player, you will probably want to pick one or two versions and stick with those. Each themed Munchkin also comes with expansion packs, so you can add plenty of replayability and additional twists!
Horror Munchkin Games: Zombies, Halloween and Lovecraft
Looking for an awesome halloween game? Munchkin Zombies and Munchkin Cthulthu are two of the most popular spin-off games for Munchkin, and the more recent Munchkin Bites will make a good catharsis for anyone who has had to watch Twilight recently!
Ideal for horror fans, these hilarious genre spoofing games feature shambling zombie players hunting down hapless human opponents and cursing each other at inopportune moments, brave souls facing off against terrifying and insanity inducing elder gods, and a cast of spooky paranormal creatures prowling through a haunted house and surprising a whole host of other creepy monsters!
Pick your favourite, or mix and match - the really fun part of Munchkin, apart from the unfailing hilarity, bad puns and in-jokes, the gameplay is very similar in each version, though they all bring new elements to the table, and you can mix up an entire horror themed deck for a Zombies and Werewolves versus the Elder Gods Munchkin game!
Learn more about the horrifically creepy variants:
Aliens, spaceships and super powers soar across the skies in Star Munchkin and Super Munchkin!
Star Munchkin and
Super Munchkin are the two science fiction versions of the game. Star Munchkin is galactic exploration and star travel (and all the films and tropes that go with that). Super Munchkin is based on the superhero genre, and features psychics, heroes, mutants and evil villain opponents. Both games have a lot of aliens!
These two variants are both a bit nicer and less backstabby than the
original Munchkin (and definitely nicer than the horror Munchkin games!). They both follow the common principles of becoming more and more overpowered, rather than undercutting other players, whether it's in a technology race (bigger guns! with longer names!) or mutating and acquiring more superpowers (as seen in any superhero or mutant ever if their story arc runs long enough).
Learn more about the science fiction variants:
I'm in the process of updating and transferring all my reviews from elsewhere, more to come!
Munchkin Cthulhu 2 Call of Cowthulhu
Munchkin Cthulhu 3 Unspeakable Vault (Rev.)
