Beer & Pretzel Games: Munchkin

Our “Beer and Pretzels” series features a group of light, fun games that can be picked up in about five minutes and played in a more relaxed style. These are simple games that–combined with snacks–create an entertaining evening with friends. All these games are family appropriate and packed with laughs.

For all of you tabletop roleplaying gamers out there that have a serious Snakes and Ladders addiction, Munchkin is the game for you. Grab a bunch of friends that you wish to assist, betray, or full on annihilate and embark on a quest to make it through ten rooms of a dungeon.

In the beginning every player gets 4 cards from the door deck and the treasure deck. This will allow you to don any equipment that will upgrade your level and make you a more dangerous Munchkin.

The Simplicity in which you can play Munchkin is a straightforward as 4 steps.

• Kick down the door

This is the first step that you take into every room in munchkin, you start by moving into the first room in your dungeon.

• Fight the Monster

Once you kick down the door you can either fight a monster pulled from the top card of the door deck or one you have in your hand.

• Grab the treasure

If you beat the beastie you can successfully get the treasure from the win and proceed to the next room.

• The first to reach level 10 wins!!!!

This may sound straightforward but there are other players with other cards who are going to try and shoot past you, pull the rug out from beneath you, make your monsters a little bit too tough for you to beat, or just straight up curse you.

If you can beat the monster that gets you into room 10 you win and can proceed to do you happy dance and rub it in their treacherous faces.

Munchkin looks fantastic by embracing the old school tabletop RPG look and enhancing it with their own cartoon Munchkin-styled animated characters. Every card, deck, expansion or random figure or plushie has not only a hilarious game mechanic but some individual and corresponding style (my personal favorite being the Duck of Doom).

Munchkin has simple yet well-structured gameplay that allows even the most unacquainted player to grasp the wide variety of playstyles that are littered throughout this game. This makes it a perfect Beer & Pretzels game for new board gamers.

My personal favorite way to play is to slowly accumulate Attack cards while I wait until the next strongest opponent is ahead of me and just obliterate them with souped-up monsters that I’ve had hidden in my hand.

The game encourages you to be helpful and devious at the same time and that in itself is a major marvel.

Munchkin has encouraged such Monopoly-level blowouts as well as side splitting hilarity that it earns a place as one of my favorite games. It has an incredible ability to go from a 5-minute game to an hour long game, while subsequently driving you to want to play another one straight after you finished. And that’s what makes this game so fantastic.

If you partner the original game with the insane amount of options and choices from Call of Cthulhu Munchkin, Warhammer Munchkin, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Munchkin and on and on and on there should be no person on this planet that does not have copy of Munchkin in their house.

The image below shows a small amount of the vast empire that is munchkin. I could create a list of all the options that are available to you, but I think we would run out of server space. If you are hunting for something specific in the word Munchkin, I’m sure you’ll find it.

If you have not played I highly recommend picking up the starter set, grabbing some beer and pretzels, and embracing one of the best tabletop RPG mini games ever made.