I was at the GAMA Trade Show, helping in the SJ Games booth. I played most of a game of Munchkin Quest. I've read the updates since. I can tell you what's going on. You may have trouble shutting me up…
BTW, yes, obviously I'm biased, but most of the below is objective, and what is opinion is clearly so, and I did genuinely like the game.
It will be out in August, it will cost $50 USD, its *AWESOME*, and I'm buying two copies out of the gate.
It did go to press the other day, so its on schedule. It may or may not be at GenCon, but I expect to have it at ConQuest over Labor Day weekend.
Let me describe the game, and then I'll tell you my play experience.
Its a heavy box. There's a lot in there. In fact, it will ship pre-punched, as all the cardboard wouldn't fit in there with the try if it wasn't.
Its *not* the card game with a board stapled on. They're not charging you $50 USD for the same art you already own. It does not take four to twelve hours like some dungeon crawl boardgames I could name. Actually, it doesn't take twelve hours like *most* dungeon crawl boardgames I could name.
Here's the principal differences from the card game: first, you have a board. This helps. You're not just flipping the next card, kicking down the next door, and fighting whatever's there. That often means you get a race or class card when you really want to fight a monster, or you'd *like* to fight a monster, but you get a race or class card. In MQ you can move into an unexplored room and you *will* get a monster. Or you can move through explored space, and you will run into known monsters, or avoid monsters altogether – see that? You get some choice.
So if the monster deck is now all monsters, where are race and class cards? In the new DXM deck, for Deus Ex Munchkin. You get one of these every turn ( so if you get stuck you will have a chance to get going again ) , and you can pick up some extra draws in certain situations.
Getting back to the differences, you now roll dice in combat. You will add a d6 to your level+items, and someone else will roll for the monsters. This adds some nice uncertainty, and if you're desperate to catch up you can take on a monster one or two levels higher than you and hope. Heck, if you've got a Loaded Die card…
You also have hit points. You start with three and lose one if you lose a fight and have to run, and another if you fail to run away, in addition to the other bad stuff. There are two rooms and a few cards that will let you heal, Dwarves get an extra hit point, etc. There are also money and movement rate tokens.
Playing on a board also effects who can help and hinder who. You can help a player in an adjacent tile, but not clear across the board. If memory serves you can also play one use items to help either side in an adjacent room, but not across the board. Monster enhancer cards can be played from anywhere.
The connectors between rooms can be doors, walls, secret doors, etc.
The board is awesome. There's an entrance tile, and twenty four double-sided room tiles. I like double-sided, because it means that if you get the room on one side, the room on the other side will not be in this game. Since you rarely use all 24 rooms, each game is likely to see a different assortment of rooms. The rooms and connectors fit together with dovetail shapes, so if someone wants to explore a new room off the edge of the table you can easily slide the whole board over a few inches. Heck, you can also rotate the board, if the need arises.
The various rooms have different effects. Some are two narrow for the large monsters to pass, some give bonuses or penalties to different races or classes, some offer "Deals" whereby you can trade some gold or items or movement points for some kind of benefit. There are plenty of reasons to move around the dungeon besides looking for treasure. You *can* search already looted rooms for overlooked treasure, but you may find a monster after all, and you can't search them endlessly, they get Looted Out markers.
Combat does not end your turn. If you're not feeling up to taking on an unexplored room with a random monster you can move a couple of spaces and take on a low level monster ( so that you don't leave low-hanging fruit for someone else ) , beat it, gain a level, win its treasure, and then decide that the new you is buff enough to move into unexplored room and fight another monster.
The cards are neat, and they are poker-sized, so they're larger than Munchkin cards. I believe they'll have a linen finish, as opposed to satin, but I'm not positive. But they are in COLOR!
The monsters move after each player's turn. You roll a color die and they follow colored arrows and long story short, you can't necessarily predict the direction or distance of their move, and they will likely change direction. It only takes a second to do so it doesn't slow the game, but you get really random monster movement – you really can't predict where they'll go, so if you really want to be sure Squidzilla doesn't move on to you you have to put some effort into it, either by being far, far away, being in a room that the monster can't enter ( like the entrance tile ) , or hoping really, really hard.
Let me see, what else… the rule book is beautiful, if you die or drop an item it remains in the room you dropped it for others to pick up, there are tighter, better rules on how many unused items you can carry, all kinds of stuff that's more like a board game and less like a card game.
Oh, and each class has a d10 power. This is a special little extra ( Clerics cancel curses, Warriors get a combat bonus ) , but for it to work you have to roll under your level on a d10. This adds some more pleasant uncertainty, and it adds to the ramp up of power as you increase in levels.
If you count the room tiles, I'd say half the art is new. Most of the monsters and items are familiar, though many of their abilities and effects are new, since they interact with the DXM deck and the room tiles.
To win you must reach level 10, get back to the entrance tile, and beat a boss monster, which is always level 20. No more reaching level 10 and then winning by fighting the potted plant from your hand.
I really enjoyed the game. I like having the extra choices. In the card game you have to take what comes, but here you can run after a monster that you can beat, you can dodge the dragon by running into the twisty maze, you can keep going back to the map room, wherein if you can spend a couple of movement points to choose the next room tile you'll explore, instead of drawing one randomly. In the card game some of your turns are short and not much happens before you're waiting for your turn again. In MQ you can do several things on your turn, and I really like that. Between turns you can help in combat, if you're hanging out near the other players, but you also get to watch the monsters wander around and hope they don't stop in your space.
So I like Munchkin, but I think I might love Munchkin Quest. If the card game seemed haphazard to you, the board game may be the answer.
Not enough room tiles? Need to play with 5-6 players? No sweat, the 5-6 player expansion should be out toward the end of this year. Twelve more room tiles, some more monsters, purple and orange player pieces. But won't the playing time increase? Never to fear, there will be new rules that keep playtime in the two hour neighborhood ( can't tell you exactly, I haven't seen/tired any of that ) .
And for the miniatures tie-in, each player gets a plastic Munchkin figure as a mover. The monsters are cardboard standies, though.
There's an entry for MQ on boardgamegeek.com, a page for it at SJ Games ( link ) where you can see a lot of art, and plenty of news about it, well, occasional news about it, in the Daily Illuminator sjgames.com/ill
I'm looking forward to it.
I'm very happy to answer more questions about it. I like it.
Andrew
Brilliant!