Munchkin Cthulhu
3-6
10+
60+
Munchkins have hacked their way through dungeons, kung fu temples, starships, haunted houses, and super-foes. Now they face their greatest challenge – Cthulhu! Will they survive? Will they retain their sanity? Will they...level up?
Munchkin Cthulhu is a standalone game in the Munchkin universe, this time lampooning Lovecraft's Mythos and the horror gaming that surrounds it. This base game features four new Classes, including the Cultist, and a lot of classic monsters from outside reality – and they all have Stuff you can take from their twitching bodies. You can play Munchkin Cthulhu by itself, or combine it with any number of other Munchkin titles for mind-bending silliness.
User Reviews (1)
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This is my first Munchkin offshoot, so I can’t really compare it to say Star Munchkin or Munchkin Fu. But I can say that this is a decent twist on the original game!
The basics of Munchkin still apply here. You level up by playing special cards or beating monsters. To beat monsters, your level plus the bonuses from your equipment must be greater than the monster’s level. If you can’t beat it, Bad Stuff happens. More on that later.
The biggest difference between this game and regular Munchkin is that there are no races (I think that’s normal for themed Munchkin games) so the classes become more important. You can play as an investigator, monster whacker, etc. However, the more important class in this game is the cultist. Usually you can change classes pretty easily, but it is harder to get rid of the cultist class because it represents you going insane. This is admittedly a bit goofy… I don’t think that was how it went down in the mythos. It threw me off a bit, but after a while I got used to thinking of cultists as madmen.
If you draw the cultist card face up, then you have to use it as your class. There are also several monsters that can force you to become a cultist as part of their Bad Stuff. At first, the cultist thing can be a bit annoying, as a cultist you get a bonus for the number of other people that are also cultists. The kicker is that the last person to avoid taking the class gets to gain a level- even if they are level 9. Usually only killing a monster counts for gaining the last level.
Its an interesting mechanic, and I am starting to like it more now. Once you get the cultist thing down, it runs pretty smoothly. It is faster and less complicated without the race cards. I thought it would feel like something was missing, but it doesn’t because you are always concerned about being made into a cultist.
The components are about the same as in other munchkin games. The cards hold up okay. This was actually my first colored Munchkin set, but I recognize that all of the sets have color cards now. The dice was kind of a let down. It seemed like it should’ve been green or something, but I guess that’s no big deal.
The cards themselves are funny and entertaining, but I’m not sure they are as fun as the original Munchkin’s.
If you are a fan of Lovecraft and of dungeoneering type games, this one is a great buy. Again, I think the “all insane people are cultists” thing is a bit goofy, but it is an interesting attempt to bring an insanity system to Munchkin.