Munchkin - Tips & Strategies

Selling items can sometimes slip your mind but if you can remember to sell when you get 1000 gold worth of unused items… And don’t be hesitant to get rid of a +1 bonus you are using if you need an extra 100-200 gold to get to 1000. Most times sacrificing the items +1 bonus for the level is a better trade off but I usually only do this kind of trade off at higher levels, since sometimes at low levels you can trade the bonus for the level then have to face a monster that wouldn’t have pursued you if you had just kept the bonus instead of selling for the level.

Munchkin is such a simple game that it almost seems foolish to have a limit to how many players can play. You will feel the need to play with eight or nine, because what else can you play with that many people?

I will attempt to crush that desire to be nice to your too-large gaming group.

1. It will be a year before you get a turn. Seasons will come and go while you sit with no cards, dreaming of your chance to hit third level. On your turn, you will be faced with the Wight Brothers, and no one will help. Why? They are also out of useful cards, and they don’t want to die. Don’t worry, you’ll hit 3rd level someday. Maybe in the Year of the Ram.

2. The style of endgame in Munchkin comes up in many different games. Everyone tries to win in order, and the person who wins is the person who tries to go out after everyone else has used all of their evil cards. With too many players, there are too many evil cards. Your odds of winning have decreased to be indistinguishable from zero. Your odds of leaving the gaming table with good memories of your experience are actually zero. Why play games where people aren’t happy? That isn’t playing. That’s working.

3. If you fall behind in Munchkin, you have locked yourself in to a fourteen hour session of pain and suffering. You cannot win. All you can do is help someone else lose. You are likely not the only one in this boat. You are lengthening the game, because it is your only possible strategy at this point, and that DOESN’T actually help you. You should forfeit and go watch BSG while they finish up their game. Maybe you can set up the next game. Take one for the team.

In summary, do not play this game with more than six people.

Often times at the low levels it is very difficult to beat a monster which results in fleeing the battle. If you offer to help them early they will get the chance to level up, so don’t hesitate to request 1 of the treasures and make sure you get your choice first of the available treasures. In many scenarios it is better to get some help and lose a treasure than flee and get nothing. And on the off chance that one of the other players makes the monster too hard to kill, the game is still young so dying and starting over won’t hurt you too much.

If you are mid-level or so and you have a decent monster in your hand, don’t use it on other people. Save it in case you have trouble landing monsters when you get to the higher levels. Inevitably, everyone piles on the highest level player, but eventually they run out of ammo. That’s when your monster comes in.

Sure, the game is about back-stabbing your friends, but in a larger game (more than 4 players) it’s considerably faster to play as teams so as to pool resources in defeating monsters in early game, and prevent the agonizing decision on who to use your best/worst cards on. A team only wins when all its members are level 10.

Not quite sure if you’ll like Munchkin? Direct your friends to the Munchkin Rigged Demo, a short Flash demo that introduces you to Munchkin and teaches the basics of the game.

http://www.worldofmunchkin.com/game/demo.html

Munchkin has only a few limits on what you can carry. It must be an item (item have a gold value) and you can only carry one big item (anything currently in use by your character counts towards this limit). You can use this to keep your hand under the limit and avoid giving away cards, expect ally one-shot items.

The only disadvantage is losing the element of surprise. Everyone can see what you are carrying!

Remember to turn the cards for carried items sideways so it’s clear what is carried and what us in use.

One way to keep track of your fighting level (your level plus all equipped items and other boosts) is to use 2 d20. This allows you to quickly determine fighting levels & saves having to count up all your boosts each play. We have never had someone have level + equipped items that added up to more than 40. This speeds the game up quite a bit, especially when playing with younger players.

This may seems silly, especially after all of the other bloodthirsty and pointed tips and houserules I’ve posted up until now: Do not side against your wife/significant other. Especially if they are not gamers, particularly.

I learned this the other day. Treated my wife as I would any other player, and essentially slept on the couch for not slipping her extra EQ (just because she sat next to me).

Additional rule: Do not sit next to this person during the game, either.

When you have a lot of people playing it can be extremely difficult to get to level ten because everyone has cards that can assure that you don’t beat your last monster. When this begins to happen the games can drag on too long.
Usually when a person dies they lose everything and start over. In college we would play with the rule that if the game stretched past midnight if someone was killed they were eleminated from the game. People then begin to use their cards to try to eleminate people and those cards get used up faster making it easier to beat that final monster. It also adds a fun twist when you hit your time limit and realize that death is now final.