Once a month I get together with some people I met through the local game store to play some tabletop games, which gives me the opportunity to review what we play. There’s a few different elements that determine whether a game is good and/or fun. First, you have the style or flavor of the game. Part of this is the setting. Is the game set in a fantasy world, is it a space adventure, is it an historical game? Also, there’s the scope of it. Are you playing a single character or commanding an army or governing a city or a nation or even multiple nations, whether all at once or one at a time? Some games, like Checkers, don’t really have all that much flavor. While I enjoy a mostly flavorless game sometimes, I tend to be a big fan of flavor. My favorite types would be historical or fantasy, through all different scopes.
After flavor, there’s all the elements of the actual gameplay. A fun game for me is one that’s easy to start playing, but also has depth to the mechanics to make for a variety of strategic choices. There should be enough rules to allow for this depth, while not requiring you to memorize every single detail to start playing. You should be able to learn the rules as you play. Nothing kills game flow like referring to the rule book after every move.
Another element to the gameplay is how interactive it is. One of the points of tabletop gaming for me is getting together with friends. A game should reinforce this, not marginalize it. If every player’s turn consists of totally isolated actions, you end up wandering off, mentally and even physically until it gets back to your turn. Interaction doesn’t have to be antagonistic. There are a lot of cooperative games out there these days. In between those two poles, there are games that make you stay aware to what everyone else is doing. Sometimes, this comes back to flavor as well. If someone else is doing some neat things, it makes you pay attention even if you might not be directly interacting with them.
This past Friday night, I ended up playing a game of Munchkin Quest and then a couple games of 7 Wonders. I played Munchkin Quest first, so I’ll start with that. Munchkin has been around for a while, and spawned a whole slew of expansions and different varieties. I’m not sure when exactly the Munchkin Quest version came out. Munchkin is basically a tongue in cheek homage to old school, fantasy-esque dungeon crawling games, such as, well, Dungeon.
Munchkin is basically a card game where you are playing a vague character that gets defined as you play cards. You start out as nothing, but then you can take up a class and race, which are typically the generic fantasy ones, such as Wizards and Clerics for classes, and Elves and Halflings for races. Since you don’t start as anything, and you can change your class and race pretty much any time you want, I never really have a sense that my character amounts to anything other than cards on the table, and that’s not good flavor in my opinion. Each turn you draw from a monster deck. If you can beat the monster, you gain a level and treasures. You can also solicit help from other players by offering them a share of the loot if you can’t beat the monster on your own. The treasures are generally things you can equip on your character, such as weapons and armor. Every card is basically a silly joke or pun, such as an Ugly Stick for a club or Wight Brothers as an example of a monster. There’s also Curses you can play on other characters, such as the infamous Chicken on the Head, and cards that make monsters tougher to keep other players from defeating them. There are a lot of cards, so your strategy will keep changing throughout a game. Munchkin Quest basically just adds another deck of rooms that give special bonuses or penalties. The goal of the game is to go from level 1 to 10.
I know a few people who seem to really like Munchkin, but honestly I think it’s overrated. I enjoy it for a little while, but I usually stop enjoying it before a game has ended. Anyone who knows my sense of humor knows I like a good pun, but I find this to just be too over the top. It’s funny here and there, but not consistently. I like to have fun and joke around while gaming just like anyone, but my personal preference is for the game to essentially be more serious. I don’t mind a few jokes and humorous references worked in, but an entire game built around making fun of the genre, even in tribute, just gets old for me before too long.
Another unfortunate element to the game of Munchkin Quest last night was that the addition of actual rooms seemed to needlessly complicate matters. It seemed like we were referring to the rule book almost once per player, which was way too often. On the plus side, the game does encourage interaction, with the ability to assist one another and also ways to screw one another.
So, on a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give Munchkin Quest a 4 for Flavor, a 5 for Gameplay, and a 7 for Interaction, which makes for a 5.3 overall. It can be fun in bursts, but I think there’s other games more worth the time.
Which brings me to 7 Wonders, a game I’ve liked quite a lot the few times I’ve played it so far. In 7 Wonders, each player is in charge of one of the cities where one of the ancient wonders of the world were built. Over the course of 18 turns, divided into 3 ages of 6 turns each, players will build a variety of buildings, some which produce resources, such as a Mine, some help you acquire resources from your neighbors, such as Trading Posts, some are luxury buildings, such as Temples, some are “scientific” buildings, such as an Apothecary, and some are military buildings such as Barracks.
So, the first thing that I love about this game is the flavor. I’m interested in ancient and classical history, so I appreciate playing a game in those eras. The artwork on the wonder and building cards is really good. So, I enjoy building my city around its great wonder. It feels a little bit like Civilization, though you only have one city. I like seeing my city take shape and grow, which means I enjoy playing no matter if I win or lose. To me, this is a good element to a game. If too much emphasis ends up on who wins, a game can get frustrating.
The way it works is you get dealt a hand of 7 cards. Each card is a building you can build, provided you have, or can trade for, the Resources needed for it. The tricky part is after each turn, you pass your hand of cards on to another player and get a new hand, so you can never be entirely sure what you’ll be able to build turn to turn. As you play, you can get an idea of what overall is available, but it’s hard to count on building something for sure. Another element to the strategy is that there are chains of buildings, where if you build a certain building in Age 1 that allows you to build a certain building without the need for resources in Age 2, and sometimes there’s a third building to the chain for Age 3. For instance, in Age 1, you can build an Altar, which allows you to build a Temple for free in Age 2 and then a Pantheon for free in Age 3. On any turn, you can also build one of the phases of your wonder instead of a building.
The ultimate goal of the game is to accumulate victory points. There’s a variety of ways to earn them. Luxury buildings, such as the Temple directly grant victory points. Some of the phases of your wonder will generally do this as well. Military buildings allow you to win battles at the end of each age, and winning the battles grant victory points. Science buildings grant victory points based on how many of that type you have. So, there’s lots of ways that you can proceed to try to win. The variety of strategies combined with the randomness of the cards you’re dealt make each game different and fresh.
The one downside is all that variety inevitably leads to some confusion and need for clarification, so we did end up referring to the rules quite a bit to clarify things. It’s not necessary to know every detail to start playing, though, so that’s a plus. You can dive in and learn as you go. There also isn’t that much direct interaction, though you do need to pay attention to your neighbors because of the military and trade buildings and to try to avoid passing them a building that would really help them win towards the end. It is neat to me, though, to see everyone’s cities take shape.
So far, I’ve played it with 5-7 players each time, and it seems to work great for that number. I could see it still being fun with a few less as well.
I’d rate 7 wonders a 9 for flavor, an 8 for gameplay, and a 7 for interaction. Flavor does help the interaction score here because I just like seeing what everyone is doing. So, that makes for an 8 overall. It might not be for everybody, but I really enjoy it and think it’s definitely worth a try.
iggysden 