September 18, 2020: Munchkin Musings: September 2020

It's the fall, when all the kids are back in school and workers are busy having meetings to prepare for the holiday season . . . Ha ha ha, I'm kidding, of course! We're all still at home, wondering whether we'll ever enjoy the pleasure of human contact again. Or is it just me? Maybe I shouldn't have watched Animatrix right before bedtime every night for a week.

As promised last month, we have an assorted set of topics, so let's get started!

The Vault Has Opened!

Every fall, we open the holiday vault on Warehouse 23 and make some old favorites and new releases available through the end of the year. This year, in addition to older holiday releases such as the Munchkin Gift Pack, we're going to have Munchkin Tails of the Season, a new Christmas-themed 15-card expansion that mixes perfectly with Munchkin Tails but would also go very well with all of our previous holiday expansions, or with Munchkin Christmas Lite if you want to have a really wacky holiday game! Plus you can find lots of smaller items suitable for placement in stockings, coin belts, or Stuff Of Holding, as you see fit. Go explore!

Dungeons!

The new Munchkin board game, Munchkin Dungeon, from the team at CMON, has made it to Warehouse 23 and probably your local game store as well, and the expansions will be coming very soon. If you missed that epic Kickstarter last year, this is your chance to pick up the loot that other people have been enjoying for months! Go fight the Boss -- over and over!

If you prefer our style of Dungeons, on double-sized cards that ruin your opponents' turns and help yours (or vice versa), we have plenty of those as well! Check out Munchkin 6 – Double Dungeons, Munchkin Cthulhu 4 – Crazed Caverns, Munchkin Zombies 3 – Hideous Hideouts, or Munchkin Pathfinder 3 – Odd Ventures, all available right now!

Mazes!

We had hoped to be shipping Munchkins & Mazes to game stores and story gamers by now. Like everyone else this year, we've had to revise our plans as the world keeps changing. We do expect to get it shortly and hope it will be available to everyone next month, though, so keep watching this space for good news!

Munchkins & Mazes is our love letter to a certain alliterative fantasy roleplaying game and to the idea that no game is so good that a new edition can't make it better . . . even when it's not really new. To learn more about it, read my Designer's Notes from back in April . . . which seems like most of a lifetime.

Guts and Gory!

Also coming next month (COVID willing and the cricks don't rise) is Guts and Gory, the third expansion for Munchkin Warhammer Age of Sigmar. As much as I would love to take credit for that wonderful title, it comes from the team at Games Workshop who didn't like the original one I submitted. (And now I don't, either, so this is the one and only time I'll even admit that a different title ever existed.) I had a lot of fun writing this expansion that combines two very different Armies in a way that somehow works. Combine it with the rest of the Sigmar series and you'll have over 500 cards with glorious John Kovalic art to play with . . . or over 1,000 if you ALSO combine this with Munchkin Warhammer 40,000 and its expansions! (If you do this, you are legendary and I want to watch your game. I don't know if I have the stamina to play in it, however . . . this older man needs his sleep.)

All of the Munchkin Warhammer sets and expansions and accessories are in print and available wherever fine death games are sold. What a perfect holiday gift for that someone who doesn't know they need a new card game obsession in their life!

Playtesting Update

Our call for Munchkin playtest groups back in July has been more successful than we hoped! We got enough to run three simultaneous playtests for 2021 expansions and still have some groups in reserve for other playtests that will be coming later this month, including our first core game planned for next year. I know a lot of folks can't get together with their groups right now, but we're sure grateful to the ones who can and have been sending us some really helpful feedback.

Are we going to continue this in the distant future when we're all happy gamers sitting around tables with friends? I'd say it is very likely, with the added benefit of also playtesting at stores, schools, and conventions like we used to in the good old days of (checks history books) March. We're getting too many great ideas to give this up. If you're interested in having your Munchkin table considered, the instructions are in the link above. We look at every group that sends in an application!

-- Andrew Hackard