A New Blog, A Not-So-New Game Worth Its Weight in Loot

Monster Lands started my journey into board game obsession. It’s true, I had certainly purchased other games by that point in my life. Friends from college had introduced me to The Settlers of Catan with its excellent Cities and Knights expansion, and that and a mostly ignored copy of The Munchkin Quest Board Game constituted my collection until a new local game store opened a block and a half from my apartment at the time.

This store Press Start to Play served as a game pawn shop and hosted a wide assortment of used video games and consoles, plus a bustling Magic: The Gathering community. It also featured a small collection of board games that piqued my interest. I started becoming acquainted with them, particularly since one of the store’s co-owners frequently attempted to make his job as fun as possible by playing games during his shift.

Though the store never had many board game titles in stock, the ones that hit their shelves proved intriguing and ended up in my growing collection (especially deck-builders like Dominion, Ascension, and Clank!).

Flash forward to the same game store but in a different location. I had recently played Clank! In Space and recognized it solved problems I never realized the base game had. I concluded I would likely never play that version of the game ever again. With that thought swirling in my mind, I arrived at Press Start to Play to find a new game on their shelf with a rather stunning rendition of monster art on the box cover that instantly intrigued me.

I traded in Clank! and its two expansions and used the credit to purchase Monster Lands, a game that would change my understanding of the board game industry and kindle an already growing passion for the hobby.

I fell in love with this huge game, even though (full disclosure) it’s not exactly quick to set up. Each player will choose a player color that will feature two characters with unique special abilities. After stocking all the various markets in “The Citadel” items, shields, mercenaries, potions, traps, tricks [if players want to have the ability to attach each other], and heavy weapons [if fortunate to play with the game’s expansion]) and the components needed for the realms outside of its realm (monster and land cards, missions, path headers, and loot), players can turn to their play area to formulate a plan of attack.

One cannot help but notice that this game comes with quite a lot of dice, and I found their use in the game quite intriguing since the mechanics promise more than a simple dice chucker. Despite each mercenary having a different special power, all players will start the game with two red strength dice, 1 blue magic die, and one yellow persuasion die (in addition to one trap and seven gold). The dice served more than mere random arbiters of progress or failure; in this worker placement game, they served as the workers.

The purple and red dice placed in the town area of this game will never regale their future generations with tales of being rolled in high-stake situations, as they merely serve as placeholders to collect, based on their placement, traps, mercenaries, shields, potions, equipment, or gold. It’s neat to think of a die more than just a die, and fantastic games like Beyond the Sun and Unsettled also change the conventions of what’s possible with a six-sided cube during gameplay.

This brings us to the game’s chef’s kiss: the yellow die and its power to manipulate the various markets in interesting ways. At the start of the game (and whenever a new yellow die becomes acquired), players will roll their yellow dice and keep all values displayed to the entire group. Played in isolation, a yellow die reduces the cost of any item available in the market, so that a player who rolled a 6 receives a reduced cost of 6 gold to make that purchase (the cost can never fall below 1 gold).

Players who roll lower numbers can fare even better, for a player who places a yellow die on a track that already contains a yellow die can add both dice together and deduct that sum from the cost of the item if and only if the second die’s number is lower than the first. Knowing when to play (and not play) yellow dice goes a long way in determining a player’s success on the battlefield.

The game starts with players placing their small collection of dice on the board to either gain a type of resource from the Citadel or assign them to fight a monster or claim land or loot. Each time players acquire a mercenary and add it to their clan, they immediately earn the die or dice listed on the card and adjust their clan’s reputation. To get more dice, players will (usually) need to kill monsters or claim land to earn more glory so that they have enough reputation to attract more mercenaries.

Monsters have overrun the kingdom, and before players rush off to fight the ever-growing hordes of evil creatures, they’ll want to stock up on the mixture of advantages the game offers for sale in the Citadel that they believe will help them survive the monster’s attack and deliver the killing blow. Of course, players could brazenly rely on the luck of the die to defeat monsters [SPOILER ALERT: they really shouldn’t if they know what’s good for them].

Players can assign mercenaries and the goodies they wish to bring to battle on the path of their choice, with the number of monsters (one or two) determined by player count. Each land has four potential paths, and turn order proceeds from left to right so that the player who places a mercenary in the farthest path to the left will have the first attempt to defeat the monster.

Monsters always attack first, and they will roll the number of dice listed on their card (unless otherwise modified) and hit on rolls of 3, 4, 5, or 6. Each mercenary can sustain one hit before dying and can block damage with a shield or heal it with a blue potion). Mercenaries who survive then get to attack the monster. They roll all the dice on their path and apply any bonuses from items they brought with them and ones their path provides. Mercenaries can either trap (if they brought one) or kill the monster, and each monster card lists the total value of all dice rolled needed to achieve the intended result.

If the mercenary meets or exceeds the value, the monster will successfully be trapped or killed, though a player cannot trap a monster if the value rolled exceeds the kill value. If the mercenary does not, the damaged monster will move to the next path, making it much easier for the next person to kill.

…Or not. Sometimes other players might make decisions based on the assumption that “there’s no way that person would ever lose to that monster, so I won’t defend as heavily.” Since the monster always attacks first, it could potentially decimate an entire row of would-be heroes in a turn of events that can easily be described as “terrible but hilarious.”

But why would mercenaries place themselves in harm’s way? The reason’s quite simple: once a player has dispatched a monster, the land now becomes available for conquering. Lands operate like monsters except they have no offense; the first player to achieve or exceed the number listed on the land receives it and the special abilities it provides, one of which is foregoing the payment of one mercenary at the end of the round. Mercenaries who find themselves on paths that lead to defeated monsters or conquered lands receive a loot token for their troubles. Monsters that have survived combat move to the Citadel at the end of the round and randomly disrupt one of its functions (ironically, it’s often the one players want to use the most).

Defeating monsters and conquering lands provides the easiest way to gain glory, but failure could prove devastating. For those seeking a low-stakes solution, the game provides two missions each round that offer incremental paths to progress without the fear of potentially losing mercenaries. Play proceeds until a player accrues 30 or more glory or the end of six rounds, at which point the players calculate their VP by adding their glory and reputation values with the values earned by collecting mercenaries.

The ebb and flow of the game sparks exciting turns and clever maneuvering, but the board does get cluttered quickly in later rounds and newer or less experienced players might struggle to have a good time if they struggle to add to their meager pile of dice at the same pace as everyone else.

I found this game so enchanting after its first play I leaped at the opportunity to track down the Kickstarter version to upgrade the experience when I learned of its existence, which led me down a path to an entirely new level of board game enthusiasm (a point I’ll likely expound upon in a future post, so feel free to breathe a sigh of relief now that this massive missive has nearly concluded and I don’t wander off topic again).

Monster Lands deserves more love. I felt that deserved saying so much I made it the first topic of discussion in this corner of the interwebs.