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As a couple this is now our third addition of Munchkin to our game collection, it definitely doesn’t disappoint, she loves Batman, and he puts up with the obsession!
Despite having the Original Munchkin and Munchkin Disney, Munchkin Batman was a great buy especially having the Kickstarter addition with added stretch goals. It's similar enough to make the rules easy but different in so many ways to make it a worthy addition to our collection.
Are you going to be Insane, a Prankster or Greedy?
Our Initial Thoughts
As soon as the box hits your table the artwork stands out and we instantly wanted to dive in and explore. Everything from box, to cards, to rules its Steve Jackson all over with his awesome artwork and hilarious quips throughout the rules and cards. Seeing the Batman characters transformed into the munchkin style was brilliant and unique throughout. Every component of this game is made with high quality materials ensuring this game will withstand the test of time.
First Things First… Characters
If you have a favourite character keep your fingers crossed luck is on your side as you randomly deal the villain cards. You will be in with a chance of playing as Charlotte’s favourite Harley Quinn or her pudding The Joker. The other six you could get are The Penguin, Mr Freeze, The Riddler, Two-Face, Poison Ivy or Cat Woman. You’ll get your Villain Card which will tell you your special power then grab your character standee to track your levels on the board, always starting at level 1.
Onto The Cards
There are three types of cards in this game, your villain card and the two card decks used in the game the door cards and the treasure cards. You will split the door and treasure cards and place them on the board in the spaces allocated. You will need to shuffle and deal four of each to each player and get ready to play.
The door deck will contain crimes you are going to try to commit, Motives, curses or difficulty increasers to screw over your fellow villains and make their crimes harder. The crime cards are the heart of the game ranging on difficulty from easy-peasy to crimes of the century. Completing the crimes will gain you levels and treasures taking you further into your crime spree. Motives are what power you and give you extra abilities, for instance if you become Insane you get to complete copycat crimes whereas if you’re a prankster you can keep curses after the effects to play against someone else. Once a curse is drawn you’re onto a loser we’re afraid these are the bad ones, you will either lose cards or motives, or you could find yourself losing levels. The ones you want to find are the difficulty increasers such as Batman and Robin that will add +10 difficulty to any crime, these can be used against any of your friends around the table when they are attempting their crimes.
In the treasure deck you could find your favourite accomplice or a much-needed bonus such as cheats, items, amour or head/foot gear but beware some of these can only be used by specific villains. You may also find cards that will automatically level you up, these can come in very handy to fast track your win but can only be used up to level 9! Accomplices are a really useful tool but be sure to read the cards as they will add bonuses to your crime or difficulty to your friend’s crime. However, once the crime is complete or run away from, you will have to take a roll of the dice to see if you keep your accomplice. When you find items, you will need to make decisions based on what bonuses they give, but also remember you’re only human and therefore only have two hands and one head. If you are lucky enough to find a cheat card the cuffs are off and you can use other villains’ treasures or have extra body parts.
Rulebook
Firstly, don’t be scared by the length of the rulebook! It is extremely useful giving you every detail needed but the rules themselves are very simple and easy to learn. All Munchkin games run in the same order using three basic actions. Each game has there own additions and quirks relating to the theme such as in this one with crimes and Arkham Asylum. The rules can also be found on/ and are downloadable in PDF format. (You may even find new versions to buy 😉)
Playing Order
To work out which villain will start the anarchy you will each roll the dice the one who rolls the highest will go first and away you go!
Game Play
Now that you are set up and have your cards, you’re ready to go, the starting villain will kick down the door. This means selecting the top card from the door deck, if you find a crime you will need to check out the difficulty rating across the top. As this is your first round you are only a measly level one, here is where you are hoping to have some accomplices in your hand! If you do, play them on the table face up and add their bonuses to your level to complete your crime. This is also where if your fellow villains are feeling particularly mean they could add to the difficulty to ensure you fail to complete the crime. However, should one of your fellow villains feel in the giving mood they could offer to help you, but they may barter for your treasure in order to do so.
If you can complete the crime, you will be rewarded with an extra level and some treasure. When claiming your levels, the board comes in handy to track how far you’ve gotten and how many crimes you have completed. However, if you can’t complete the crime you will need to run away, to run to safety you will need to roll the dice and get a five or higher, should you get a four or lower this is where the bad stuff occurs. The bad stuff will change per card and will be written at the bottom. The bad stuff usually sees you lose cards, items, levels or even be captured and sent to Arkham Asylum.
If when Kicking Down the Door you don’t find a crime you can move into the Loot The Room/Look For Trouble phase. To Loot the Room, you take another door card and whatever you pick up goes straight into your hand. If you Look for Trouble this means you play a crime from your hand of cards and complete your crime as if you were kicking down the door.
The next stage is where you have to play or discard cards in the rules this is called Charity. You’ll need to get your hand down to the limit of five cards. To do this either play items in front of you such as armour or Motives or discard them by giving the cards to the lowest level Villain. If there are tied lowest level Villains, you divide the cards you are giving away. However, if you’re currently the lowest the cards are sent to the relevant discard decks on the board face up.
Then the player to your left takes their go and so on following the above until the first villain reaches level ten! Level ten can only be completed by completing your final crime.
Kickstarter Stretch Goals
As we own the Kickstarter version of Munchkin Batman we have a few special additions to our game, one thing to definitely mention and recommend is getting yourself a Batcomputer (sometimes known as a kill-o-meter). The Batcomputer came in very handy during crimes to add up all of the levels and bonuses letting you easily see if you’ve got more than the difficulty.
One of the other useful additions was the six extra dice letting you have one each or to roll multiple when trying to retain accomplices.
We also got two blank door cards and two blank treasure cards letting us put our own spin on the came should we wish, this is a cool feature to really make the game our own!
The last addition was a dice bag with the cool graphics of Batman on one side and the Villains on the other.
Final Thoughts
We really enjoyed playing Munchkin Batman and will be definitely playing it for a long time to come. For our first play through there was only three of us and so we can’t wait to have a big party of us and to cause more chaos with different characters, playing curse cards and scuppering each other’s plans as we go. Every play through will always be different and you will never run out of new cards and artwork to marvel at.
This game is another stunning addition by Steve Jackson and is the perfect addition to any gamers collection first timer or Super Munchkin!
