Do you, too, have a lover of D&D? Do you have as hard of a time as I do, getting your D&D lover together with a DM? Then you need to check out Boss Monster! Boss Monster is like Munchkin, from a monster’s perspective.

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Like Munchkin, Boss Monster is a simple card game. There’s no big storytelling component like Dungeons and Dragons. However, instead of playing a character fighting monsters, you’re playing a monster who builds a dungeon and kills off heroes.

Monsters are assigned randomly. Each monster has a different bonus when they level up, but it’s a one-time thing and not huge in the gameplay. Everyone starts by building one room of their dungeon. New heroes (equal to the number of players there are in the game) come out, and you get a chance to build another room to your dungeon.

This step is critical. Heroes are attracted to the dungeons based on how much they’ll get in reward, based on their class. So, thieves are attracted to lots of treasure, clerics to holy symbols, etc. You want to make sure you’re not attracting any heroes you can’t kill off. So make sure to check what heroes are out, and what rooms the other players have built.

If you get five wounds (from heroes getting through your dungeon alive), you’re out. The first person to get to ten souls (from heroes dying in their dungeons) wins. So, you do want to attract heroes to your dungeon, but you want to make sure you can kill them. Most heroes have at least four hit points, while most early dungeons are unlikely to do more than two or maybe three damage.

Later in the game, as you’re able to put more specialized rooms in place, you can get some pretty hard-hitting dungeons. Some rooms will give other rooms bonuses, too. This is why I count Boss Monster for math practice. Every time a hero goes through a dungeon, you have to figure out how much damage they’re taking. Sometimes this is pretty straightforward, but other times, this can get quite complex.

There are also spells. Some spells make it easier for you to kill off your heroes; there’s one spell that makes a hero go back through your dungeon. One spell can be used on your room giving a bonus. So you can make one of your rooms more powerful (and hopefully kill off the hero).

There are also spells to use only on your opponent, like the freeze spells, that make one dungeon room useless. Still other spells seem to be just to mess with people, like sending an already-killed hero back through the dungeon that killed it. Not generally useful, but certainly annoying.

As players get closer to winning, play can get quite cut-throat. Another similarity between Boss Monster and Munchkin is that it can be pretty slow to get started. Sometimes you happen to draw good cards for your starting hand, and things are great. Other times, though, you don’t. This can be frustrating, but I think could be easily circumvented by giving every player one beginning room that’s helpful (and the same) as part of their starting hand.

At the end of the day, this has been one of our favorite games. My son loves Boss Monster. To help you decide if it’ll be as great for your family, be sure to check out our play-through video.