Monsters On Board Review

Have you ever wanted to prowl the woods? Hide in the shadows and terrify unsuspecting humans? No? Well that's good as you would end up with your own Netflix series. But why you ask? Why am I spooking these innocent people? Because I need spook juice for my monster party of course. So grab your thriller jacket, crank up the radio! Because back streets back ALRIGHT! Welcome to Monsters On Board

Theme & Components

So theme-wise. The whole game is about a group of ghouls who are throwing a big party. But they need more spook juice, because as we all know monsters love to dance. " Cause it's a thriller, thriillleeer YEAH!!! And where does one buy spook juice? You don't. This rare nectar is only produced from scaring the life from innocent bystanders in the local village. The art in monsters on board is that awesome blend of comical monsters we've seen so many times before. It does give a huge nod to the popular animated movies, hotel Transylvania. Well, that's the feeling I get from it.

The main board is a big haunted mansion. With a graveyard around the round track and little ghost tokens stacked in the graveyard. You get 4 fear-mobiles to drive your monster lords ( dice ) around. These are a fun touch and add to the theme well. The dice are all bright colours to match the 6 main creeps and are really nice to look at when your board begins to fill up. The player boards are broken into 2 halves. On the left side is your order of spiderjack. This is where all your dice drafting happens. Also where most of your actions and end game scoring takes place.

The 2nd half of the board is where you'll be moving your grunts through the village of Startleton. Trying to scare the spook-juice out of people. The boards are nicely themed if not a little busy. This is especially true as the grunt minis are quite big. So when you're moving them through the neighbourhoods they can get a little fidley. This is even more exaggerated once you start to add ghost tokens and then the minions. It can become crowded quickly. I did enjoy the way the movement works in this game. It can be a puzzle in itself as you work out jumping over minions and getting extra bonuses from ghost placement. The artwork in this area is hard to see under all the icons and space markers. But overall the theme is amazing in this. Our kids loved it and I must say so did we.

Components

We have the deluxe edition with all the minis and extra shiny pieces. All the spooky grunt minis are colour coded and are freaking awesome. The round marker is a creepy pumpkin. You don't get much cooler than that. The minions each player gets are little goblins in skull tophats. Let me repeat that little goblins in tophats. The player boards are dual layered. They have tons of recesses for the mass amounts of dice you are drafting which is always a bonus.

The scoring markers are nice wooden bottles of spook juice. The deluxe components are high quality. They do add thematically to the game, but there is a slight issue. This is that, alot of it is a too big. The grunt minis become fidley and you are always knocking the other minis down. Especially when moving around the town spaces. Once you have a few in one neighbourhood, with tokens and minions it's hard to see the board and they don't really fit comfortably. The spook-juice scoring tokens are way too big for the scoreboard and cover multiple spaces which can get frustrating. That being said would I still purchase the deluxe edition? Yes! All the little extras are super cool and the pros outweigh the cons in my opinion. So I can deal with a fiddly ghoul or two to look down at a town overrun by grunts and enjoy the artwork of the minis.

Gameplay

Now onto the meat of this spooky pie. Mechanically this is a dice drafting and movement game. But it's also a super big puzzle. From moving grunts and getting combos with minions. To drafting the right colours and numbers on your dice. Which in turn gives you more bonuses on your spiderjack area. Which then gives you even more bonuses because you get to move your ruins along their tracks. plus you're trying to place dice I'm certain ways for end-game scoring.

Then buying end game bonus cards which also require certain puzzles be completed and just Wow! That's alot to get your head around. But Monsters On Board manage to pull this off seamlessly. The colour coded dice for movement is a perfect touch. The iconography is simple and effective. The puzzles and combos are crunchy. But it's simple to follow along with and play, which then lets you really get your teeth into the puzzle without fumbling over a bazillion rules. The cards you can buy give you end game scoring objectives. They come in a range of puzzles, from having adjacent coloured dice. To having a certain amount of ghosts in neighbourhoods. Plus a load more.

Final Thoughts - Monsters On Board

Yes it's full of fluff. Yes. The deluxe edition may be way over the top. But deep down this game is one of the best games I've played this year. I loved the puzzle of this one. The combos you can create are fun to mess about with. The joy when you work out and execute the perfect round and keep that end-game puzzle going. I love trying out new strategies for scoring. Whether it be getting grunts to the end of the track and stacking that colour dice. Or grabbing as many end-game scoring cards and trying that way. Each and every time I've played this game no matter my strategy. The puzzle and just overall fun of this game has shone through.