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How many dungeons have we seen where a brave band of heroes enters, heroically beating down all the creatures and minions they encounter, avoiding and disarming trap, until they finally reach the heart of the lair with the final boss, fighting an epic battle to stop its evil plans. Ten years’ worth of dungeons at least. But now it's time to turn the tables, the bosses are fed up so they're cooperating, they've all set up nearby the same town, in an effort to split up the invading heroes. But they haven't lost their egos, each boss wants to prove their the biggest and worst around, and so either they'll either defeat the most heroes and claim their souls, or just outlast their fellow bosses then disappear into the night, they hope.
In The Box
This box of Boss Monster is a standalone set, everything you need to play comes included, a rulebook, a separate quick start guide to help speed things up, and of course the two stacks of cards. This set is the 10th Anniversary Edition, the original game that came out ten years ago is almost a carbon copy of this, but over all that time the rules and cards have evolved, adapted and transformed. Remember before when I said that a boss would hope to outlast his fellows, well that rule no longer exists, instead of players being eliminated once they reach 5 wounds and leaving a last man alive aspect, the 5 wounds now trigger the game to finish at the end of the round. The cards have been updated too, there are some minor tweaks here and there, and there are also new cards included in this set that have never been seen before. So if you've played this before you might see one or two new things, but even if you're still new to the game it's easy to get into the rules and begin playing.
Building A Dungeon
The set up and rules for Boss Monster 10th Anniversary Edition are essentially the same as for the original version of the game, but for those of you who are new here I'll give a brief summary. Each player gets a Boss card which depicts the monster whose dungeon you'll be defending, each with their own special ability, activated when they level up. The stack of cards that comes in the box will be separated into a couple of different decks. There are room cards, these are used to build the length of the dungeon, up to a maximum of 5 rooms. Each of these could be a devious trap room or a deadly monster room, and these can also be upgraded into advanced rooms that can contain more powerful effects and damage potential. The rooms also contain different types of treasures, the total in the dungeon will be what lures in the heroes to visit. There is also a deck of spells, you start with a couple of these and then can obtain more through the game through various effects, these can have a variety of uses from building extra dungeon rooms and damaging heroes, to destroying pieces of opponent’s dungeons or even outright eliminating heroes. So speaking of heroes again let's discuss their cards too. So there are two types of hero that will enter play, and the deck is stacked appropriately. The top half is ordinary heroes, so these guys will show up first, each hero has a type of treasure they prefer, for example thief types will look for riches, while mage types will hunt for magic. If a dungeon has a clear majority of a treasure type then the hero will show up there to dungeon delve this round, otherwise the hero will wait in town this round and possibly further ones until there is a definitive majority. The bottom half of the deck is Epic Heroes, these guys are like regular heroes, except much more dangerous, being stronger and harder to kill. Any heroes defeated in your dungeon will provide you with souls, the currency that your boss will need to win the game, but beware that any heroes you fail to kill will actually end up wounding you instead, and if you take too many wounds the game will finish and they'll cost you some negative points. Any epic heroes that enter your dungeon are a double-edged sword, if you can defeat them they are much more valuable and offer double the number of souls for your boss, but fail and let them reach your boss room and you are going to take double the number of wounds, so be warned!
Boss Of The Dungeon
The game plays fairly quick once you get the hang of it, every round a number of heroes show up equal to the number of players, all bosses have a chance to add an extra room to the dungeons, then the heroes decide whether to visit a dungeon full of treasure they like or just to wait in town for the round. Each boss in turn will run the heroes through their dungeon, either defeating them for souls, or watching them reach the boss at the end and dealing a wound. Finally everyone checks the end game conditions, if any boss has either 10 souls or 5 wounds or both then the game finishes, the final scores will be the number of souls gained minus wounds taken, and the winner can be determined. Otherwise, all players draw a room card as you proceed to the next round. After a couple of rounds the hero deck will be run halfway down and that is when the Epic Heroes will start to show up.
This is one of the main differences now in this Boss Monster edition, previously any boss that acquired 5 wounds would be eliminated at the end of the round, then the remaining players would keep going until someone reached the number of souls required, or there was only one boss remaining not eliminated by wounds. Think of the scoring system of King Of Tokyo for a similarity. Now, either of the two conditions will trigger the end of the game, and any wounds always count as negative points, previously they only did for some end game tie breakers. This means that a boss who runs a risky strategy to get to 10 souls first, might not be the eventual winner if they become too wounded along the way.
A couple of other changes made in this version are smaller, here or there a card effect may be slightly changed, or text altered in response to changes made to the game since its original release. For owners of the original Boss Monster game you will find several new cards contained within, 8 new Rooms and 6 new Spells are present and some of the original cards that contained multiple copies now have some slightly alternate art to make them stand out from each other, and plays out a scene of the action going on in that particular area of the dungeon, or as the spell is cast.
Expand Your Dungeon
The great thing about Boss Monster is all the potential to add extra variety to the game. Since the original release there have been almost annual releases of expansions, even small boxes to top up the cards, or large boxes that can also be played stand alone on their own. All of these are compatible with each other, so can also be mixed in with this box too, they can add extra treasure types, extra rules and cards to have up to 6 players in the game, a new type of card to power up the heroes, special hero types and more.
The cards in the game all use pixel art by design, but some of the cards such as the heroes also include flavour text. This helps to build up a picture of the story for those who like to immerse themselves in the theme. Most of the heroes and bosses are parodied from popular works of fiction or different IPs or universes, so the eagled eyed amongst you will enjoy seeking these out and seeing what you can spot.
There are some negative points to note for some people. There is text on all the cards to be aware of, so while playing the game you may have to constantly look around at the other dungeons or keep asking players what effects the rooms they have played do, which also means the game is not so language independent or younger players might struggle. It is rated for 13+ anyway, but there is at least one Boss card to be aware of who is subtitles the 'Sorcerer of Sexiness', perhaps if you do intend to play with family or a younger audience then remove the card from the choice of options.
To go with the text there may be some questions about how any of the cards work, originally the rulebook contained a FAQ for this. It has been substituted in this rulebook with a QR code to link you to the Brotherwise website to find an online version, I checked it today and sadly it doesn't seem to work, a bit of digging can find an older one on the website which could answer many of the questions that might pop up. But with some of the rule changes such as removing an 'active' player for effects and just resolving in reverse order as per other card games, I haven't found this as common a need as I did in the past.
