Tabletop Tuesday - Boss Monster

Welcome to another edition of Tabletop Tuesday - Your weekly exploration into games of dice, cards, luck and more of the Tabletop world.

This week's game...the game of pitfalls and fireballs that is Boss Monster.

Players: 2-4
Time: 20-40 minutes
Genre: Strategy Card Game



As you may be able to tell from the cover art, Boss Monster is a game that very much pays homage to old video games and other nerdy cultural references.  Heroes will brave treacherous dungeons in hopes of treasure and the chance to take down the dreaded boss monster.  However, in a clever role reversal, you the players are the boss monsters.  And your goal is to build the most deadly dungeon and collect 10 hero souls.  But you are not alone, as other boss monsters (players) will be competing to do the same.  Each hero will be attracted to a certain treasure type: Thieves to gold, clerics to holy relics, warriors to weapons, and mages to tombs.  As such, you must build your dungeon room by room to attract the weak heroes, or perhaps build it to detract the more threatening heroes onto your unprepared opponents.  For if a hero should survive a dungeon and reach the boss, that boss monster shall receive a fatal wound.  Take five wounds, and it's game over.

Each game typically begins with a cautious approach as dungeons start off weak, but then turns into a strategic battle to win over heroes and collect the winning souls as the dungeons gather deadly traps and complexity.  Each room provides certain benefits and their alignment to other rooms can create some creative (and deadly) combos.  When your dungeon is fully built with five rooms, your boss monster then also unleashes a devastating "level up" move, of which each boss variant has a different effect.  Add on top of this advanced room upgrades that require certain treasure types and spells that can be played during build / adventuring phases, there's a lot of potential mischief to be had and key decisions to make.  It's also just fun to enjoy the retro aesthetics and quirky sense of humor these cards have.  I recommend this game for those who enjoy critical thinking or have an affinity for old-school video games.

If you have any questions about Boss Monster, be sure to ask in the comments.  There's also several expansions to this game, such as Tools of Hero-Kind, which adds some clever mechanics to heroes for added challenge, reward, and overall interest.  So look forward to hearing more about such and other games and expansions in future installments of Tabletop Tuesday!