 Hey everybody, welcome back to Magic Orthodoxy. My name is David and this is a card game. Alright, so all this week we are going to look at card games. That's right, card games. Now you'd say, okay, why are we doing card games? David usually only does playing cards and magic reviews. That's true, but if you think about it, playing cards has the word playing in it. Like there is this assumption that they can also be used for playing games. We talk about poker, right, and just playing card games. I'm going to play Solitaire or something like that. Even tarot cards originally could have been used to play games with and so it seems only natural that I would also be interested in card games and I am. I'm also interested in card games and I do collect card games, good card games, and I thought, you know what, let's take some time to go through some of my very favorite card games. Alright, let's go. So today we're going to look at Boss Monster, the dungeon building card game. This is from Johnny and Chris O'Neill over at Brother Wise Games and if you want to learn more about them, you can visit them at BWiseGames.com. This game is for players 13 and up. It costs $19 and it's for 2 to 4 players. An average game can take about 20 minutes or less, or a little bit more of course. And what comes in the box? Alright, so you're going to need your box. It's a nice hard shelled box. You can see about just roughly how big it is, okay? It's got a shelled lid there. Inside this, you're going to get cards. Now it's a completely card based game. There's no extra things. There's no board, there's no dice, there's no chips, there's no tokens. It's all done with cards. So it's 155 game cards. You're going to get 8 boss cards, 75 room building cards, 31 spell cards, 25 heroes, 16 epic heroes, and a 21 page rule book, and a quick start guide. How do you play? How do you play this game? Originally this was a Kickstarter. It was a Kickstarter successfully funded. There was a lot of hype out about it. And you know, there's kind of been like an 8-bit resurgence. You know, you're seeing 8-bit playing cards, also 8-bit t-shirts, things like that. There's, you know, Minecraft kind of brought all that back. And so this is kind of an homage to the old school 8-bit console games. Now, even though it's based on those old games, you're not going to find any of that artwork. This is all original artwork with original bosses, original heroes. You're not going to find any, you know, Zelda or anything like that. You're not Mario. You're not going to see any familiar faces. But you will see caricatures of things that you recognize, like Castlevania. You'll see those kind of things. You'll say, oh, that's from such as such a game, like Metroid or whatever, right? So the game is a retro inspired tabletop game where you build a dungeon out of room cards. And what you do is you attract heroes and then you destroy them. So it's basically the opposite of a regular video game where you are the hero and you go through the dungeon and you try to defeat the boss. In this game, you're the boss and you build your dungeon and you try to defeat the heroes. If you defeat 10 heroes, you win the game. But if five heroes make it through and each one of them gives you a wound, you lose. Alright, so in a typical game, you'd separate all the cards, their like cards into each like pile. Okay, and then you're going to customize the decks so that you have the right amount of cards for players. So you'll have more cards for more players, less cards for less players. Each person then selects a boss, alright, at random. You don't get to pick the one you want. And then you'll move in order depending on each character's XP. Each boss has a different amount of XP and you go in XP order. Each player is then dealt room cards and spell cards. And now each player begins to build their dungeons by adding different monsters and adding different traps. The heroes and epic heroes are then released into the world. And what you want to do is you want to lure those heroes into your dungeon and of course find a way to kill them before they reach the boss. And then if you're successful at that, of course, then you score a point there. But if you're not successful at that and the hero gets through all the way to you, you are inflicted one wound. Now, I don't know if you're familiar with Dungeon Lords by Chex Games. So it's similar to that. It's a dungeon building game. However, this game is a lot easier and a lot simpler to play. Alright, so expansion packs. Are there other things out there that would kind of take this to the next level? Yes, there's Boss Monster 2. Boss Monster 2 can be played both ways. It can be played as a standalone game by itself or it can be played as an expansion. Now, I've heard positives to both. This is the one that I don't have, but people have said that they actually... Some people actually say they prefer 2 to the original, saying that it's more fun. And other people have said that they enjoyed adding those cards to the original so that it became an expansion pack. But there's another true expansion out there called Tools of a Hero Kind. And in that, there are extra cards that you can put into your deck as well as new cards that you can add to your deck tools. Alright, so is it fun? Right at the end of the day, that's what we all want to know, is this a fun game? So it's a fun, basic game for people who've never done a dungeon building game before. There's no deck building, right? There's no deck building that you're using all the cards that come in the deck. You know, you are playing against other people, but you're just trying to win before they win. There's not a lot of interaction where you're like taking your cards and you're attacking their cards. You know, you're not really playing against them. There are some strategy moves where you can inflict some damage on them or play against them, but that's not really the bulk of the game. The bulk of the game is you making your dungeon as the characters go through your dungeon. So each person is kind of doing their own thing so it feels a little solitary-y. And while you're doing your part, everyone's kind of watching you play. So you could almost play by yourself, but you can't obviously. But they do have really fun cards. It is easy to learn how to play this and it is easy to play. A lot of the times I'm playing with my 10-year-old son, so we enjoy things like this. And so this is definitely a fun diversion for us. I know there's a lot of other people in my family that enjoy this game as well. Alright, so that's my review of Boss Monster, the dungeon building card game from Johnny and Chris O'Neill at BrotherWise Games. Like I said, go visit them at BWiseGames.com or you can just simply pick this game up at Amazon for 19 bucks. Thanks, and I'll see you next time. Bye. Thanks for watching my video as a special treat for you because this is game themed. You get bonus content. Yep, bonus content for watching this all the way to the end, so good on you. If you're new to my channel, just know that typically I review playing cards and magic tricks. And if you're a subscriber, you'll get special information every single month when I do giveaways. I give away a deck of playing cards every single month, sometimes two, sometimes three. So make sure you subscribe, hit that like button, and I'll see you next time. Thanks for watching.