Monster Mayhem

By: John Baggett

Wednesday May 21, 2008

Ah, good old B-movies.  Bad makeup, poor lighting, unintelligible plot and goofy monsters.  Those where the days. Reminisce about those silver screen creepies with the classical movie monster based game, Monster Mayhem.  The game has been out for over a year now, but I've just gotten my hands on it and reliving a black and white past.

In Monster Mayhem you play as one of five classical creep shows, a vampire, a werewolf, a zombie, a mummy, or a poltergeist. The object of the game is to eat the innocent folks of the city, gaining more Craving Points than your opponents by the end of the fifth turn. Craving points are earned by capturing the victims on the board. Each victim has differing ratings in five different categories: Blood, Bone, Brains, Organs, and Spirit.  Each monster is after one of those succulent components of the victims and earns the amount that pertains to their particular craving according to the cards that represent the victim.

The board is a large hexmap and tiles are placed randomly around the board at the beginning of the game.  These tiles can either represent the places where a specific monster starts, or where the tasty victims do.  It is your tasks, as a monster craving for the sweet bits inside of people, to run them down and devour.  Each monster has a card that shows the monsters specific advantage and disadvantage.  For example, the werewolf's advantage is that he can howl and keep a victim from moving, and his disadvantage is that he can be forced to fight a victim and end up killing his target instead, earning him less Craving points.  To be honest, the advantages/disadvantages are really not that helpful or hindering. It is just a slight change to make the characters different.

The victims are moved randomly by drawing from a deck of Escape cards.  The color of the card corresponds to a directional compass, and the victim is moved the number of spaces marked on the card. This can sometime lead to amusing situations where a victim runs into a monster, the monster fails to capture the victim and it flees again, running to the edge of the board and turning right back into the face of the beast.  You are also allowed to attack the other plays, sending them shambling into the night as you take Craving Points from them.  Event cards, which you keep in your hand, can give you small bonuses to dice rolls, trigger a monster's weakness, or various other effects.  Things can get competitive as any other board game.  Threatening to drop a Trigger Weakness card on your opponent if they eat your victim, helping victims win combat, tossing hunters at you opponent, etc.

What is truly nice about Monster Mayhem is that is only lasts five turns.  This forces players to take action quickly and makes each choice of movement and card play important.  Gameplay is fast enough that you can play it and not be exhausted afterwards like wuth games like Risk or Monopoly.  It would have been nice if the monsters had a bit more distinction to them, or the Event cards were a bit more dramatic with their effects, but it is a fun solid game that can easily be enjoyed with a group of friends.