Playing – Here to Slay

HERE TO SLAY

2 to 6 players
Type: Card Drawing / Munchkin, Competitive

How to play / win
Play cards to recruit additional heroes, attempt to counter other players, or defeat monsters. You win once you have either defeated three monsters or recruited all six classes of heroes into your adventuring party.

Almost every action except for fighting monsters can be Challenged if you have the Challenge card and can roll equal or better to the player trying to play the card or use an ability. Rolls can be modified by magic items, cards played by you or other players, or by special abilities of your heroes or monsters you have defeated. There is a great deal of opportunity to interact / interfere with other players if you have the cards for it.

What I liked
The art work is really cute and the abilities really inspire things to do in a fantasy TTRPG. If board games featuring cute animal adventurers are your thing, check out ROOT (the board game or even the TTRPG) or Bunny Kingdom or even My Little Scythe (the junior version of the very crunchy Scythe).

Like Munchkin there are many cool items and abilities and it’s hard to resist calling out the names of your heroes as you call them and their abilities into play, not unlike summoning a Pokemon.

With this I took issue …
There is all kinds of potential swing in this game’s heavy reliance on the roll of 2d6 and other player’s being able to affect that roll. Attempts at a long term strategy can be quickly thwarted if you can’t manage to roll over a 6 due to a) bad luck b) other player’s dropping modifier cards on you or c) another player has played a Challenge card on your attempt to play a hero or activate an ability.

Like Munchkin, there is the inevitable pile on against the leading player that will continue until all the modifier and Challenge cards are used up and one player makes it too victory. Depending on how things play out, it can make for a drawn out game due to bad dice rolls and opponent interference making it nigh impossible to get to that final victory condition.

Finally, there is a lot to try to recall or read at a distance (depending on size of table and quality of eyes) to take in all the abilities of all the heroes and monsters in play (there’s a wiki of all the cards). In short, if you like cut throat card games or the mechanics of the Munchkin card game but want something with a bit more crunch, you will probably enjoy ‘Here to Slay’.

*Inspired by the excellent podcast, “Into the Meepleverse” and their discussion of gaming resolutions for the year, I decided to make some resolutions of my own including trying to play at least ten boardgames new to me.