Training Simulations: Nightmare Before Christmas Munchkin Game from USAopoly

The characters from Disney Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas are on the move. This time they are coming to the MUNCHKIN game universe as a stand-alone card game. “What is MUNCHKIN?”, you say. I’m glad you asked.

MUNCHKIN is a popular card game developed and produced by Steve Jackson Games. Originally based on the tropes of fantasy tabletop role playing games, MUNCHKIN pits players against each other by seeing which can be the first to get their character to reach level 10. Players earn levels by kicking in (dungeon) Doors, killing Monsters, and taking their Treasure. Play is very simple and easy to follow. Where things get interesting is when other players interfere with your process.

Players can play Curses (a type of card) on each other, add Wandering Monsters to a combat, or beef up the strength of a monster being faced by another player in order to make the character Run Away. If that happens, the Monster the character was facing gets to do Bad Stuff to the character, forcing them to lose Treasure, a level, or even kill the character. Character death allows other players to ‘loot the body’ which means they get to steal the character’s stuff. The dead character does get to keep any levels and Citizenship(s) they hold.

Wait, you want to know about Citizenships? Curious devil, you. Ok, this is where the game shines as a The Nightmare Before Christmas product. Each character can belong to one or two Towns: Halloween Town, Christmas Town, Easter Town, or Thanksgiving Town. Being a Citizen of a Town grants the character special abilities within the game. For example, Citizens of Christmas Town can discard an item card worth 300 gold pieces or more and automatically run away from a Monster.

Speaking of monsters (I knew you were curious), monsters are represented by the various characters of The Nightmare Before Christmas story, including Oogie Boogie, Doctor Finkelstein, and Lock, Shock, & Barrel. These monsters range in level from 1 (Corpse Boy), easiest to defeat, to 20 (Oogie Boogie), the most challenging. Characters defeat monsters when the character’s strength, determined by adding their level, any items at their disposal, is greater than the monster’s strength, determined by adding the monster’s level plus any modifier card (remember those cards I mentioned that other players could add to monsters to make them tougher to defeat? Yeah, those.). If a monster is defeated the character can loot the room for Treasure.

Treasure? Patience, I was just getting to that. Treasure is any item that can aid characters in combat. In some cases you can only have one type of treasure in play at a time. For example, one Treasure type is Footgear. Likewise for Headgear, and Armor. A character can even have a Ride, like a spiffy +3 Bathtub, that will help the character Run Away.

The art on the cards is beautifully rendered in the style of the movie. Each character, item, and element of the movie is easily recognizable. The cards are also color-coded for easy separation into Treasure (white) and Door (black) cards. The game come with 168 cards and 1 very cool red die. The game box interior is divided into quadrants for easy storage of cards and die as well as being decked out with even more cool art.

This product is very faithful to the spirit (get it?) of The Nightmare Before Christmas as well as a great expansion for MUNCHKIN. Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention that you can add this set of cards to any existing set of MUNCHKIN cards. Yeah, you can. How epic is that? Pretty epic. That’s why I give the MUNCHKIN The Nightmare Before Christmas developed by USAopoly 5 out of 5 skulls!

The Nightmare Before Christmas Munchkin Game retails for 24.99 and is fun for the whole family.

-JJ Lanza