Monsters & Maidens – Review

Designer: Fred MacKenzie

Artist: Royce Mclean

Publisher: Clever Mojo Games and Game Salute

Number of Players: 2-6 

Duration: 10 mins

Monsters & Maidens is a quick game, with not many components, and I really am a fan of quick games. There really isn’t much to this game at all to be honest, which is why it’s so surprising that it’s so darn fun to sit and play.

The ideas is that the Maidens are out there, and the hero (you can choose a lady or a gent hero) needs to rescue them without the Monsters getting in the way and recapturing the Maidens.

You get nine really nice custom dice, which are split into three colours. Each colour favours either Heroes, Maidens or those dastardly Monsters. Every Maiden you roll gets automatically rescued (for now), and the remaining dice go into battle with each other. So say you roll 4 Maidens, 3 Monsters and 2 Heroes. The four Maidens are safe (for now, YAY!) the remaining dice go to battle the first two Monster and Hero dice cancel each other out, the other Monster though captures one of those 4 Maidens you already rescued. You can then try and have another go with the non-Maiden dice and hope to either role more Hero than Monster dice to try and get that Maiden back or just try and get more Maiden dice until you either are forced to stop or think you have pushed your luck as far as you can.

Capture those Maidens!

It’s fun and to be honest quite addictive, the rule book gives you a method for scoring which works just about OK. We made a quick house rule and decided to play to a set number of rounds and most points wins. My one major quibble with this game is what doesn’t come in the box. Scoring chips! The Kickstarter page which is where this game started, originally had scoring meeples for the deluxe package, somewhere between Kickstarter and retail these meeples disappeared and there is no deluxe pack to purchase from stores. Which leaves you with two options, score on paper (which is what they tell you to do in the rule book)  which in my opinion takes some of the quick rapid fun out of a game, or taking tokens from another game you own (which we did) to keep track of scores.

If you are looking for something which is addictive and quick to play this is for you, there is very little strategy involved other than knowing when enough rolling is enough and also which dice you have left to roll as they favour different characters. So this may not be for all the hard core gamers out there. However, this would work really well as a game opener on Board game night just to ease everyone into the more challenging games that are to follow, or as an intro for new players and kids. Which is my no means a bad thing.

Custom Dice!