Monster Hunter World: The Board Game Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Monster Hunter World, a boss battler board game published by Steamforged Games. Based on the video game of the same name, Monster Hunter World will have you fighting giant monsters.

I grew up playing a lot of video games and, especially early on, many of them weren’t great. Dungeons and Dragons and early video games emulating D&D, like Temple of Apshai, were dungeon crawlers. Then someone along the way realized that slaughtering 20 goblins and eight skeletons for 7 silver pieces wasn’t as fun as just fighting the dragon at the end of the dungeon and thus the boss battlers entered the world.

Monster Hunter World is a board game based on the video game of the same name that’s a boss battler that pits one to four hunters against a monster in a world. Each battle takes one to two hours.

Each hunt begins with a gathering phase where you jot down materials you find as there’s a small choose-your-own adventure section. Depending on the number of scoutflies you have, shuffle the card the book tells you into the monster’s action deck.

The hunt begins with the monster’s activation where they flip over a card and perform its action. These include moving towards or away from heroes, melee or ranged attacks, inflicting physical or elemental damage, and applying various statuses. This card also informs how many hero turns you’ll get and how many attack cards can be played face up on the stamina board each turn.

On a hero’s turn, they can take preparation or combat actions.

Preparation actions include:
• Walking to an adjacent node
• Using a potion to clear your stamina board and restore all your health
• Sprint to another node at a cost of one face-down card on your stamina board for each node traversed
• Sharpen your weapon which shuffles your damage deck.
Combat actions are:
• Walk and Spring as above
• Play an attack card

Players have a hand of five attack cards that have various attacks and conditions they’ll apply to the boss. They also include a number that