Monster Pit Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Monster Pit, a defense board game published by Elzra Games. In Monster Pit, players are working to stop the monster from destroying the citadel.

Doom approaches the citadel. It’s time to rally your forces and prepare your defense. Monster Pit is a new tableau building, dice drafting, and hand management set in the world of Catacombs from Elzra Games. That’s right, the beloved token flicker now has a new game in its universe.

Monster Pit isn’t a tower defense game though. Instead, you’ll be recruiting troops and heroes to aid you in slaying the monster and his host of creatures. Can you protect the citadel from certain doom? Time to find out.

Monster Pit is a game that, once you get the flow down, will go smoothly. But it does have a bit of a learning curve. It can also be played either cooperatively or 1 vs Many. For the purposes of this review, we’ll focus on the cooperative version.

Each game starts with the players selecting their unique captain, and then deciding which monster they will want to take on (5 in the base game). Each monster has its own special powers and skills, so expect games to play a little differently depending on who you are fighting.

Once setup, each round takes place in 4 phases:

That’s the basics of the game. There are lots of little things I didn’t cover, like quests, special buildings, unit powers, etc… But the round structure is easy to understand. The game ends when either the players have killed the monster, or the monster has reached the end of its track and crushes the citadel.

Despite the quick summary above, Monster Pit definitely has a bit of a learning curve. Part of it is that the game is somewhat unique, but the other part comes from having to explain what each of the