Murder Hobo Tavern Brawl
- Board's Eye View
- 15 hours ago
- 2 min read
Designed by Steve Wetherell, with art by John Luther Davis, Murder Hobo Tavern Brawl (MHTB) is a light, tongue-in-cheek small-box card game from Authors&Dragons where you're battling to be the last one standing. The 2-6 players all draw cards each turn from the same draw deck, and there's no drafting by choice or deckbuilding so success depends on anticipating what your opponent(s) are likely to do and making optimal use of the cards you draw.
Players each start off with two character cards. These are humorous takes on the tropes from Dungeons & Dragons and most other fantasy games. Your initial character cards will be deployed for their defence values but characters you subsequently draw can be used similarly for defence or for the special power or ability set out in their card text or to make an attack. For the latter, the character will use weapon or spell cards, but not all characters can make use of all weapon or spell cards so you'll need to ready the right combination of cards. And just as video game battlers allow for combo moves so too attacks in MHTB can be stacked for more powerful attacks.
When you're attacked by another player you have to be able to defend against the damage they've dished out. That will mean sacrificing character cards you've allocated for defence. And MHTB is a game more than any other where defence is crucial. There are no hit points to keep track of or to wear down in this game: if you take even a single point of damage that you aren't able to defend against then it's Game Over. You're out of the game; better luck next time!
We've particularly enjoyed MHTB as a brisk two-player head-to-head dueller that you can play in just 10-15 minutes. That's not to say there's a problem with multi-player contests but the game can turn out to be quite chaotic as you increase the number of players; and there's player elimination so a player who gets ganged up on early in the game, or who just suffers some unlucky card draws, can find themselves sitting out while others battle on.
