Minion Hunter
| Players | 1 to 6 |
|---|---|
| Age range | 12 and up |
| Setup time | 5 - 10 minutes |
| Playing time | 45 - 90 minutes |
| Random chance | Medium |
| Skill(s) required | Cooperative gaming |
Minion Hunter is a board game originally released in 1992 by Game Designers' Workshop in conjunction with their Dark Conspiracy Role Playing Game. The game is designed to encourage the players to work together to stall and/or defeat the plans of four Dark Minion races as a primary goal, with the individual advancement of the players as a secondary objective.
Components
The game consists of numerous pieces: a game board, six player markers, four minion markers, a stack of Plot cards, a collection of equipment cards, several denominations of currency, and a pad of character sheets. An additional six sided and ten sided die are required for play.
The game board is a stylized map of the United States as presented in the Dark Conspiracy sourcebook. The metroplexes are highlighted, as are routes of travel between them. Around the edge of the board is a "Career Track" that gives players opportunities to acquire equipment and to boost stats. Between the bottom of the US map and the career track is another scale numbered 1 through 20 used to track how advanced the Minion Plots are becoming. There is also a three space "Hospital" track that is used to track the healing of characters after a failed encounter. Finally there is also a short scale used to advance Plot cards until they mature.
The six player markers have pictures of various Minion Hunters with various color schemes to help further differentiate them. Players may pick whatever marker they would like to use.
The four minion markers depict four minion races well known to regular players of the Dark Conspiracy RPG. These markers are used to track the advancement of each race's world domination plots.
Each plot card lists a metroplex on the back and either a creature, random encounter, or red herring on the front.
The equipment cards come in either a blue background (to indicate rare or empathic items) or a white background, and each item has a listed cost and details any stat or movement bonuses it provides.
The currency comes in denominations of 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 500, 1000, 5000, 10000, and 50000, and is used for a variety of purposes throughout the game.
The Character Sheets provide a space for the character name and boxes in which to track the four stats in the game: Combat, Contacts, Stalking, and Empathy. All of these stats start at 1 and increase or decrease over the course of the game.
Gameplay
All cards are shuffled separately and placed on the appropriately marked spaces on the board. Twelve cards are randomly pulled from the Seventy-two card Plot deck and removed from the game to produce some variation in what plots may occur. Each player selects a corner space of the Career Track to begin on. This is their "Starting Career" and provides them with base modifiers for their stats and, in some cases, some starting equipment. The objective of the players is to develop their character statistics to a point that they can combat the Minion Plots and prevent them from reaching fruition.
Each player turn a facedown Plot card is slid one space along the Plot track. Players have until it reaches the end of the track to get their marker to the specified city. If a player is in a metroplex specified by a Plot card they may opt to "encounter" the card, which causes it to be flipped face up. The player may then choose to fight or retreat from the encounter if it is a dark minion or other encounter. If a Plot card reaches the end of the Plot track it is flipped face-up and if one of the four Minion races is specified, their marker will be moved a fixed number of spaces on the Minion Track.
If the players are able to burn through the Plot Deck before any of the four Minion markers travels the length of the Minion Track they win, with the winner among the players determined by who has earned the most "Fame", earned by defeating Plot cards. If any of the Minion markers makes it to the end of the track before the Plot Deck is depleted, that Minion race wins and all players lose as the world is plunged into darkness and chaos forever.
Additional Material
Shortly after the first edition release of Minion Hunter, GDW released an expansion pack for the game called Minion Nation. This expansion pack included numerous additional and new equipment and greatly expanded rules for random encounters while traveling both on the Dark America map and within the proto-dimensions. After the release of Minion Nation, all further sales of Minion Hunter included the expansion set.
Notes of Interest
There are several oddities about the play and setup of the many aspects of this game. One of the most notable is that there is not enough money included with the game to purchase some of the items that are provided within the Equipment deck. These three items (Lockheed Javelin Jet, Voyager Helicopter, and Distorter) all have listed costs of over $1000000, when the game only provides $664,000 in cash. There is no statement in the rules that says that you are only limited to using the money provided however.
In the Minion Hunter supplement there are randomization rules that supplant the built in limitations of the Plot deck. The way the Plot deck is configured it is possible to remove enough cards during the random draw to make it impossible for one or more of the minion races to win. Using the random rules, a roll is made against a table for each plot card when it is first encountered. This causes there to be no real limit to the amount of plot points that could be drawn for each minion race.
The Distorter is the only item in the game that cannot be purchased with the material in the box. Both of the other big ticket items offer an alternative stat test to acquire the card, but the Distorter does not.