Monster Taiwan （妖怪台湾）

Sometimes when I buy games, in particular those from lesser known brands, I try to guess how experienced the game designer and publisher are based on the game design, the rulebook, and the overall production of the game. Yes, sorry, I’m judging people. With big brands, you can always expect a high level of polish, because these guys are experienced. With lesser known or unknown brands, it’s like doing a lucky draw. Sometimes you find interesting and bold ideas. Sometimes you question the design decisions. Sometimes you see tell-tale signs of inexperience. Sometimes it is the thrill of this kind of lucky draw that makes me buy a game.

Monster Taiwan is from Taiwanese publisher TWOPLUS and they have been around since 2008. This is a game with much local flavour. It introduces many monsters and ghosts from Taiwanese folklore. The monsters are not necessarily malevolent. Sometimes people use them to do evil, but sometimes people use them for good. As human society advances, we believe less and less in monsters and ghosts. When humankind gradually interacts less with the monsters, they become forgotten. This is the key message in the game. I feel the monsters symbolise part of traditional culture that is becoming lost. 

Some of the monsters in the game

This is a dice drafting game played over four rounds (seasons). Every season there are five monsters accessible to players. If you activate them, you get to use their powers. You can draft dice to place directly on monsters. Monsters have limited slots for dice and the slots require dice of specific values. You can also draft dice to your own player board, which is your village. At the end of every round, there is a strength comparison and scoring for all three terrain types in villages. Another thing you can do is spend dice from your village to activate a monster. This weakens your village, and also it’s a two step process compared to directly placing a die from the dice pool to a monster, but there is one important benefit you gain when you do this. You get to claim one of only two tokens associated with that monster. Tokens will be worth points at the end of the game if the monsters are not forgotten. 

The dice tray has slots for five monsters around it.

The player board

If die colour matches terrain, score 1 point.

This monster reduces green die values

This monster steals a victory point

At the end of every round, two monsters least activated will be forgotten, i.e. discarded and replaced. Their tokens are worth nothing now. Monsters which survive all four rounds are worth many points. Those which only appear in the final round are worth much less. 

The markers for the four seasons indicate how long a monster has been in play.

Monster tokens

Another way you score points is by fulfilling missions. They require that you have dice in your village of specific values on specific terrain. Some missions instead of giving points grant an additional ability. For example the rightmost mission above gives you a virtual brown or blue die of value 1. You can use this virtual die to fulfil future missions. 

When contemplating whether to buy the game, it was partly the dice which made me decide to buy. I thought in the worst case if I disliked the game, I could try to design my own game using these pretty dice. 

I did a two player game with Chen Rui. I find the game a little problematic with just two. This is because every monster has two tokens. If we both activate the same valuable monster, then we neutralise each other, and this aspect of the competition becomes pretty boring. You always make sure you invest in any monster which looks like it will survive. Maybe with two players one token needs to be removed. Then the players will have meaningful competition trying to disqualify monsters the other player has invested in. 

Overall, I didn't find the game interesting. You try to score some points by fulfilling missions. You try to populate the different terrains in your village more than your opponents. You want to activate monsters to attack your opponents, to help yourself, or to invest in them and keep them in play. This is a perfect information game, since everything is open information.