We recently shared that Steamforged Games are following up their awesome Monster Hunter World: The Board Game with a Kickstarter for Monster Hunter World Iceborne: The Board Game, based on the DLC for the Monster Hunter World video game. This is a standalone board game that takes everything that was ace about the original Monster Hunter World, sends it into the frozen wastes and adds some really cool new features such as Turf Wars featuring a second monster wandering into the middle of a hunt!

Last week we were invited by Steamforged Games to a secret press event to check out the new game, learn about the Kickstarter and get to play the game itself! We’ll be sharing more on this soon (In particular make sure to tune into our next podcast on Monday to learn about our thoughts on the gameplay)

Today we’re sharing the interview we did with Jamie Perkins (Product owner for Monster Hunter World) as we learn about the creation and gameplay of the board game, what is new in Iceborne, which monsters are joining the hunt and what everyone has to look forward to from the upcoming Kickstarter!

Check out the video above to learn more, as we chat about all things Monster Hunter World Iceborne.

If you are interested in checking out the new game then make sure to check out the Kickstarter page – The campaign starts on May 18th, but you can sign up now to be notified when it goes live.

The game features some gorgeous miniatures, exciting gameplay and nerve wracking cooperative action as you and your fellow hunters work together against the odds to try and defeat deadly monsters. We’re really looking forward to getting our teeth into the game again and fine tuning our monster hunting strategies!

We had an ace narrative moment at the start of our search for the Monster when the team ran through an example of the “pick your own adventure” style intro to each scenario. These narrative elements talk your through your journey to the monster you are hunting, and give you a couple of different options. You are following the tracks, but you hear a roar in the distance? What do you do? Carry on along your path or go and check it out? Each of these branches lead to more branches that eventually lead to game impacting moments. Your decisions during these sections could cause new cards to be added to the time deck (A resource that is always ticking down and has a nasty habit of making bad things happen to the group) – in the demo game we had the outcome of the narrative event caused a Turf War card to be shuffled into the deck, meaning that at the back of our minds we knew that at some point a second monster could turn up and change the dynamic of the board completely!

Speaking of the monsters, they really are a challenge that really captures the feeling of a video game “boss fight” – you as a party slowly whittle down the health of the monster while managing your own limited resources, teaming up together to target weak points on the monster, break their armour and try and optimise damage to win the day

Iconic items from Iceborne such as the Clutch Claw are also in the game, allowing you to zip across the playing field and open up the monster to some massive damage spikes if you have a well prepped hand of cards.

There’s some really cool features within the game, such as the fact that you have a rough idea of what the monster is going to do next (Attack the closest or furthest hunter for example) but you are never fully in control – maybe you have read the signs incorrectly and the monster will change track into the person who you really didn’t want to be attacked, or maybe he will get to act twice without your party able to react! What’s more, once multiple monsters are on the board they also see each other as enemies, leading to some really tactical play where you might want the monsters to fight each other for a couple of turns to but yourselves some breathing room – but be careful, those monsters can do a lot of collateral damage to the surrounding area and you really don’t want to be caught between them!

What’s really fun about the game is the fluid nature of the turns. Essentially each turn the monster will take an action, and that action card will then determine how many of the hunters get to act, and how many cards they get to play. One turn perhaps the entire party can act and play 3 cards each, but then the next turn it might be a single player getting to play just 2 cards.

This adds to the feeling of battling against against an unpredictable creature who could strike down the entire party with a single blow. With the clock running down, and the creature getting more and more dangerous, every action is important and a false step could lead to doom for the hunt!

There’s a really clever mechanic with the stamina track. This is a resource that all players have to manage in order to survive the hunts – essentially this represents what your hunter can do before they are exhausted. Every card that is played (With some exceptions due to special abilities and gear) are placed either face up or face down on the track. Once the track is filled that player is not able to make any actions. Cards are removed from the track every turn, and some items can be used to clear the track entirely – but you dont want to get caught needing to play 3 cards in order to escape from an angry monster when there are only 2 spaces left on your track!

This quickly led to our party having to work together in order to manage this resource and make sure no one hunter was left behind. Due to the fact that every member of the hunt had to take a turn before anyone else is able to make another one also meant that there was no danger of a single player “taking over” and leading the hunt themselves – each player was important and an integral part of the game.

For those who already have Monster Hunter World The Board Game, monsters and hunters are cross compatible across both games, giving you lots of new creatures to hunt! the Kickstarter also has lots of new monsters and hunters coming in expansions outside the core box to add more challenges and perils in your hunts.

We’ll be sharing more information about Monster Hunter World Iceborne on the road to release, so stay tuned to the site for more!

Massive thanks to Steamforged Games for inviting us down to the event! Their Kickstarter launches on the 18th of May and you can check it out here

Published by Matt Crowther

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