Monumental Review A Large Scale Civilization Board Game.

- Hello, welcome back to the channel, today we are having a review on monumental which I just did a tutorial on. If you're interested in seeing a how to play version of that But today I'm gonna tell you what the game is about, what I think it can improve on and of course and on a good note by talking about my favorite aspects of monumental.

Now in monumental you get to pick between five different civilizations to play as. You get to choose between Japan, China, Denmark, Greece and Egypt. They're all unique in that for at least the deluxe version, you get different warlord miniatures along with the cosmetics.

They also have their own distinct warlord cards, their own city cards, and also the cultural policy cards which kind of act like abilities as you progress through the game. Now on your turn you get to choose between a bunch of different actions. You can conquer new territory, you can develop your city more, you can use our explorers to gather different resources on the map, and you even get to make these super grand landmarks or wonders that you can develop in your city.

And then you keep going and going because time is measured by the progression you've made in your era deck. So this will dictate when the game ends. As soon as you draw the last card, and that will trigger the end game. And then in terms of endgame scoring, you score points for how developed your city is, and for how much area that you control.

There's also bonus points you get from different achievements, like from having the most territories controlled or the most of a certain card. All that will give you bonus points in the end as well. Okay, so let's talk about what I think the game can improve on.

So every turn takes about seven to 15 minutes and it varies so much because sometimes your turns will change drastically depending on how many resources that you've gained from the previous turn. I think turn length is something that can definitely be improved on.

In the game, your turn is determined by how many resources that you can spend and how many actions you can take depending on those set resources, but I feel like the pacing of the game can definitely improve a lot. If everyone is limited to just one action, I think that would crank the pacing a lot, and make a lot more fun to play.

As big of a scale as monumental is, I still think it's best, probably with two players. Because of the length of the game. There are just so many actions that you can choose from as you are playing your turn. Now secondly, when I first ran through the game, I was having so much fun like developing city, and conquering new territories and performing all of these tons of actions, and it feels like you've built up all of this momentum to get to the end game and then the income conditions I thought were a little bit underwhelming.

I mean like I mentioned earlier, you gain points for how much territory you control and how developed your city is and how many of the certain card that you have. But I think the way you score points can be a lot more fun and a lot more interesting. If it is something that you monitor throughout the whole game.

I know the game gives you like a calendar so you can track your points throughout the game, but it's not something that's necessary. So I think instead of just scoring points, based on how many cards you have, and how many territories you control, I feel you can have a lot more playing interaction from changing the endgame conditions or at least the Victory conditions, maybe if the winning condition was to be the first person to control half of the provinces that would increase way more playing interaction because now you're competing to gain control over all these territories.

Even though it's just like a rough example, I feel like doing that would scale up the intensity of monumental and feel like it would match the scale of the game itself a lot more than to assign different points just based on how many cards you have. Now, thoroughly, this kind of goes along the lines with endgame conditions, and with player interactions, like I've just mentioned, but with all of these civilizations that you can choose from and ones that you can play as I feel like there's a lot less playing interaction than I would have expected.

Most of it comes from you conquering a province that has another player and then sending their characters back to their capital city. And then fourthly, there's also kind of a diminishing role for explorers. You start off with having them scavenge different provinces for different resources and for like the market tiles.

But as soon as all those resources are gone in the map, they no longer serve a purpose or they no longer have a role in the game. I was a little bit confused to playing with a unit that progressively loses its role as you are playing the game but they do expand on their role a little bit when you include the monster expansion.

So let's get started by talking about my favorite aspects of monumental. Okay, so highlights of the game first off, with the deluxe version that I have here, the game looks so, so good. From like the size of the warlords to all the details and all the miniatures to all like the little bricks that have been sculpted out in the outposts.

Like Come on you've seen the B roll. This is one good looking game. The cards, I'm a sucker for this type of material. I feel like it's linen or something very, very texturized it's not something that bends easily. The cards aren't flimsy or anything which is definitely what my pet peeves, because very very is dirty.

I love this whole texture. I think it's linen, Is it linen? Basically they don't wop like normal card stock. I don't know if card quality is something that you look for when you're looking to buy a new game or play a new game, but I just thought I'd throw that right in there.

Next up, artwork, this is one of the reasons why I was drawn into the game in the first place. It was definitely because of the artwork. The artwork is so nice and is so vibrant from like the lake tiles to the mountain tiles to all the unique artwork drawn for all the warlords that included in the game.

It really adds a unique character and unique dynamic for every civilization that you're playing because of the artwork alone from all the cards that you get to choose from. And yeah, so when you have nice artwork, especially since I'm a very visual person, it really elevates to your playing experience.

Now this takes me to my next point with the base game overall, it's fun, it's really, really fun. There are a few mechanics that I think can be tightened in order to really elevate the experience of playing monumental, but where I think the game shines is with all of the variants and expansions as of this recording.

I say that because I think they have an expansion plan coming up for the summer. But you can add monsters to the game where they'll pop up in different provinces and that's when explores have, a better role. I know look, with the Windigo Wendigo. The Wendigo, that's when explorers have to be present on that tile in order to defeat that monster.

So that definitely addresses the role of explorers a little bit more. For the heroes, they'll pop up in your development display. So those are heroes that you can buy and purchase. And I think that's super cool how they're like heroes of history, and they have powers that are representative of what they were known for what they're famous for.

So monsters, heroes, and with the last kingdoms expansion that have a bunch more new civilizations, it definitely increases the re playability of monumental overall. And I think overall, this is one of the best aspects of monumental, it's because of all the different civilizations that you can choose from when playing the game.

Even when it comes down to the map itself. Like yes, the game does give you a lot of pre constructed maps depending on how many players that you are playing with, but you can make your own map and that adds a ton of re playability on top of the monsters on top of the heroes on top of the lost Kingdoms expansion, all that definitely cranks up how often you can play this game and my favorite, favorite Part about monumental, the reason why I really liked playing it so much was because of the momentum that you're building, from every turn.

You can start off with just like one military resource on your first turn. And then all of a sudden, as you are laying the seeds in the foundation for your next turn, all of a sudden one becomes like four resources, and now you have multiplied the amount of things that you can do on your next turn.

And I love that because if you ever feel like you're falling behind, know that your next turn, can change drastically, and you will have a lot more options to play and keep up and even progress further than your opponent, friend, family other player.

Personally, I would go with opponent so if you ever feel like you are falling behind in the game, don't worry because your turns can change drastically. Like for example, Miyamoto, who is the hero for Japan, his ability allows you to gain two science resources as you conquer province for the first time.

And one of the actions that you can choose in the game is to advance in science by spending two science resources, so that gives you a lot of options to make some combos in the game. And then let's say you just bought a really hefty heavy card from the development display that cost a bunch of resources.

You take that card and put it on top of your deck. Combine that with Miyamoto's ability, and then you advance scientific resources. Now, you could actually... that card right away. So the game gives a lot of options for developing different combos, and there's a lot of different ways you can approach the game as you play.

So I really like how you can experiment with all the combos and the momentum you're building up as you go from turn to turn. So overall, I definitely think that monumental can improve on pacing and on Play interaction, but it's still a super fun highly replayable game overall, with their expansion coming out this summer it's super exciting.

They already have a ton of civilizations available from both the base game and lost kingdoms, but now they're adding another expansion which is very, very exciting for this summer's release. And those are my thoughts on monumental. So if you've played monumental, what do you think about it? How do you feel about this game? I'd love to hear your thoughts down in the comments below.