Monumental: Core Box
Description
The fate of your civilization rests upon your shoulders!
Monumental is a massive board game for 1 to 4 players (5 with the Lost Kingdoms expansion), where you will compete with your opponents to lead your prestigious civilization through the ages.
The game starts at the Classic era (antiquity). Through the ages, you will have to assemble your military forces to conquer new territories, focus on scientific research to enhance your civilization’s abilities, build breathtaking wonders to harness their unique advantages, and develop your cultural policies to guide your people to victory.
Each civilization has its own deck of cards, each with its own cultural specificities, as well as an army to explore and conquer the provinces on the board. Each turn, you’ll be able to draw and activate cards, combining their effects to develop your civilization and conquer the world. But you’re not alone in this race, as your opponents will try and outrun you as quickly as they can. A game of Monumental is played over different eras, each of them featuring new cards to acquire and use.
At the very beginning of the game, you control a small remote city whose name gets lost in the wind. Yet by the end of the game, thanks to the many cards that you will acquire, all will admire your monumental city, the jewel of a glorious nation!
As war is often inevitable, you’ll need to lead your troops to combat when necessary. Fight barbarians or protohistoric Free Cities to loot their resources, then wage war against your opponents! Each civilization comes with its finely sculpted set of units for you to deploy on a richly illustrated modular game board and to take control of the world.
Suffice it to say that the cards that you will buy and activate in your city are the key to victory. You must find the proper balance between all different card types, as each of them will give you special advantages. Managing your deck and anticipating cards to come will also give you the upper hand over your opponents.
In Monumental, the main gaming mechanic is called CROSS-TAPPING. To activate your cards, you must pick a line and a column in your city, and activate (tap) cards from this line and column (5 cards out of 9). You may pick any line and any column.
This innovative mechanic introduces a whole new way of planning and using the cards of your deck from turn to turn as optimization and combos are at the heart of the game.
Before the first turn, randomly draw 9 cards from your deck (out of 14 at the beginning of the game) and place them on the table in a square of 3x3 cards: this is your city. Over the course of the game, your city will evolve. You’ll start with basic buildings with limited interaction, but by the end of the game, your city will be full of advanced buildings, breathtaking wonders, and immense Knowledge.
However, although your city is comprised of 9 cards, you may only activate 5 of them per turn. This will lead to difficult choices, as all cards can be useful. Your citizens cannot work all the time though, and you’ll need to allow them to rest.
Deck building and cross-tapping are the basis of what makes Monumental a fun, innovative and infinitely replayable game!
