So there are times when I’m playing games that It takes me a few plays to get into a game and other times that I immediately say: “this is a winner,” 5 Minute Dungeon is definitely the latter. I knew the first time I played it that I had to own it and I gushed about it the first time it was on Kickstarter. Now it’s back with an expansion and a chance for anyone who missed the first game to get in on all of the exclusives.
When i got the first game in from the Kickstarter the box seemed a little bigger than it needed to be, but when I opened it up I saw why; it was just waiting for an expansion and now it’s here!
(If you need to be sold on the original game, check out our review of the base game here: http://www.gamegeek.ninja/?p=455 )
So…the expansion:
First, let’s just say that the designers really know what they’re are doing. The components of the expansion are going to match up exactly with the base game. And they all work very similarly, so if you’re familiar with the base game, you’ll be able to jump right in.
So…there are several new types of cards to talk about, so let’s get going.
Curse cards:
As if the dungeon wasn’t hard enough, now each Boss comes with 5 extra curse cards to throw you off your game.
Some are just extra Mini-Bosses, but others are more maniacal. These are cards that are going to effect the way that you play the game. Some of the cards affect your hand limit or whether you can even look at your hand, while others give you physical restrictions like not being able to use your left hand or only being able to say “Waffles!”
Waffles waffles waffles, waffles waffles waffles!
(It’s really ridiculous and funny).
These cards remind me of some of the effects in Tada! or Yogi or even some in Escape! Curse of the Temple.
The thing is that these curses stay around until you play a card or special action to get rid of them. Luckily there are multiple options to do so both with the new characters special power and with Artifacts, a completely new card type.
Artifact cards:
So Artifact cards are super powerful cards that can only be used once per dungeon. But, you don’t get to use all of them each time. In fact, you barely get to use any of them. There are six included in the expansion, one for each character. But…you only get to use a character’s Artifact if you aren’t playing with that character during this dungeon. So, since we are not using the Barbarian this dungeon, we can use his Artifact. The Artifacts are placed face up in the middle of the table for anyone to use once during the dungeon. Once used , thy are flipped face down and no longer available.
The good news is that they are awesome! The Artifact cards do these amazing things:
Discard the top 2 cards of the dungeon
Everyone’s discard piles get put on the bottom of their draw piles
Remove all curses
Defeat a Mini-Boss or Cancel an Event
Defeat a Monster or everyone draws 2 cards
Pause time until someone plays a card and everyone draws 3 cards
Really, these are awesome cards.
New Action cards:
Each of the original characters also received 2 new Action cards that boost their power even more.
Some of them deal specifically with getting rid of curses while others just get rid of a Mini-Boss (no big deal). All of these new cards are black bordered cards, which are subject to being eliminated by some of the curses. These are all very cool and slip right in to their character’s decks seamlessly.
New Characters:
There is one new double sided player board that gives us 2 new characters, the Shaman and the Druid and a whole new deck of cards to play with them.
The Shaman
The Shaman’s special power is that they allow another player to draw cards from their Discard Pile. So if you play it right you could get rid of 2 Monsters in a row or 2 obstacles or some such action. Pretty cool but not as cool to me as the Druid.
The Druid
The Druid allows you to discard cards to move a curse to the bottom of the Dungeon Deck, which lets you deal with it later, and plan a little bit for it.
But even better I think than either of these characters is their Artifact card, the one that removes all Curses, it’s super powerful, except that you can’t use it if you want to use either of these characters, which you’re going to want to do after you see their cards.
The Cards
The Shaman/Druid Deck is (at least for the moment) a deck of Black cards. What makes this deck awesome is the Infinity Resource cards. 
These cards count towards as many of the resource as you need. Need 45 arrows to defeat a Monster? These would count. One card and you’re done. This deck also has a card that eliminates a curse and another that Heals (players draw 2 cards from their discard pile) but the real standouts are the Infinity cards.
So, now you know what you get (in pretty specific detail), so what do we think?
Well, this one is a no-brainer. If you have the original you need this expansion. If you didn’t get on board the first time you’re gonna need the original game too. This game is completely ridiculous, completely insane and completely perfect. I will play this one anytime, anywhere, and since it only ever takes 5 minutes, probably a couple of times.
The new characters and cards simply add to the fun of the base game, which is exactly what you want out of an expansion. There’s no great rule changes or anything because the base game was already stellar. Just new stuff and a few tweaks to accommodate for the new stuff. And as always, the art and humor are top notch.
The Artifact cards are my favorite addition until I think about the Curses, which are really my favorite new addition, until I think about the Infinity cards, but then there’s those Artifact cards again…
There’s just a lot of great new things and…well I’m just gonna go play it again right now.
Get the expansion.
Ninja approved (infinity)!!!