Mad Monks and Relics is a game from Simulations Workshop from 1995. Randy Moorhead is the designer. It is to be played by 3-5 players and takes 2 to 4 hours to complete (sometimes shorter).

What you get

Mad Monks is a typical Simulations Workshop desk top published game. This means you get a ziplock bag containing the rules, 5 player mats, a sheet of counters (a few in color!), a 17”x22” game map on parchment-style paper, and several thinner cardboard sheets that need to be cut apart into 219 cards. The cards are divided into Generalis cards, relic cards, knowledge and monks. Care needs to be taken in shuffling the cards to avoid damage, and a plastic sheet over the map is a good idea. Overall, things are pretty thin. The artwork on the cards is sometimes a bit tough to see, but flavorful. I love the cover illustration, and I wish I knew the source, as I’d love a higher resolution copy for my wall.

What you do

Mad Monks and Relics is a game about searching for the Holy Grail. Each player takes a Monk card at the beginning of the game, and the character depicted was an actual persona from the late 13th century such as Dalimar of Bohemia, Abu-I-Fida or Moses de Leon. Each character has two ratings, one for knowledge (useful in finding relics) and one in Piety (keeping yourself from being accused of heresy), and a starting amount of money, as well as their own special abilities (for example, Abu is good at avoiding the plague, but gets hit hard by the Inquisition). These monks will travel about Europe uncovering ancient books like Robert de Borons ‘Joseph d’Arimathie’ or Wolfram van Eschenbach’s ‘Parzival’. These books contain the clues to allow the Monks to try and uncover the relics, like the teeth of Saint Apollinia, Christ’s shroud, the true foreskin (really!) or, to win the game, the Holy Grail. Some games end with the Grail uncovered, so don’t.

Play consists of an initial Black Death phase (if necessary) followed by each player-turn, which involves first a play of a single event card on the active player by one of their opponents, and then the player’s action. The Black Death phase is only triggered after the appearance of the Black Death event, and the BD marker starts in Genoa or Venice, then each BD phase moves to an adjacent space determined randomly. Don’t end up in the same location as the BD: it would be bad. The player turn starts with the play of an event by an opponent. Opportunity to play event cards starts with the opponent on the player’s left, and travels around the table until someone plays a card, or everyone declines. Most cards are keyed to a location, and can only be played on a player at that location. However, if a player ever spends two consecutive turns at a location, then any card may be played on them, regardless of location. The events can be nasty: bandits who steal gold, and maybe murder the character, heresy which threatens burning at the stake, Islamic zealots who can case a Monk to quietly disappear, carnivals that can part the naïve Monks from their precious gold.

Once the event is resolved, the player can take an action. This can be moving (no cost to move by foot one space, 1 gold to move 2 spaces by horse, and 2 gold by ship) and drawing of a card, or to play a Liber Inventus to uncover knowledge cards (which means the player in the correct location can draw a number of these cards that represent old texts that hold the clues to relic locations), selling (for money) or donating (for points) relics, attempt to uncover new relics, or spend 5 gold to directly uncover a knowledge card. Knowledge cards can be formed into sets, and once two or more of the same heading are in a player’s hand, they may be placed on the table before them. The larger the set of cards, the better the chance of relic recovery. Plus, they no longer count against the 10-card hand limit, freeing up space for other cards. Players may trade or sell cards to each other anytime they are at the same location, or with the optional Federalis Expressis rule, at any time regardless of location.

Once a set of at least 3 knowledge cards are collected, and the player has journeyed to the location dictated by the knowledge card, they may try to uncover a relic. This is done by rolling a die with modifiers for the # of cards in the set, and compares to their knowledge ability. If the score is at least equal, they get to draw a relic card. The cards may be blank (damn and blast!), a lesser relic worth variable victory points if held or gold if sold, or the Grail, which immediately ends the game.

The game can end by finding the Grail, as mentioned, or when a player has had their second character die. The game is scored by adding VP from relic donation, gold owned, with a penalty for characters that dies during play.

What I think

This can be a tremendously fun game, but it can be very frustrating as well. It is inherently a ‘take that’ card game with some really nasty events. Even innocuous-seeming cards that cause you to lose a turn become deadly: whenever you stay in one spot two turns, the requirement that the event card be played only at the location listed is lifted, so you can be hit by any nasty one the other players may have. Movement is slow and expensive, but simulates pretty well the period portrayed. The Black Death phase is more of a nuisance, as you have to be pretty daring or inattentive to get hit by it directly. Usually it just makes a barrier. It can take considerable time, effort, and money to get together a set of knowledge cards, which can all go for naught as the recovered relic card turns out to be a fake. Then, the scoring is very skewed: whoever finds the Grail pretty much will win the game. A Eurogame this is not.

However, despite these perceived shortcomings, as a simulation and a storytelling game, it is superb. You get a real feeling for the half-mad Monks crawling through the ignorant, dangerous Europe of the 13th Century. As discussed in the player notes, what must it have felt like to be the only person in the whole town that could read and write? If taken in the spirit of a shared creation of an epic tale of the trials of a few hardy souls to track down the artifacts of their Faith and the quest for redemption and enlightenment, it is hard to beat this game.