New Core Rules for Monster Hunter World: The Board Game

Hey, hunters! As we close in on the end of the Kirin and Picking Bones pre-order, we’ve got an exciting update for you from the Steamforged lead for the Monster Hunter board games, Jamie Perkins.

Remember, the Kirin and Picking Bones pre-order closes on June 28th. Make sure you order the bundle before then to get the pre-order exclusive neoprene mat and holographic cards!

New Core Rules

If you’ve been following the Iceborne Kickstarter, you’ll know game development and print file review is now complete. Once that massive task was out of the way, the Monster Hunter tabletop team sat down to see whether we could add some of the updated Iceborne rules to the new expansion pre-order. As it turns out, we can!

Because the Iceborne board game uses the Monster Hunter World board game engine with some adjustments, there are some core rules differences between the two. The release of Picking Bones gives us a great opportunity to introduce some of those rules changes from Iceborne into World.

These optional core rules changes will be included in the Picking Bones rulebook. We’ve been careful to select core rules that will work with ALL content in Monster Hunter World: The Board Game, not just Kirin and the Picking Bones monsters.

If you’d prefer to keep using the rules as written in the Ancient Forest and Wildspire Waste rulebooks, that’s absolutely fine. You can also pick and choose from these optional rules if you’d only like to play with some of them.

Is the Picking Bones expansion the only way to get these optional rules? 

Once Picking Bones has been delivered, we’ll be making the rulebook and the optional cards described below available as free online PDFs for you to download. 

Replacement Time Cards

As part of further development of the core mechanics for Iceborne, we made some revisions to the time deck. In order to implement these changes to the time deck in Picking Bones, we’ve added 14 new time cards intended to replace their equivalents within Ancient Forest or Wildspire Waste sets. 

These new time cards introduce the capacity to dodge negative effects, such as Suspended Boulder or Vespoid Attack, and reduce the impact of discarded time cards from Roar. 

Additionally, the odds of the negative effect triggering on each card has been reduced. The original cards gave a 50% chance of suffering a negative effect. These replacement time cards give a 33% chance of suffering a negative effect, which you can then dodge.

The full list of new time cards is:

• Nitrotoad x2
• Paratoad x2
• Poisoncup x2
• Roar x2
• Sleeptoad x2
• Suspended Boulder x2
• Vespoid Attack x2

Stamina Management

This one is related to time cards because they describe the end of turn sequence. When you draw a time card at the end of your turn and follow the end-of-turn sequence, instead of discarding one attack card, you can either:

• Discard any one face up attack card from any slot of your stamina board
• Discard any two face down attack cards from any slots of your stamina board

No Preparation Actions

If you choose to use the new core rules, there are no longer any preparation actions! You can only choose combat actions during the hunting phase. And that’s because…

Item Cards

Yes! The newer method of managing Potions, Rations (see: clearing your stamina board), and Whetstones to sharpen your weapons are being introduced to World! These new item cards are included in your Picking Bones expansion.

The reason you no longer need preparation actions is because the mechanics handled by that type of hunter turn are instead covered by the Potions, Rations, and Whetstones item cards, which you’ll play onto your stamina board like attack cards.

Additional Downtime Activities

Last but not least, we’re bringing over two new Downtime Activities from Iceborne. Those are:

The Hunter’s Lodge

If you’re playing with Palicoes, you can now switch your Palico between quests to make use of different effects. If you’re not playing with Palicoes but could use the extra help for a particular quest, you can now discard any three resources to take a Palico along on your next hunt.

Provisions Stockpile

• Trade common resources: Not got the resources you need? Time to trade! Discard any three common ores, bones, or hides from your character sheet to gain any one common ore, bone, or hide.
• Trade rare resources: Looking for something more unusual? Discard any ten resources from your character sheet to gain any one resource from the reward table of a monster you’ve successfully slain before.

In addition, you and your fellow hunters can now choose three individual Downtime Activities, instead of choosing as a group. So, if you need a break from Dave’s incessant hunting horn tunes, you can go pet the Poogie by yourself instead. 

That does mean only your hunter will get the benefit from your chosen Downtime Activities, but fret not: if you’d all like to do the same activities, that’s still possible. Poogie pets all round! There is one exception, which is Visit the Handler. If just one of you decides to swing by for a visit, you’ll all benefit from the effect.

If you’ve got questions, you can find me and the rest of the Steamforged team in the official Discord.