Monikers Review

Monikers can be played with any number of people, but a regular game has 3 or more players aged 17 and up. To start, divide up into equally sized teams and distribute a certain number of cards to each player based on a chart found in the instructions. From the cards given, each player selects a portion to play and discards the rest. Both teams and all players then combine said cards into one deck that both teams will use for the rest of the game.

The game consists of 3 rounds. Each team takes a 60 second turn with one representative chosen to be the actor and the rest being guessers. The drawing player takes a card and, for the first round, can describe the thing on the card without saying the name of the thing. Each card has the name of the thing, a description if you’re really at a loss for words, and a point value. Keep track of correct guesses and skips across both teams, then tally up points once the deck is depleted. Shuffle the same cards back together and commence round 2. The team who is behind goes first. For this round, you can only give one word hints. Otherwise play and scoring is the same. In round three, no words are allowed, it’s all charades!  You know the drill by now though, keep track of correct guesses and skips, tallying up points at the end. Whichever teams scored the most points at the end of the 3rd round wins!

Expansions are available for the base game, and helpfully, each card is labeled with what deck they come from, so you can more easily stay organized once game time is over. Monikers is a dream scenario for players who love charades-style games. The recycling of cards, rather than making things stale, keeps things exciting and competitive, because you never know if you’ll reliably get the same card again, but it’s not as if these subjects are appearing out of the blue, everyone has been exposed to them at least once (well, unless the cards got skipped!) And if you want to include the young’uns, there is an “adults only” tag on certain cards, allowing you to remove them in advance.