March 30, 2013: Munchkin: Drawing The Line At $24.95

Since Munchkin was first published in 2001, the game has been offered at a $24.95 suggested retail price (if we ignore that experiment with ending our pricing in $.99). According to the inflation calculator at westegg.com, $24.95 in 2001 dollars translates to $32.34 in 2012 dollars. And even though we have added components to Munchkin since 2001 -- a custom d6 and a nifty insert tray, plus a third page of rules -- we have kept the price at $24.95.

We would like to keep it that way, and we're pretty sure you agree.

As part of our fight to hold the Munchkin price at $24.95, later this year we will be making minor changes to the packaging and rulesheets used in all of the core Munchkin sets.

The weight of the paper and cardstock used for the box, game rules, and insert tray is being slightly decreased. In other words, they're getting a little thinner. These changes are minor -- some people in the office couldn't notice the difference between the new components and the existing Munchkin games' boxes, rules, and trays, even holding both at once -- and there's a very minimal savings per game, but we run hundreds of thousands of core Munchkin games each year. The savings adds up to enough that we can keep the price of the core Munchkin games at $24.95.

Of course, we are not changing the cards, since it is important that Munchkin cards be compatible across sets. If you grab one of the newer printings of these games later this year, you don't need to worry about your cards shuffling together. And we aren't changing the nifty custom d6 in each set, because we like it and it's worth paying a little extra for cool dice.

Finally, we want to stress that the size of the box isn't changing! It wouldn't do for the games not to fit nicely in our own library, and we're sure many of you (especially all of the retailers who help make Munchkin the success that it is) also want your games to shelve neatly together.

Thanks for playing Munchkin, and we promise to keep doing everything we can to keep the price at $24.95!

-- Phil Reed