While I love Historical Wargames, I had Dear Friends thanks to whom I am able to broaden the scope of titles I play. Thanks to Kuba, who has many large, figure and plastic-heavy titles, I have opportunity to familiarize with positions I would probably not invest in. And sometimes, it is good to write about them if they made an impression on you.

Some games earn their title. Monumental, designed by Matthew Dunstan and published by Funforge, is exactly such a case – not only because of the wonders you build during play, but because of how much table space, cards, tokens and decision-making the game demands 🙂 . After my first two proper sessions with most of the expansions on the table, I felt I had enough material to share genuine first impressions of what is shaping up to be one of the more interesting civilization-deckbuilding hybrids on the market.

Below you will find a brief overview of the game and its expansions, a session report from one of my first full encounters with Monumental at the table, and finally my early impressions. Enjoy the read!

About the Game

Monumental is a civilization-themed deckbuilding game with strong 4X elements – explore, expand, exploit, exterminate – released by Funforge in 2020. It supports 1 to 4 players in the base box, and up to 5 with the Lost Kingdoms expansion. Each player leads one of the historical civilizations (Egyptians, Japanese, Romans, Chinese, Norse in the core box, plus several more added by expansions), guiding it from the Classic Era to glory through scientific advances, military conquest, cultural policies and the construction of breathtaking Wonders.

Monumental – the box cover.

The key mechanic of Monumental is the so-called cross-tapping. Each player has a 3×3 grid of face-up cards representing their City. To play a turn, you choose one row and one column and activate – tap – the five cards at their intersection. Those five cards generate the resources, abilities and combos you will use that turn.

The puzzle of which row + column to pick, given an ever-changing 3×3 layout shaped by your deckbuilding decisions, is at the heart of every choice in the game and is what makes Monumental click. Combat is dice-less and quick, the modular hex-tile board offers strong replayability, and the production – cards, plastic figures, tokens, player boards – is genuinely lavish.

For this session we played with all three currently available expansion sets ( at least this is what I remember, it was some time ago!):

  • Lost Kingdoms – the first major expansion, adding four new civilizations (Aztecs, Mughals, Amazons, Atlanteans), new terrain types (pyramids, desert, jungle, islands), new modular maps and crucially the 5-player mode along with the new Continuous Play Mode.
  • African Empires – the second large box, introducing three further civilizations together with new game-wide mechanics that meaningfully extend the strategic palette of the base game.
  • Smaller modular packs – additional Wonders, Knowledge and themed content, which slot in without slowing the game down.

All of that adds up to a game that, fully expanded, is genuinely large. Setup alone took us close to an hour, and the full session – including some rules explanation, four players play – ran around 4 hours. Two tables joined together were needed just to fit the components. Monumental is not a game you play casually after dinner. But when you commit to it this is pretty good experience.

Example Session Report

My full-length sessions with Monumental happened during our annual board-gaming trips (you can see some of them here: Sylwester 2024). What I am presenting below was an evening session with four players: Michał (myself), Kuba, Agnieszka and Jarek. We pulled out everything – the base box plus Lost Kingdoms, African Empires and the smaller modular content. The intent was clear: get a complete picture of what the game has to offer, even if it meant pushing past midnight.

Enjoy the report! PS. Remember you can expand each picture on click.

Setup in progress. Even with two tables joined together, finding space for player boards, the modular hex map and dozens of card stacks was a logistical challenge in itself.

From the very first turns, the cross-tapping puzzle made its presence felt. With only 15 cards in the starting deck – of which two are unique to your civilization – there is real tension between activating a row that gives you the resources you need now and one that develops your engine for later. The early game is dominated by a single question: how aggressively do you Archive (the game’s term for trashing) your starting cards in order to thin the deck and get to your better acquired cards faster?

Look at some of the forces which did not yet joined the game as well as player-aid / turn-reminder.

A key decision in our group was whether or not to use the Continuous Play Mode introduced in Lost Kingdoms. I believe my first play was without it, while second utilized this approach. In this mode, players do not wait passively for the active player to finish their turn – instead, you can prepare your own actions in parallel, dramatically reducing downtime. This mattered hugely. Monumental turns can be long: the rulebook explicitly tells you that during your turn you may take any number of actions in any order as long as you have the resources for them, which in some situations is a recipe for analysis-paralysis. The continuous mode largely defuses that risk and was, in our group’s unanimous view, the single biggest improvement the expansions bring.

Close-up on one of the areas where large amount of forces was gathered. The miniatures are really fine, the removable, colorful rings under them allow for quick identification of owner.

The middle game was where the expansions really showed their value. The Wonders from African Empires, combined with the new civilizations from Lost Kingdoms, gave each of us very different paths to victory. Agnieszka built a strong cultural and Knowledge engine, racking up bonuses for Knowledge sets. Jarek tried to dominate militarily but found out – as we all eventually did – that Monumental rewards balance more than specialization. Kuba and I ended up in a parallel race: both of us methodically Archiving weak cards, both of us building Wonders, both of us picking up area-control bonuses on the modular map. Neither of us was sure who was actually ahead.

A player’s City – the 3×3 grid of cards that gets cross-tapped each turn. Managing your own tableau is a challenge, not to say trying to control what your opponents activated and predicting what they could do next.

Final scoring was incredibly tight at the top. I closed at 47 points, edging out Kuba on 46 – a one-point margin after 4 hours, which tells you everything about how balanced the game can be once you understand the engine. Agnieszka finished on 29, having built an elegant cultural civilization that lacked just the area-control density to keep up. Jarek closed on 21, paying the price for a military-heavy strategy that did not quite assemble in time before scoring.

First Impressions

Based on those two games (one reported in detail), here are my early impressions of Monumental:

  • Cross-tapping is a very interesting mechanic – picking one row plus one column to activate the five cards at their intersection sounds simple, but it forces a constant trade-off between tempo and engine-building, and the puzzle changes shape every time your City evolves.
  • The game is long – be honest about that with your group. Setup takes time. A four-player game with all expansions is a 4-to-5 hour commitment. Just have it in mind and plan properly.
  • Continuous Play Mode is essential at higher player counts. Without it, downtime can become a real problem because individual turns are open-ended by design. With it, the game flows surprisingly well even at 4 or 5 players. If you have Lost Kingdoms – which you almost certainly should – use this mode by default.
  • Production quality is truly impressive. The cards, plastic figures, modular hex tiles and player components are top-tier. Funforge clearly invested in making the game look as monumental as its name promises – although delivering it too much longer than the crowdfunding campaign promised.
  • Scoring rewards balance over specialization. Our final 47-46-29-21 spread suggests that the players who tried to do everything reasonably well outperformed those who fully committed to one strategic axis. I believe this is a good feature as you cannot just neglect one or two aspects of your kingdom.
  • It demands an experienced group. First-time players will spend a lot of energy just understanding how the cross-tapping interacts with the nine base actions, the resource economy and the area-control layer. I mean, this is not bad thing, however can substantially prolong the game.

To sum up, Monumental was well received by our group, although not without some reservation. It is ambitious, it is large, it is gorgeous, and – most importantly – it offers a genuinely original take on the civilization-deckbuilding hybrid. Still, it requires space, time for set-up and play so you need to consider this when you plan to play it.

See you in another review!