Monster Hunter World: The Board Game gets a Kickstarter launch date and gameplay teaser trailer

Monster Hunter World: The Board Game has been given a Kickstarter launch date for next month, alongside a glimpse of the video game adaptation’s gameplay in a new teaser trailer.

Announced last year, Monster Hunter World: The Board Game adapts the 2018 video game of battling enormous beasties with pals in the hopes of crafting a fancier set of duds from their assorted body parts. (The monsters, not your friends.)

The first stab at bringing the long-running Capcom series to the tabletop comes courtesy of tabletop studio Steamforged, which has previously adapted the likes of Dark Souls, Horizon Zero Dawn and Resident Evil 2 into boxes of cardboard and miniatures.

Dicebreaker previously revealed Monster Hunter: The Board Game’s gameplay details, including its use of card decks to capture the unique movesets of different weapons - from the slow but powerful swings of a greatsword to the fast and furious slices of dual blades - and a branching narrative campaign for players to advance through over multiple sessions. Between scenarios, the players will be able to forge new equipment using any loot they collect during each battle.

The board game’s newly-released gameplay teaser shows the importance of positioning hunters during skirmishes with the world’s various fearsome fauna, as well as the scale of its human-sized hunters to their prey - with the largest miniature in the box measuring in at over a foot high.

The trailer shows off the series’ poster star, the fire-breathing Rathalos, as it confronts a group of player-controlled hunters armed with a variety of weaponry. The Rathalos is joined by the Great Jagras, Anjanath and Tobi-Kadachi from the game’s Ancient Forest environment, each mounted on 100mm bases.

The footage displays the full gameplay setup for the game, including the player boards and cards that will be used to ultimately triumph over each foe - and then carve them up into the crafting materials used for new weapons and armour.

The teaser accompanies the announcement of a Kickstarter launch date for Monster Hunter: The Board Game, which will go live on the crowdfunding platform on April 20th and run until April 30th.

The campaign will offer an entry-level set for $70/£51 that includes the Ancient Forest biome, four hunters, four monsters and a 30-hour campaign that can be freely replayed. The game’s core pledge - considered by Steamforged to offer the “complete” experience of the board game - doubles the campaign length and price tag, upping the monster count to nine, the available roster of hunter classes to eight and including more than 1,200 cards.

A £203 ($279) all-in option increases the campaign length to 75 hours, the number of miniatures to 24 - including the “XXXL” Kushala Daora - and close to 2,000 cards.