Monza Board Game: Rules for How to Play

Objective

The objective of Monza is to be the first player to get your racing car over the finish line.

Set Up

Place the gameboard in the middle of the table.
Each player chooses a color and takes the corresponding colored car. Place your car on the start space (has arrows of each color). Any unused cars are returned to the box.
Place the six dice near the gameboard.
The youngest player starts the game. Play moves in a clockwise direction.

How to Play Monza

To begin each of your turns you will roll all six dice. The colors you roll on the dice determine how far you will be able to travel on your turn.

Rolling the dice — The current player has rolled the dice. They will be able to use these six colors when moving.

Moving Your Cars

After you have rolled the dice, look at the two or three spaces in front of your current space. These are the spaces that you will try to move to first. You must always move forward. You can only move to a space whose far end is further along the track than your current position. Cars may never move through or land on a space that has a tire on it.

If you rolled a color that matches one of the spaces that touch your current space, move your car to the space. You will then get rid of the die that matches the color of the space that you moved to.

Moving using a blue die — The red player starts their movement using the blue die to move to the blue space.

After you have moved to a new space, you will look at the spaces ahead of your current space to see if you can move further on your turn. Should you still have a die that matches one of the spaces colors, you will move your car another space. If you are able to move forward, you have to move forward even if you don’t want to.

Finished moving in Monza — After moving to the blue space the red player moved four more spaces. Next they moved to the red space in front of the blue space. Next they switched lanes to the middle green space. They then moved forward to the white space and then the purple space. They were unable to use the second red they rolled.

Landing on an Occupied Space

You can move through spaces that have another car on them. If you end your turn on a space that another car is on though, the car that was previously on the space is moved back one space in its current lane. A car can never be moved back into a tire space.

You will continue moving forward until you no longer have a die that matches one of the spaces in front of you. You can move up to a maximum of six spaces on your turn.

Winning the Game

The game ends when one of the players reach one of the finish line spaces. Each player that reaches the finish line remembers how many dice they needed to use to reach the finish line.

The round continues until all of the players have had the same number of turns.

Should only one player reach the finish line, they win Monza.

Winning Monza — The red player is the only player to reach the finish. The red player wins the game.

If multiple players have reached the finish line, all of the players compare the number of dice they needed to use to reach the finish. The player that used the least dice wins the game.

Variant Rule

Players can choose to use this Monza variant rule if they want to.

After a player has finished moving, you will look at the color of the last used die. The player that is using the car that matches the color of the last used die, can move their car forward one space as long as it is free. The space doesn’t have to match their color and the player can choose to change lanes.

Using the variant rule — The players are using the variant rule. Since the last die the red player used was purple, the purple player gets to move their car forward one space.

Monza FAQ

If you have any questions about how to play the game, leave a comment below on this post. I will try to answer any questions asked as best and as quickly as possible.

Components

6 Racing Cars
6 Color Dice
Game Board
Instructions

Year: 2000 | Publisher: HABA | Designer: Jürgen P. Grunau | Artist: Haralds Klavinius

Genres: Children’s, Roll and Move

Ages: 5+ | Number of Players: 2-6 | Length of Game: 15 minutes

Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light | Luck: High

For more board and card game rules/how to plays, check out our complete alphabetical list of card and board game rules posts.

Written By:

Eric Mortensen

Eric Mortensen is an owner and head writer on Geeky Hobbies since 2014. He is an avid board game player and collector with over 3,000 board and card games in his collection. Since 2014 he has written more than 1,100 board game how to play guides.