Munchkin

Your goal in Munchkin is to raise your own level to 10. You do that by killing monsters, and using certain cards. Each turn you "kick open a door", revealing a monster, a curse, or another card. If you pull a monster you have to either fight it or run away. To fight the monster you add up all your bonuses (from items, your level, or cards in your hand) and if you're stronger than the monster, you win and take it's treasure.

If you can't win, you can ask another player for help... then you negotiate the treasure splitting, and finally fight the monster using your combined bonuses.

If you can't convince anybody to help, and you can't win, you've gotta run. Roll a die and try to run away. If you fail, you have "Bad Stuff" happen to you. That might be really silly or minor, or be crushing. It all depends on the monster you're fighting. Munchkin does try to keep you from pulling really big monsters early by making most of them not pursue you when you flee.

You'll have cards like "Ancient" which will be able to beef up a monster to epic proportions. You should hold them until somebody is about to win, then spring it on them. A particularly powerful card is Wandering Monster. Hold on to a giant monster, and then spring a second, possibly +18 or +20 to combat monster in at the last second. That alone will hold off somebody from winning.

We find that the second person to make that win attempt is the one who typically gets it. Since the first person is able to be defeated by everybody else around the table, and at the same time depleting everybody's hands of good cards, the second person can typically sneak in and get it.

The wizard is incredibly powerful, using the discard ability to gain treasures. Since treasures are the hardest thing to bootstrap into early game, it's valuable to give up a few monster kills (or fleeings!) to grab some great items.

Later on in the game, thief is useful, to backstab people. It's not much, but most of the other classes are mostly useless in the end game.

With races, an elf is a great thing to have early on. Nobody minds if you go from level 2 to 3 when they let you help them, and you can offer to help for free (no treasure), which is valuable since they want the treasure to themselves.

Late game, race doesn't matter much, just go with whatever you happen to find. Your items are the real benefit at this point.

Duck of Doom. Firepile's flickr.
Munchkin Cards on Table. Luka Isnt Luka's flickr