Mysthea

Plays: 3Px1.

The Game

After playing Mysthea, I did a quick search on the net, and found that Mysthea is a rich world with many characters and stories. In addition to the Mysthea boardgame, there is also a role-playing game, and other boardgames.

The Mysthea boardgame is an area majority game with some engine-building. You play a character in the Mysthea universe. You summon fighters to vie for control of the regions. The game is played over three eras. There is area majority scoring at the end of each era. There are many other ways of scoring. After the third era, the player with the highest score wins.

Everyone plays one unique character (in my case, this guy in the middle, looking like a band leader of a hip hop group). You have only two troop types. The small ones are minions, and the big ones golems.

This is a player board. The track at the top is for keeping track of two currencies. I call the basic one juice (officially it is probably blood or elixir), and the rare one stars. Of the 9 spaces on this board, the bottom right is your discard pile. The other eight are for placing improvement cards. This is the chassis of your engine. Each slot has an icon and you must place specific types of improvements in the matching spaces.

This was the character I drew. I received 4 juice at the start of every era. Free money, basically.

The main board has five round islands, and each island consists of three regions of different terrain types. One unusual mechanism in this game is you can shift the islands around. When you perform such a tectonic shift, you first move the island you are on to the centre. You then force the island in between two other islands, pushing them apart. All the islands will shift and eventually settle into a new configuration, forming a circle again. When you do such a tectonic shift, you get to claim one of those tectonic shift cards on the right (not real name). These cards let you score points based on various criteria. Another important effect of tectonic shifts is monster movement. Monsters on the board sometimes moves one step clockwise to the next island at the end of an era. Sometimes you want to meet the monsters to fight them, sometimes you want to avoid them. With the possibility of tectonic shifts, sometimes it is hard to predict which island the monsters will be on at the end of the era.

At the bottom right you can see the card market. In this game many actions require playing cards. Everyone starts the game with a different set of basic cards. During the game you get to buy cards to improve your abilities and develop new abilities.

This is one of the monsters. You have one monster on the board in the first era. A second one is added in Era 2, and a third in Era 3. By late game it's hard to avoid monsters since there are three of them. At the end of each era, monsters may move and they may attack. Players fight monsters together. If you are unable to defeat the monster, you will lose troops. If you succeed in defeating a monster, you get a reward based on your contribution ranking. Whoever contributed the most manpower gets the highest reward.

The 2nd and 3rd monsters are already picked during game setup and placed on the side board. So you know what's coming.

This is the side board. There is a thin deck of cards on the left. These are the round cards - you draw a card at the start of every round. There are 9 spaces, which means an era can last up to 9 rounds. In the round card deck there are 5 terrain cards, representing the 5 terrain types in the game. There is one monster movement card, which makes monsters move one step clockwise. At the start of each era, one monster attack card matching the monster placed onto the board is added. For Era 1 you will have 7 cards in total, and in Era 3 you'll have 9. In each era you keep playing until you draw the 5th terrain card. The 5th terrain card tells you this is the final round for the era.

When a terrain card is drawn and placed, the number above it will indicate the victory point value for controlling this particular terrain type at the end of the era. At the end of an era, you process these round cards one by one. This photo above shows a situation in Era 3. When resolving the end of era, you will first score the misty regions, each being worth 2VP. Next you score the crystal regions (3VP). After that the monster Caerulas attacks. Then all monsters move one step clockwise. This fourth card is the monster movement card. After that the forest regions score (6VP). And so on and so forth. The last card is not yet drawn. It is the fifth and last terrain card, and it will be worth 10VP. Very lucrative.

As terrain cards are revealed, players gradually gather information about which terrains have low values, and which may have high values. Competition will naturally shift towards the higher value regions.

At the fifth position (lower left) you see an icon which means resetting your artifact. Everyone has an artifact which can be used twice per era. You need to use the artifact if you want to start a battle or if you want to do that tectonic shift thing. Once used, the artifact is turned face-down. It is refreshed at the start of round 5, and at the start of an era. Ideally you want to use yours before round 5, so that you will get to use it twice per era.

Most of the time you need to play a card to perform actions. You gain juice as indicated by the number on the card. You may then spend juice to perform actions like raising troops, deploying troops, moving troops. You can also spend juice to perform the action depicted at the bottom of the card. You may choose to place the card on your player board. This converts the card into a permanent improvement. Cards come in four colours, and the colours have meaning. Yellow cards score points. Green cards are accessories which will help you get more stuff done per turn. Blue cards are mostly upgrades to your various units. When you battle another player, you may commit a card to augment your abilities. In such cases, yellow lets your troops avoid battle, blue scores points, red increases your strength, and green produces juice.

This reference card lists all the things you may do on a turn. You get to perform one normal action and one special action. Of the three normal actions, I have described the card play above. The second normal action is buying cards from the card market. The third is gathering resources. You get at least 3 juice, and you reap resources from the regions where you have people present.

There are four types of special actions. Battling another player and tectonic shifts require the use of your artifact. The 3rd special action is likely the most frequently used - activating an accessory. Of course, you need to have played an accessory card to be able to use it. It is beneficial to play an accessory card early, so that you utilise your special actions as much as possible. Other special actions are not easy to do. The 4th special action is the Encounter. Every player has an Encounter token on the board, and it starts on a different island from your character. To perform an Encounter, you (your character) need to travel to the island with your Encounter token, then spend stars (the rare currency). You will earn points, and trigger an event (usually good). Each time you perform an Encounter, the star cost for the next one increases. It becomes harder and harder to do. The Encounter also gets moved somewhere else.

Each era has its own deck of action cards, and later eras generally have stronger cards. The cards have no text, so you need a (rather large and double sided) reference card like this.

The yellow disc at the bottom right is the yellow player's Encounter token. The yellow player's leader is here, so he can perform the Encounter action if he has the required number of stars. Once you perform an Encounter, the Encounter token is sent to another island. If you want to do the Encounter again, you need to hunt it down again, in addition to collecting enough stars again.

This is an Encounter card. The point value is shown on the card back, so everyone knows the value of the next Encounter. The two icons are your options. Do you want to trigger a treasure event or a chat event? You must pick before turning the card over.

This is the card face of an Encounter card. The upper half is what you get if you have chosen the chat event. You train a minion or deploy a minion for free. You also move your Encounter token 2 steps clockwise.

The number in the top right corner of an action card tells you which era it is from. These cards here are from Eras 1 and 2. There is a serial number at the bottom right. You can use this to look up the reference card or the rulebook.

This tiny envelope is for player-vs-player battles. You have the option of secretly committing an action card.

I have explained how regions score points at the end of an era. Defeating monsters gets you points too, and sometimes resources as well. You get points from tectonic shifts, from fighting other players, from playing yellow cards (insert football / soccer joke), and from chasing Encounters. So there are many ways to score points. You want to do so efficiently, and effectively. Every era you are positioning for the end of era scoring. Some eras are longer, some shorter, and you need to be nimble in reacting to the many possibilities.

The Play

I did a 3-player game with Ivan and Tim. Mysthea does have many mechanisms, but the big picture is not all that complex, and the individual mechanisms aren't either. The challenge for a new player is the many different action cards in the game. There's a lot to digest and you'll need to look up the reference sheet or rulebook often. It gets a bit better after you get familiar with the icons used.

Engine-building is a big part of the game. You want to build a decent engine so that you can be more efficient. Do more with less. Your engine is your permanent advantage. Due to the variety in the action cards, players will be building different engines, and their strengths and priorities will differ. E.g. I developed an advantage in gaining stars, so I decided to invest effort in Encounters.

There isn't much fighting between players. It is not only because of the limitation imposed by the artifact usage. Fighting is not always lucrative. Sometimes you'd rather spend your energy somewhere else, where you can earn more points. You don't need to fight a lot, but you will need to compete a lot. This is an area majority game, so there's simply no escape from competing. You lose out if you don't actively try to compete. You can't win everywhere. You don't need to win any region by a lot. Ideally you win many regions by just a little bit. You want to have the most gains using the least effort.

Your character is important. When you deploy troops, they must go to where your character is. So his location is effectively a restriction you need to work with. Troops can move after deployment, but since actions are precious, you want to save as much as possible.

This was the first era, so there was only one monster (in the middle of that island at the bottom). This was still early game, so there weren't many soldiers on the board yet. Movement within the same island is just one step to either of the other regions. Movement from island to adjacent island also requires only one step, but you may only move between the same terrain type. My character (green) is on the island on the right, standing in a misty region (white). To move to the island at the top right, it only takes one step because I can move directly to the misty region on that island. However if I want to move to the island at the bottom, I will first need to move one step to the forest region (dark green) on my island, and only then move one step to the forest region of that island at the bottom.

Notice the two black discs, on the island on the left, and the island at the top right. These are fortresses. They are Ivan's (black). Fortresses have a combat value of 2. However they can't move (of course), and they are dismantled at the end of an era. You need to build again next era.

This is my player board, and I have some upgrades now. The blue card at the top left gives me a star (valuable resource!) whenever I train a minion (small soldier). Stars are required to perform Encounters. Due to this advantage I had, during the game I spent much effort on Encounters, managing to do it six times (the max). The card at the bottom left lets me build accessories for free. I made sure I played this card before I started building accessories. That second card in the bottom row is an accessory. A big part of Mysthea is working out how to synergise your cards, and playing to the strengths of your cards.

The six Encounter cards I collected.

This was Era 2, so there were two monsters, on the island on the right, and the island at the top right.

This monster (centre) was going to get a good beating. Tim (yellow) had invested much manpower on this island. I (green) only had one lone soldier, but I was going to earn the rewards for 2nd place in beating the monster. This was a good deal, so little commitment for such a good reward. Ivan (black) could consider coming here to compete with me, since I only had strength 1. Tim could initiate a battle to kill my lone soldier, just to deny me the rewards, but it might not be worth the trouble. Initiating battle with another player requires using the artifact.

That guy at the top left is Ivan's character (black), and he was the Ip Man of our game ("1 guy fights 10"). Player characters have a default strength of 3, compared to 2 of golems and 1 of minions. Ivan's special ability was an additional strength of 2, so his character started the game with strength 5. Later, he played an improvement card to give his character a further strength increase of 3. That made his character strength 8!

This is Ivan's player board. His character card is at the top left. The second card on his board is the one giving him a strength boost of 3.

This was the side board situation in Era 2. The first two round cards drawn were monsters, so we knew early that yes, they would attack, and we knew where they would attack, because they wouldn't be moving before attacking. This made planning much easier. The two monsters having taken up the first two low value slots meant the terrain cards would occupy higher value slots - more points for everyone. All five terrain cards had been drawn, so the era was coming to a close. That last card still in the draw deck was the monster movement card. The monsters would not be moving at the end of this era.

This was a tectonic shift in progress. The island being moved was first thrust into the centre. The active player then had to decide which gap between the other islands to stick this moving island into. For each of the three options, who would benefit and who would lose out? How would this affect monster movement? How would this affect people who were chasing Encounter tokens?

This was Era 3, and all three monsters were on the board - on the islands on the left, right and top right.

Tim's (yellow) special ability was he earned double the rewards whenever he defeated a monster, so he had incentive to fight monsters. In Era 3, Ivan quickly grabbed the tectonic shift card which gave points based on number of monsters defeated (regardless of who defeated them). This was a smart move because all of us had more soldiers by Era 3, and we were strong. Also with three monsters on the board, the potential was high. When we did the end game scoring, I got all excited because I was able to keep up to and then overtake Ivan (it had been a tough competition throughout the game). However I had forgotten about that tectonic shift card. Once Ivan added the points from that card, he easily reclaimed the lead and won the game.

The Thoughts

Mysthea, underneath the fantastic art and amazing sculptures, is very much a Eurogame, with multiple ways of scoring points. The area majority is the core platform on which you compete. It's a part you can't avoid competing in. You can't allow others to run away with it. Outside of this area majority scoring, there are many other ways you can score points, and different players may emphasise different areas. You want to build your engine, because it gives you permanent advantages. You don't want to fall behind in efficiency. Fighting other players doesn't happen much, because it is not always in your best interest to do so. However few direct attacks does not mean low player interaction. Area majority is all about player interaction. The tectonic shifts can also mess up your opponents' plans in a major way.

Fighting monsters is an interesting proposition because of the conflicting motivations. It requires significant commitment from the parties involved. Sometimes you want to contribute more so that you get the biggest reward. Sometimes you want to contribute just a little bit, so that you get some reward without spending much effort. Sometimes you pull out at the last minute, causing your compatriots to fail. Sometimes you join a winning fight at the last minute to snipe a reward from the then smallest contributor.

Some competition is of the first come first served nature. Good action cards turn up in the market. Do you quickly buy them, or do you want get your Encounter done first in case someone does a tectonic shift and royally screws up your plan? Often there are a few things you want to do, but you know when you pick one, someone else might beat you to another. Sometimes you want to do things in a certain order, e.g. collect resources, then perform an Encounter with those resources, then play a scoring card to score points. However due to the competition and the changing board situation, sometimes you are forced to make less efficient moves, lest you lose an opportunity completely. There are difficult choices to make. There are trade-offs.