Designed by: Martin Wallace
Mythotopia is a fantasy game of battling for control of the territories in a make-believe land.
The game board shows the world of Mythotopia broken into said territories, and at the start of the game you will have some of them under control, as denoted by city tokens you place there. You have a starting hand of cards that consist of a card each for the territories you control, plus 4 more cards consisting of ship, build, army, and market. You deal yourself four cards and on each turn you choose two actions from a number of possible actions to take.
Most of the actions relate to the cards – they all have icons on them that represent certain things – armies, ships, food or money. If you want to invade a territory, you need to play at least three cards in a combination – one showing the territory you’re invading from (you can invade any neighbouring territory you like) one representing the army itself, and one the food needed to feed the army. As long as you outnumber the opponents there, on a future turn you can resolve the war in your favour (crucially, resolving a war has to be the first action you take, giving other players time to counter-attack!) There are a number of other actions too; such as adding armies or ships to the board, or buying cards to add to your deck.
Mythotopia is a deck-building game: at the end of each turn you replenish your hand back up to four cards, and when you run out of cards your discards are shuffled to become your new draw pile. There are ways and means to improve your cards (you can purchase new cards with money) but the essence of the game is improving your personal deck in order to improve your showing on the board – every time you take control of an opponents’ territory, they lose 3 points and you gain the same amount. You also get to pick up points by completing certain objectives, such as building a city or invading a territory with a dragon in it. If you’re ever in a position where you think you have the most points at the start of your turn, there is an action to end the game – taking the action effectively means you win, so make sure you do your sums right!
There are a few other things to consider about Mythotopia too, but these are the basics.
The game is essentially a multi-player (or head to head) battle, so the Take That quotient is high.
Moderate on a first play, dropping substantially. You only ever have a limited amount of cards to choose from, though the board itself adds some depth to your choices.
See above. With more than 2 players, there's certainly an element of risk, calculating what cards people might have in their hand...
There's a reasonable degree of depth to Mythotopia. The cards for scoring and upgrading your hand both vary from game to game. What stays consistent is the idea of managing your hand and 'building' your deck of cards.
2-4
Players
12+
Years
90-120
Mins
Sam says
I'm not the biggest fan of deck-building games (I am however, in the minority, considering the enormous popularity of Dominion) but Mythotopia was intriguing to me. It looks a little plain for a game, but hidden beneath that rather bland exterior is some decent, tactical gameplay.