Mercurial Deep Dive
What the Community Thinks About Mercurial
Mercurial splits the reviewers who have played it. Board Game Garden named it the number two game of its September, and the hosts of one top 100 countdown placed it at number 34, calling it one of the most beautiful games they have ever played. Board Of It and Quackalope came away disappointed. Board Of It describes it as an interesting example of a game that is almost there, and Quackalope says it will not be coming back to their shelf. Almost everyone agrees on the art; the argument is about what happens once the dice are rolled. Some coverage has ties to the publisher: the Before You Play how-to-play video was sponsored by Good Games Publishing, Board Game Garden received its copy from Good Games Publishing at Gen Con, and the Meeple University Kickstarter preview used prototype components whose rules and artwork were not final.
Core Mechanics That Define Mercurial
Dice Manipulation
Players are mages rolling a pool of elemental dice, and Board Of It estimates that about 95 percent of turns are spent manipulating them. Dice are rolled at the start and again after each cast, and then you are stuck with them. Before You Play walks through the take and play turn: take a skill alteration card from the market, take a spell by allocating dice to its slots (flex slots accept mana or acuity crystals instead), take back your exhausted alterations, or recycle the leftmost spell for an acuity crystal, then play an alteration card to reroll, flip or convert dice. Void faces are useless unless converted, while ether faces can be turned into another element through your class's ether flow power. Hands are capped at 10 alteration cards.
Engine Building Through Spell Combinations
Spells taken during a round sit in a spell combination until you spend a turn casting it. Meeple University explains the twist: red ruin and blue restore cancel each other out, so the spells you gather need to support each other. Before You Play adds that an exact balance reaches equilibrium, converting both into mist for extra rewards. A cast lets you claim one heroic card for points plus a mana and an acuity crystal, possibly one arcana for end game scoring, and prestige tokens for leftover power. The spells are then scored away and the dice rerolled. That reset is the heart of Board Of It's complaint: once a spell is done you start again, so the game never delivers the feeling of building a massive engine.
The Mercurial Experience
Intimidating Until It Clicks
The countdown hosts admit to being a little intimidated at first, because of all the new iconography and made up names for crystals, dice and elements; once that clicked, the game flowed. Board Of It never got past it, finding jargon such as ruin, restore, arcanas and alterations hard to remember between plays and keeping the reference sheet close. Quackalope had it worst: the rulebook took a month to get through, and one player gave up halfway through a game out of frustration.
A Tight Efficiency Race
Board Of It frames Mercurial as an efficiency puzzle, casting spells as quickly and powerfully as possible while racing for the heroic cards that end the game; the game ends when a player reaches five heroic cards at two players, four at three and three at four, according to Before You Play. In the moment, Board Of It calls it a fairly nice puzzle that engages you. The countdown hosts describe it as very hard but fun, with an engine that can stall because an opponent took what you wanted. Quackalope felt stalemated in the middle of the game.
What Makes Mercurial Stand Out
Art and Production
Meeple University calls the artwork breathtaking, and Board Of It concedes the game has a lot of stunning artwork and production. The countdown hosts point out that the art is by an illustrator, not AI. Tabletop Tokki, unboxing a used copy, singles out the organization of the insert and a pull out tray for components.
Asymmetric Classes and a Solo Mode
Before You Play describes four asymmetric class boards that set your starting alteration cards, sigil, dice pool and crystals, with an initiate side that gives everyone identical resources for a simpler game. A Prodigy mode covers solo play, which Board Game Garden hopes to try on a livestream. Tabletop Tokki's copy also came with the Challenger expansion.
Potential Drawbacks
Randomness Fighting the Puzzle
Board Of It calls the randomness the most egregious misstep: your roll is random, the market is random, and it only changes when players take cards, so one player can match the spells on offer immediately while another must spend turns converting. Alteration cards stay situational rather than growing into big combos. Quackalope makes the same point: a hand of cards built around one roll becomes irrelevant when the dice are rerolled.
Balance and Length
Board Of It also questions the balance. Heroic cards range from 4 to 15 points, yet taking low value cards brings you closer to the end, so they mostly clog the market. Some arcanas are much harder to score than others, the game changes little from play to play, and it is simply too long for what it provides.
If You Enjoy Mercurial
Board Of It points to Res Arcana as a game that does similar things with snappy turns that build into a massive engine, and Board Game Garden felt Res Arcana vibes too. Meeple University compares Mercurial to Century: Spice Road and Century: Golem Edition for collecting gem-like resources with a limit on how many you can hold, calling Mercurial a few steps up in complexity; Board Game Garden felt the Century: Spice Road connection as well.
What Reviewers Are Saying
"The breathtaking artwork, no doubt about it, feels like stepping into the magical realms yourself. Scenery, creatures, items, the whole lot."
— Meeple University
"The first problem you'll encounter is you roll all the dice and what you roll is random, what's in the marketplace can be random, and there's not really much of a way that the marketplace shifts without players taking the cards."
— Board Of It
"It felt like there was a lot of bloat in this game that didn't need to be there. It could have been cut down, refined a little bit more to a very good, to a very good, very approachable engine building system."
— Quackalope