Mythic Mischief Review & How to Play

foreign Tyler with meeple mountain bringing you another board game review this time from our friends at Ivy Studios who've been kind enough to give us the Headmaster Edition pledge of their new title Mythic Mischief Mythic Mischief is an abstract strategy game for one to four players and it places you in the role of a fantasy House of school attendees such as vampires or Frankenstein's monsters or zombies and ghosts and everything in between you're going to be working to create havoc in the library by getting your opponents captured by the librarian the very somber very quiet and intimidating tone keeper you're going to be using actions on your turn to move yourself your opponents and even the bookshelves themselves in the library around to change the landscape of the library to get your opponents captured as the Tome keeper makes their rounds to the library you're going to try to do this without getting caught yourself so that you can gain the most Mischief points first and be crowned the king of Chaos in the library uh let's jump in and learn how to play this really exciting strategy title Mythic mischief welcome to the world of Mythic Mischief in this abstract strategy game for one to four players you're going to take on the role of a fantasy House of school characters such as vampires or zombies in this case you're going to be competing against your opponents to generate Mischief points the first to ten of those will win the game you'll create Mischief points by getting your opponent's units captured by this dark ominous tone keeper miniature here rounds are broken up into you utilizing your available actions utilizing these dice Pips on your character board to move your characters move opponents characters Shuffle bookshelf positions around the map and all in all try to wreak havoc and reposition things on the board so that you can get enemies in a position to the Tome keeper might capture them once you decide to pass or run out of actions the tone keeper is going to move along a chartered path moving to the first second and third locations as mapped out on the the player map on the grid and he'll move a certain number of spaces uh each turn in this case at the start of uh before lunch he'd move four spaces towards the first space every turn if a unit is ever ran over or caught by the Tome keeper they move off the board and the opponents would generate a Mischief point if you get your own character captured by some form of oversight or misstep on your point you would lose a Mischief point in that case play will continue like this until either someone gets to 10 Mischief points or the tone keeper has gotten to all three of his locations before lunch and all three of his locations after lunch at which point the game will end and the player with the most victory points or mischief points will win one of the great aspects of this game is you'll also be working because you're in a library to collect the tomes for your school faction that are scattered throughout the board as you collect these you'll use them to upgrade your abilities and gain greater uses of those actions or uses of your legendary action which is an incredibly powerful ability unique to your faction once lunch has happened we go into the after lunch phase of the game the second half of the game your faction will also gain access to a new asymmetric ability that will set them apart and help you make amazing calculated strategic plays that will blow your opponent's Minds one of the great things about this game is it's very easy to learn there are some basic and simple rules that all factions utilize and from there you grow into asymmetry for each of your factions as you go throughout the game round so without further Ado let's jump in and take a closer look at one of the faction boards and some of the actions that you can do in a game of Mythic mischief here we have a nice zoomed in view of one of the player boards and faction components for a faction in the base game of Mythic Mischief in this case we're looking at the vampires now every faction is going to have three Miniatures that they'll use to move around the board to pick up legendary tomes that they'll use to empower their actions or use their legendary action um and then they'll have a set of dice that are used to track your actions they're these will pip up and down to Showcase how many uses of actions you have left and then you may have some faction specific components for special abilities such as the vampire's blood tokens here that come with their after lunch special ability the thing I really enjoy about Mythic Mischief is there are base rules that are contingent across the board and then there is some asymmetry you'll notice and we'll talk about in a second there's some asymmetry in some of the base abilities asymmetry and a legendary ability in an after-school ability or after lunch ability that you will be able to tap into and so while the general rules of the game stay very similar and you kind of know what a fashion Washington too there are certainly unique and asymmetric aspects of all the factions in Mythic Mischief that keeps the game fresh and engaging and brings you back to want to try other aspects of this title because all the factions really do play and interact with the board and each other very differently so let's go ahead and jump and talk about what you can do there are four base actions on every Faction board that are similar they're always going to revolve around moving your characters manipulating opponents characters manipulating the bookshelf like Brown Wall barriers around the board to kind of reposition map terrain and one that is completely the same across the board which is pulling the tone keeper towards one of your units from there you have a legendary ability that can only be used if you spend a tone if you've slotted a Tome onto that spot and then I've used that Tome to use that ability these are all unique based on the faction and then again as I mentioned there is an after lunch special which is at the halfway point of the game you will get access to some form of new to asymmetric ability that causes all kinds of Chaos in the second half of the game now you have unique abilities as I mentioned but the way that you use them is the same across the board for every faction you're going to have dice Pips that start in a somewhat similar set with these little dots here that denote where you would start at the beginning of the game everyone will have the same setup if you go second in a game of Mythic Mischief you will get a bonus tone that you can slot into upgrading ability which is what we were showcasing here getting a little more use of abilities now as you use these you'll notice your dice have a numeric value that is the same as the bar above that particular ability on your turn you can use as many actions as you do or don't want to use and pip those dice down for instance we have three points of movement total that we can use to move our characters around the terrain and we'll do some examples on the Big Board in just a moment but as you use those abilities you would pip that particular dice down even to a blank zero such as the this and use as many points of that particular action as you want you could then use another action and any combo of actions as long as you have dice to allocate to those actions and then we'd reset and reallocate those dice at the end of the turn now as you collect tomes as I mentioned you'll be able to stack those tomes to upgrade abilities to get to higher numeric values for your dice which would allow you to utilize more actions of that particular ability more instances of that ability and that's going to be one of the predominant ways that you lean into a different strategy or a different aspect of asymmetry than your particular opponents may be utilizing but once you've completed your turn and have passed these dice will shift and reallocate based on how many uses are left on each of those particular dice components and then you'll continue into the round where the tone keeper will move on the board which will showcase here in just a second and then it would go to your opponent's turn tone keeper would move and then back to you and rounds will continue like that until the tone keeper arrives at his Final Destination for the before lunch section which is the third location for him then you go into after lunch where you get your after lunch abilities and repeat this with the tone keeper moving to three predetermined locations at which point the game would conclude the game will also conclude if someone gets to 10 Mischief points before anyone else here we're taking a look at the main board for Mythic Mischief with just a simulated setup for a two-player game with the zombies going first and the vampire's going second now again we looked at a player board and see kind of how actions and Pips move but I wanted to give you a look at the board and explain kind of some general ideas and strategies of what players may try to do on their particular turn now when you are playing from this example we'll take the idea as we're playing as the zombies in this particular instance there's a few things that you always want to Value you'll notice there's three types of terrain on the board we have these cluttered areas with these clutter tokens they cost an additional point of movement to move through for every unit that includes the tone keeper as he moves around the board there are bookshelves that are impassable terrain for most instances of the game and there are tones if you ever begin your turn on or end your turn on a space with a tone of your color you will take it and set it into your play area at the end of your turn you'll be able to slot those tokens into your player dice area and upgrade and augment your abilities the last thing you'll notice is we have these named locations these numbered locations of one two and three that are in red they're double-sided there is also a purple side but the red side is for the before lunch so these cards there's a deck of before and after lunch cards in the game we Shuffle those and we flip one out randomly and that's going to tell us the location of tomes and the location of where the Tome keeper is going to want to move to as he goes throughout the round so what we see here is first off the tone keeper is going to move four spaces every turn when a player ends their turn he's going to move towards the one location then the two location and then the three location and he's going to complete that route and if he ever runs over any players doesn't matter who they are blue or yellow in this case he's going to send them away he's going to scold them and send them back to their Faction board and if you get your own unit sent home in this way on your turn so say I'm blue and I end my turn telling keeper comes over here he runs through me he sends me home I would lose a point as the blue player and if I was the yellow player and I end my turn and the same thing happens it sends the blue player home the yellow player would gain a point in that instance so it's all deterministic on whose turn it is uh kind of controlling the tone keeper if you will because this game is very much about positioning and manipulating the environment to be beneficial to you and disadvantageous to your opponent so again we noticed that the tone keeper is moving forward so he would try to move towards this space here once he does this goes away and he'll turn and start making his way over to space two and then space three he's always going to choose the shortest path and if there is a tie for shortest path the active player the player who just ended their turn would get to choose where the tone keeper goes so it's all about manipulating your position the position of your opponents and thinking about how can you Corral and move the tone Keeper in a way that is beneficial to you now as I said once the tone keeper gets to the third spot we would take a break we'd go into after lunch everyone would get there after lunch ability which which is a new asymmetric power and then we'd reset the board with the after lunch cards which would give us new locations for the tone keeper to move to he'd start back here and from there then we would see that he's only moving three spaces a turn instead of four so he's moving a little slower and the game starts to get even more nuanced and advanced so again a lot of the positions and actions that you'll take would be manipulating bookshelves to try and protect yourself or luring opponents into a path that you know the Tome keeper is going to take so that they get captured before they can respond there's all kinds of interesting aspects to how you'll be looking to lure the tone keeper lure and move opponents Move Yourself to pick up tomes to make your abilities better all in the intention of collecting those important Mischief points foreign you need to know to jump in and enjoy a game of Mythic Mischief let me hit you with some of my personal takeaways and highlights and then we'll wrap things up uh there were some really standout pieces I was really excited when IB Studios sent me this title uh presentation and gameplay has always been their strong suit and they did not disappoint here we have really great packaging on factions we have the Dual layered faction boards and the nice game trades that hold everything together we have a true one to four player game we have the automata that in typical Rodney faction I will leave for you guys to discover on your own we have 1v1 1v1 1v1 2V1 2v2 options in this game there's lots of ways that you can play Mythic Mischief depending on your player count and your preferences and all of them are engaging in fun replayability is high you have varied map setups you have varied ways that the tone keeper will move and where he'll Move On Any Given game and you have the asymmetry of the different factions there's a lot of replayability packed into this title keep you coming back for more the rule book is clear concise and has illustrations that help you understand what you're doing and we also have these nice little additional leaflets that lay out the abilities of the expansion factions the trolls the witches and the ghosts that Ivy Studio was kind enough to include in this as well so there's lots of exciting content here to unpack and replay and enjoy my personal takeaway from this game is it's great because it's simple to teach it's very easy to learn and understand what you're trying to do and accomplish in this game and the actions that you do are very simple Move Yourself move your opponents move the terrain or move the tone keeper and try to get points all of that is very clear and concise the fun thing is it's a very difficult game to master because there's so many changing elements and that keeps things fun engaging and fresh and this is a title that I love bringing to game day because it doesn't matter the player skill there's a lot of fun to be had in this game so I'd encourage you to check out Mythic Mischief as well if you're looking for an abstract strategy game to add to your collection again I want to thank you guys for coming to meeple mountain for all of your content related needs we love sharing our content with you we just love board games we love sharing with you guys what's going on in the board game world what's new what's coming out and what's current so be sure to hit that Bell subscribe and continue to come back to us for all of our content needs because we wouldn't be here without you guys so thank you so much for checking us out I want to thank you for checking out this video hope you will check out Mythic Mischief in the near future and as always happy gaming thanks for checking out this video I hope you enjoyed it check out these links to find some other games you might want to bring to the table this is Tyler Williams signing off