Mycelia: North American Expansion - Overview

Hi everyone, my name is Mon'nique and today I'm going to be showing you what comes in the new North American expansion for Mycelia, which is coming soon to Kickstarter. Mycelia is a game designed and illustrated by JJ Neville and published by Splitstone Games, who are helping sponsor this video. And in this game, players compete to fruit mushrooms by exploring and producing spores while trying to maintain their own personal networks.

The base game was originally released in 2024, and now there is a new North American expansion that adds 35 new mushroom cards featuring fungi that are endemic to North America and brings the player count up to five players. In addition, the expansion introduces two new mechanics, saplings and grandfather trees, which provide a new way to score points and strategically manage the spores that are distributed across the board.

And so today, I'm going to be showing you how these two new mechanics play. But please keep in mind that everything that you see here is considered a prototype copy of the game, which means things are subject to change in the future. For more information regarding the new expansion as well as a campaign, I've included a link to their Kickstarter in the description below.

Last but not least, if you enjoy content like this and would like to see more in the future, please consider subscribing. And with that, we are ready to begin. So, if you please direct your attention to the center of the table, we're all set up here for a three-player game of Mycelia with the North American expansion.

Welcome to the Mushroom Kingdom. Now, if you've never played the base game Mycelia before, Mycelia is a tactical strategy game in which players compete to produce spores and grow mushrooms, scoring them points at the end of the game. And competition can be quite high in this game because on your turn, you're only taking two actions out of a choice of six.

And in general, these actions allow you to explore, expanding the board into several different configurations as the game progresses. You can move your mother mushroom around the board, which dictates where you'll be able to send out your initial spores, sometimes even blocking other players paths and claiming their spores for your own.

And of course, you can fruit your mushrooms by spending spores you control that are on specific combinations of colored triangles. The base game comes with a wide array of these mushroom cards that depict real mushrooms that are found in nature. And each card shows you the number of points it'll score you at the end of the game.

They themselves can also produce spores on the game board. And they also give you a decay action that you can take whenever you actually remove the mushroom from the board. Now, with the new North American expansion, the deck of mushrooms increases to include 35 new mushroom cards that depict fungi endemic to North America.

Now, you do need a copy of the base game in order to play with this expansion, but with it, you can now play up to five players as it includes the additional player pieces to accommodate that player count. In addition, this expansion introduces two new mechanics: saplings and grandfather trees. Saplings begin the game on the board in one of three configurations, and they introduce a new way to gain a symbiosis bonus when producing spores.

These saplings can eventually turn into grandfather trees, which gives you more strategic control over where spores are placed around the board, even during other players turns. When taking a spore action, typically spores are produced across the board in a triangular formation in the direction of the symbol that's shown on the wind dye after rolling it.

Now, with this expansion, if a spore lands on a tile containing one of these saplings, the active player can choose to invest the spore onto a sapling, potentially giving them a bonus. So, as an example, had I, as a red player, rolled this symbol on the wind dye, then I would produce my spores in this triangular direction, always placing the first spore on the triangle that contains my mother mushroom.

And since the second spore would get placed on this triangle tile, which contains a sapling, I can now choose whether or not to place my spore on that sapling, potentially gaining me a symbiosis bonus. Now, once a spore is on a sapling, it is no longer considered to be a part of your network, which means you cannot spend it in order to fruit mushrooms, and it cannot be removed or stolen via decay actions unless specified by the card.

In addition, even if you produce spores onto multiple tiles that contain saplings, you can only invest one spore per turn. And again, the benefit is that you can potentially gain a symbiosis bonus, but these bonuses are not guaranteed. The more spores there are on the sapling, the higher the likelihood of gaining a bonus.

To see if you gain a symbiosis bonus, you'll need to roll the wind dye. Now, there are three different symbols on the wind dye. We call them O, U, and A. And if this is the first spore on the sapling, then only the U symbol gains you a bonus, which allows you to place one spore anywhere within your network.

If it's the second spore on the sapling, then both the U symbol as well as the O symbols gain you a bonus if rolled. And the O symbol allows you to explore, adding a new triangle to the board. And finally, if it's the third spore on the sapling, then you are guaranteed a bonus because any of the three symbols will gain you a bonus, including the A symbol, which gains you an insect token if rolled.

And when checking the number of spores on the sapling, these can be spores from any player colors. They don't all have to be yours, but that's essentially how gaining a symbiosis bonus works. And the expansion comes with a player aid that has a chart depicting the three different types of bonuses and the number of spores you need to have on the saplings in order to gain them.

And over the course of the game, there will be more opportunities for you to add additional saplings to the board. Whenever a player takes the explore action, adding a new triangle to the board, they now need to roll the wind dye. And a sapling gets added if the O symbol is rolled. placing the sapling token on the triangle that was just added and replacing it with a new token on top of the stack as a constant reminder of this.

And lastly, saplings can eventually turn into the other new mechanic, which are grandfather trees. As soon as the sapling has three spores on it, and again, this can be any combination of player colors. So, they do not all have to be the same player. Then, on your turn, you can age the sapling, which is a new type of action that is a part of this expansion.

To age a sapling, not only does it have to have three spores on it, but your mother mushroom must also be present on the same tile. Then, as one of your actions, you can remove the sapling from the board, returning all of its spores to their respective owners and replace it with one of your three grandfather trees, which will score you five points at the end of the game.

Grandfather trees are a part of your network and can still share a tile with mother mushrooms of any player colors. However, a tile containing a grandfather tree can no longer contain any spores or standard mushroom tokens. So, any mushrooms that were on the tile immediately decay, resolving any decay actions as normal.

And from now on, anytime a spore is to land on a tile containing a grandfather tree, the owner of the tree must now redirect the spore to an adjacent tile of their choosing. And this includes on other players turns. Let's just say for example the board looked like this instead and the orange player decides to take a spore action.

However, after rolling the wind dye, they must now produce spores in this triangular direction. The first spore would get placed on their tile. The second spore would get placed on a tile containing the red player's grandfather tree, who can now decide to redirect it to this adjacent tile, adding it to their own network.

And by the way, when redirecting spores, if the board instead looked like this, with multiple adjacent grandfather trees, spores can be redirected through several adjacent tiles containing grandfather trees, sort of in a daisy chain. And so, as you can see, these grandfather trees are not only a new way for you to score additional points at the end of the game, because again, they score you five points for each one that's on the board, but they also give players more strategic control over where spores are placed across the board, even during other players turns.

And mechanically, these new mechanics are inspired by the symbiotic relationship between fungi and trees, specifically in the way that fungi attach to tree roots and exchange nutrients. And these mechanics are also present on the new mushroom cards. Some of these mushroom cards, by the way, show a new type of spore requirement that shows a blank square, which indicates you can spend a spore of any color.

And the cards feature five new decay actions that allow you to do things such as adding additional saplings to the board. Or some allow you to add spores to any sapling. And so, as you can see, there is a wide variety of both mushrooms as well as decay actions that you'll see with this new expansion.

And there you have it. That's essentially what comes in the new North American expansion for Mycelia. Now, for more information regarding this expansion, as well as a campaign, I've included a link to their Kickstarter in the description below. But if you have any questions about anything that you saw here today, please feel free to leave me a comment down below, and I'll try to get back to you as soon as I can.

Thank you so much for watching the video. I really hope it was helpful. If you enjoy content like this and would like to see more in the future, please consider subscribing. Thank you. Bye. [Music]