Mystic Vale
A curse has been placed on the Valley of Life. Hearing the spirits of nature cry out for aid, clans of druids have arrived, determined to use their blessings to heal the land and rescue the spirits.
45m
2 - 4 Players
Ages 14+
A curse has been placed on the Valley of Life. Hearing the spirits of nature cry out for aid, clans of druids have arrived, determined to use their blessings to heal the land and rescue the spirits.
ABrissey
Great deck building game. Easy to learn, easy to teach. Love the clear layered cards adding onto your existing cards, it's not a new concept but they really nailed it here. Art is stunning. Feel of the theme doesn't come through very strong.
adebisi
Mystic Vale is the natural evolutionary step in the line of deck building games. Instead of adding new cards to your deck, you actually add new powers to your cards. This has been made possible with transparent cards that are stacked on top of each other and sleeved to keep them together. Another alternative could have been to adopt the legacy concept but that would have limited the replay value of the game. There is a clear narrative to the game. The first half of the game is spent on acquiring purchase powers while the latter half concentrates more on buying victory points, and it is up to the players to decide when to make this strategic shift. I quite enjoy playing Mystic Vale. Decisions you make feel satisfying and there is some room for chance and pushing your luck. The game is light enough for casual gaming but not too light to be totally meaningless. Iconography is a little ambiguous at times but not too bad. Art follows along the lines of classic fantasy seen a number of times already. Putting the game back into the box can be a bit annoying though, because you have to unsleeve all the cards.
AlexFS
[i]2018/07/24 1 play 2p[/i] The game focus on card-crafting is very interesting, but the implementation has problems. The game is practically a gamified assignment on game design, since you build the cards that you use to try to win, so you're basically designing a card game every play. It's very sandboxy, and I like that. The push your luck aspect initially feels useless, but as you craft the cards the choices related to it become (slightly) more layered and interesting. I'm not sure, but at 2p you may have some interest in trying to anticipate what the other player is going to do, but I think this form of interaction is very limited. I'm also not that sure that you can deny much by hate drafting/buying. So basically this is a point race with minimal interaction, and this is from someone who thinks race for the galaxy has indirect player interaction. My biggest problem with the game is that the first part is very slow and boring. The ramp up is sudden and things become interesting, but initially you are cycling through empty cards and buying the same currency producing improvements. I cringe at the thought of playing again that first phase, but perhaps with experience things become more interesting? I'm doubtful. The game also takes a lot of table space, and requires some setup. But even longer is the tear down, you have to empty each card and sort each improvement. It's not a tragedy, but considering the playing time it's significant, even if you want to immediately replay the game. Not a game that I feel like owning, but still intriguing and interested in playing it, to test different strategies.