Myth Board Game

Great game only downside was having to source the 2.0 rules separately

Myth is a fully cooperative fantasy miniatures game. Each player takes the role of a Hero and everyone works together to complete a series of quests against monster opponents. Because the game is cooperative, the monsters function automatically and the players must combine their powers so they all win (or lose) together. An arena style "Slaughterfield" option allows for semi-competitive play, with the Heroes battling wave after wave of monsters, to "last man standing".OK, a history lesson. Ever since "Dungeons & Dragons" burst onto the scene in the 1970s, people have wanted to play fantasy adventures as a boardgame - going on quests, fighting monsters, capturing treasures, but without the creative input needed from a Dungeon Master to run the whole story. Terence Peter Donelly's "Sorcerer's Cave" was quite explicit about this: "a game that could be taken out of the box and played instantly, yet be different every time," as Donelly declared. Nevertheless, "Sorcerer's Cave" was simplistic and it took Stephen Baker's Hero Quest in 1989 to match up shifting tiles, monster figurines and differentiated character types to a boardgame dungeon. The only problem was that Hero Quest required someone to be the Evil Wizard (Dungeon Master) and control the monsters. The successor to this is Kevin Wilson's Descent: Journeys in the Dark. "Descent" is much more sophisticated and challenging than "Hero Quest", but one player has to be the Overlord (Dungeon Master).Now, you might feel that if someone has to take on the thankless task of being the Dungeon Master, why don't you just go the whole hog and play D&D? The beauty of "Sorcerer's Cave" was that it was a proper game that everyone took part in together. If "Descent" is the successor to "Hero Quest", then Myth is the successor to "Sorcerer's Cave". There is no Dungeon Master. You all get to be heroes.The Heroes in Myth are the Soldier, the Archer, the Acolyte (the "cleric" who can fight and has faith-based spells) and the Apprentice (magic-user) as well as the Bandit (a rat-man with stealth powers). The plastic miniatures are beautiful as are the Realms, the thick card tiles representing ruins, swamps, crypts, castles, etc that the Heroes move across. The opponents are Crawlers (insectoid horrors of varying sizes) and Grubbers (goblinoid warriors) who "spawn" from Lairs or arrive as Hunting Bands. The setting is a sort of fairy tale world that reminds me of video games like Fable or Dragon Age.Everything the Heroes try to do comes from cards and each Hero has his or her own unique character deck. The Soldier's cards are mostly combat manoeuvres; the Apprentice mostly has Spells in his deck. Some cards like Sprint are in all the decks. Each Hero Cycle has the players laying out their cards and taking the actions they allow. There's no fixed order to this: it's a fluid game and in a Cycle some players (who draw good hands) might take a lot of actions, others very few. Many cards act as "buffs", helping other players with their actions, so a lot of gameplay focuses on strategizing - getting everyone into position, getting cards down in the right order, then unleashing a complex series of manoeuvres to devastating effect.The monsters, meanwhile, stand around doing nothing. But not for long. Every significant action the Heroes take adds an Action Point (AP) to a Darkness Chart. The "Darkness" represents and abstract power of Evil and when its Darkness Meter hits 6 the game gets interrupted by a Darkness Cycle. Now the monsters move and attack, each monster having its own priorities in terms of who they go for. Instead, the Heroes now stand helplessly while the bad guys pound on them. Fortunately, there are cards called "Interrupts" that can be played during the Darkness Cycle, enabling Heroes to dodge, parry, flee or strike back.The main tactic in the game is to watch the Darkness Meter and judge whether you should let it "max out" or not. Sometimes it's better not to play a powerful card if it would trigger a Darkness Cycle at a time when the Heroes are vulnerable, low in health or lacking Interrupts to save themselves.The other tactical consideration is "Threat". Heroes increase their Threat rating every time they do damage to monsters. Having a high Threat makes intelligent monsters seek you out (which can be a good strategy, since they will ignore your friends) but if your Threat hits 10 you may be in line for a Threat Penalty when the next Darkness Cycle triggers. These can be very bad, such as the monsters gaining more attacks or the appearance of a dangerous Boss. Threat goes down if you play fewer cards than your maximum, again forcing players to choose between using their powers and being restrained.The core mechanic is rolling a ten-sided die (D10) and trying to roll higher than a Target Number (TN). Equipment, buffs and Darkness Effects may let you roll extra dice in the attempt and may change the TN for the better or worse. You also roll six-sided Fortune Dice (FD) which have symbols corresponding to each of the 5 Heroes and a swirly Darkness symbol. Different combinations of symbols can unlock special effects - generally, it's a good thing to roll your own symbol.That's the essence of the game. Killing groups of monsters makes them "pop" treasure tokens and clearing a board unlocks rewards. Treasures are drawn from a "Treasure Sack" but over time players get to replace the rather useless white treasures with more and more useful green and powerful blue treasures. Finishing quests adds new quest cards to the deck and gaining rewards adds potent new cards to a player's personal deck. Gaining Titles lets you keep more equipment between quests. All of these creates a pleasant sense of advancement - you start each quest quite weak and under-equipped, but the more successful you've been in the past the quicker you'll power up. The quest cards are arranged in "chains" and completing one adds a follow-on quest to the deck of quest cards. This is also pleasing because it means your achievements have consequences and two groups of players may develop their quest decks in different ways.All of this is, of course, wonderful. The components are wonderful too. Megacon Games launched Myth as a Kickstarter and the intriguing premise raised them a lot of pledges. When you open the box you can see where the money went. The miniatures are gorgeous, the cards are sturdy, there's a lot under the lid and it all looks fantastic."So what am I waiting for?" you say: "Let's buy this game!"Hold on.Be warned first of all that Myth is a game that encourages you to be creative. There are lots of choices for players to make. Do you want to play a quick Chapter, an extended Act or an epic Story? Or roam about in Freeplay or slog through monsters in Slaughterfield? Choices, choices. When a Realm tile is laid, you get to decide all sorts of things - is there a Lair? one or two? Hunting Bands? how many and how big? where do they deploy? is there a Trap? It's up to you. Now some people love this, especially if they come from a RPG background. Regular boardgamers may find this frustrating - if you get to decide the challenge, how exactly is it a challenge? This creativity issue extends to many of the rules because all sorts of situations can arise where players have to make their own ruling. This is either liberating or maddening, depending on the type of gamer you are.Then we have the rules...Of course, the rule book looks great: sumptuous, full colour, moody, lush. It's also completely unfit-for-purpose. Not only is it incomplete, but the layout is arbitrary and the explanations obtuse. No one could figure out how this game is to be played merely from reading the rules, which are, in effect, a set of designers' notes hastily bound together in no particular order. What you need to do is go to Megacon's site where a lot of downloadable content and tutorial videos can be found. These are very good and clarify things immensely, but there's several hours of viewing here. You'll probably need to watch the tutorials, play the game and get confused, go back to the tutorials and play it again and get irritated, then go to the FAQs on BoardGameGeek and the other tutorials on Youtube and then it'll start to come together. Then you go back to the original rules and you understand what they're trying to say.Annoying, right? Definitely, especially if you're unpacking the game surrounded by excited kids eager to get some fantasy romp underway. You need to explain that Daddy/Mummy is going to have to go online over the weekend, curse and fret and play it by themselves a couple of times before any family fun can begin. Of course, adult gamers may be used to breaking a new game in this way.Did I say it was incomplete? It's woefully incomplete. The rules are full of inconsistencies - some are typos acknowledged in the FAQs online, some are translation issues, some are just a good old-fashioned lack of beta-testing. You will look in vain in for Undead monsters (despite them being referenced on the cover art), Darkness Decks for the goblins, several of the quest cards alluded to in the rules, explanations of how poison works, etc etc. Don't get me wrong, the game can be played as it stands, but it is self-evidently incomplete, unlike (say) "Descent", which has a ton of expansions but the starter game is utterly self-contained. This undermines the game's aesthetic value. It's like in video games where you keep coming across locked-off areas or need downloadable content to proceed. Moreover, the holes in the rules exacerbate the creativity issues, forcing players to make their own judgement calls on situations that really ought to be regulated and could, easily and simply, be regulated ... if only the designers had let the game cook in the oven a little longer before rushing it onto the shelves.UPDATE: Megacon have now released Myth 2.0 with a revised rulebook that clarifies everything and revised cards that are easier to use. All the revisions are available from the Megacon website. If you've picked up the v1.0 box, you can update it from there. This doesn't solve the issue of the lack of minis but it does make the game much more playable straight-out-of-the-box so long as you do your homework first.Myth is a good game with the potential to be a brilliant game. I can't award it 5 stars because the rules were so shoddily put together. I ought to knock off another star because of the incomplete nature of the kit, but that would make Myth into a 3-star product and I like it much better than that. Here's my solution: a sliding scale!IF YOU ARE... a casual gamer looking to open the box, read the rules and get an introductory adventure underway, perhaps to please children... ONE STAR, avoid this game, buy Descent instead. Heck, buy HeroQuest.OR IF YOU ARE... a keen board gamer who is prepared to invest time to learn a game but likes challenge and rigorous rules that can be exploited through tactical and intelligent gameplay... TWO STARS, this game is probably too "fuzzy" for you and the omissions will drive you crazyIF YOU ARE... a gamer on a budget, worried about the price tag but interested in an innovative new departure in fantasy gaming... THREE STARS, this game is of interest to you but iyou'll need to get onto Megacon's website to download the revised v2.0 rules and replacement cards.BUT IF YOU ARE... a roleplayer or miniatures gamer looking for a brand new experience and wildly imaginative mechanics, happy enough to "wing it" in the pursuit of a lively and surprising adventure... FOUR STARS, this game is the next step in fantasy gaming, finally bringing a RPG experience to the game board

Zum Spiel selbst möchte ich nicht besonders viel sagen.Es handelt sich hierbei um einen rein cooperativen Dungeoncrawler. Zwar gibt es Möglichkeiten das Regelwerk für ein "Gegeneinander" abzuändern, nach dem Motto "Last Man Standing", aber ein wirklich kompetitives Gefühl kommt nicht auf.Die Kooperation zwischen Spielern funktioniert wudnerbar, da kein "Gamemaster" von nöten ist. Die "Darkness", sprich die gegnerische Kraft, wird allein durch Regeln und Aktionen der Spieler bestimmt und funktioniert wirklich gut.Die Regeln sind häufig eher als "Hinweise" gedacht, das Spiel überlässt einem viele Freiheiten. Man selbst entscheidet durch den Aufbau der Maptiles den Schwierigkeitsgrad des Spiels. Auch nach häufigem Spielen kommt es leider noch häufig zu Unklarheiten bezüglich der Regeln. Diese sind durch ihre "Freiheit" oft unspezifisch.Gut gelungen sind meiner Meinung nach auch die Helden, von denen sich jeder ganz speziell Spielt. Jeder hat sein eigenes Fähigkeitendeck, welches sich während des Spiels umgestalten lässt. Jeder Held unterscheidet sich spielerisch von einem anderen.So nun zu meinem größten Kritikpunkt (daher auch die schlechtere Bewertung)Die Qualität der Teile des Spiels, der Lieferumfang ist für den Preis einfach nicht akzeptabel.Karten sind schief gedruckt, haben unterschiedliche Grautöne (obwohl es sich um Karten des selben Typus handelt) Stanzungen sind nicht ausreichend groß für das, was eingefügt werden soll etc. (Ich beurteile hier nach dem Preisleistungsverhältnis, wäre das Spiel günstiger, würde ich sagen die Qualität wäre in Ordnung)Die Miniaturen selbst sind O.KAusserdem: KEIN INLAY! Ja es gibt für dieses Spiel, das mit dutzenden verschiedenen Kartenstapeln anrückt (welche durch die Kartenrückseite nicheinmal von einander zu unterscheiden sind) und Miniaturen beinhaltet kein Inlay, nicht einmal mitgelieferte Plastiktüten. Für den Preis eine unverschämtheit. Spiele wie Arcadia Quest bieten deutlich besseres für den halben Preis.So nun zu meinem Finalen Kritikpunkt:Preis von Erweiterungen: Es gibt bereits äusserst viele verschiedene Erweiterungen für das Spiel, egal ob "Questpack" "Itempack" "alternatives Geschlecht für die Helden" oder "Zusätzliche Maptiles". (oder besonders dreist, unterschiedliche Cardsleeves um die Kartenstapel auseinanderhalten zu können)Alles wunderbare Ideen aber zu teuer! Für die meisten Erweiterungen darf man 20$ hinlegen oder 35$ Besonders da der Versand und der Zoll noch hinzukommen.Besonders teuer sind natürlich die zusätzlichen Miniaturen wie neue Endbosse.So ich hoffe ich konnte zumindest einen kleinen Einblick verschaffen.

We don't play it anymore. So much ambiguity concerning the rules. We played it once, and now just use the miniatures and 12x12 tiles, npc symbols, etc, for our DnD Campaign. After going through some walk-through videos online, it felt like I had wasted two hours, and over $70 that I will never get back. Its a shame, because the storytelling mechanics, how the world basically runs itself without a gamemaster/dungeonmaster, is *wonderful*, as is the artwork on the map tiles. Unfortunately, some of the game mechanics are just broken, and the PDF's on the company website, and videos don't help. I feel as though the first wave of customers who bought this game are functioning as beta testers, but who will never get our investment back. The game was simply handed to family members of developers (which the developers acknowledge in the rulebook), and it was called all good.

Good game Terrible Rule book. had to look a lot of stuff on line and through FAQ's to get correct info.

Very intricate game. If you don't want 30 minute board games, get this!

I have very mixed feelings about Myth, but overall I find it to be enjoyable if occasionally frustrating and confusing. I'm no stranger to complex games, but the complexity of Myth coupled with the ineptitude of whoever wrote the rulebook can drive a group trying to figure out how to play crazy. None of the several sessions I've played through have had the rules interpreted exactly the same, and I'm not entirely sure what all we are doing wrong or if it is even possible to do it wrong. The creators' attitude seems to be, "Just play it how you want." I'm fine with that, but I'd be more comfortable house-ruling if I felt like I had a solid baseline.Anyway, throw the rules away and search for explanatory videos on YouTube or the publisher's site. That's the best way I've found to get even a vague idea of how to play.

It's really a 4 and 3/4 stars, but none the less probably the most enjoyable board game I've played.Pros:1. No need for a GM, Keeper, or anything like that. Which, in a way is a con (see below #1 below).2. Truly a co-operative game and when played with friends who really care about the game - it's a tremendous amount of fun! You can sit down and chat about strategies and get the most our of your characters!3. The production value is very high! The art is amazing.4. I own many of the other miniature board games like Mansions of Madness and Doom and played many others like Wrath of Ashardalon and Elder Sign - Myth is much more involved than any of those games and possibly my favorite (Thought I love being the Keeper in Mansion of Madness).5. Replay-ability out the waaaaahhhh zooooo! And can create your own adventures.6. Doesn't take itself too seriously... you'll know it when you see it.7. Characters can be saved from one play session to the next.Cons:1. Rules, yes even with all the help guides online - it's still a bit cumbersome and not organized well. Once you understand them - they still seem to need refinement. But they are easy adaptable to "house" rules.2. Pricier than others even at $75 on sale.3. Too many bits and bobs. There is stuff everywhere and the "checklist" of things to do every time something happens is a bit annoying.I play DnD 3.5e / Pathfinder, this is a great substitute for getting people together and killing some enemies without the need for a GM - everyone has fun. I love it.

I am going to start by saying I very much enjoy this game. It is a fun game that you can play by yourself or with a group of friends without having one player to control the scenario or monsters because the monsters have their own parameters. If you enjoy games like descent or star wars imperial assault and are tired of having to run the game this is a great game for you. THERE ARE A NEW SET OF RULES ON THE COMPANY'S WEBSITE THAT ARE EASIER TO UNDERSTAND. I recommend downloading those and using the rulebook that comes with the game for pictures. The game has beautiful minis and amazing artwork.

I love this game! Using the rules in the box is a bit troublesome, but using the excellent resources from Megacongames.com, plus excellent community support on BoardGameGeek.com, this game is great. It is very flexible in play style. There is a lot to like and great support. The developer has just finished a Kickstarter (I think you can still get in) and they have some awesome add-ons coming down the line. I look forward to a long replay value. The components and build quality are great. So much to like. I can play this alone (using two characters) or team up with up to four others, and the best part, I don't have to act as the DM! Very happy I found this game!

The only reason I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 is: it does not require a dungeon master/overlord1)The rulebook is not very good and can be downright confusing.2)Had to watch the walkthrough play and walkthrough set-up on the manufacturer website and still its confusingGood concept poor execution

With a little effort (the rules are not very clear) a solid system that has very fluid game play.

The best board game I have ever played. With a few rules and some guidelines, Myth opens the flood gates to a world of possibility. This co-op hack and slash board game lets the players decide whats next, and gets all of those players talking about whats happening on the board.

Epic

I saw them at PAX East 2015. Game looked awesome, but there is only 1 female character! My wife and daughter are totally turned off by the whole thing now and frankly, so am I.