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In Mycelia players are tasked with clearing away dew drops from the forest floor and bringing them to the Shrine of Life in honor of the goddess of the forest. In the solo game you are given the same challenge, but you’re trying to outpace a ghostly mushroom who is clearing his own board of dew drops.
Basic Gameplay
In Mycelia’s base game players clear a forest floor covered in dew drops, represented by an individual game board and small blue gems. Each player is given a starting deck of six cards and must build their deck by purchasing more cards and adding them to their own deck. On their turn players draw three cards and must play all of them, in any order. The wide variety of cards allows players to gather leaves, the currency of the game, move individual dew drops across their board, or remove drops if certain criteria are met.
Once players have earned enough leaves, they can, at any point during their turn, buy more cards from a communal row. As their deck grows players can make use of newly acquired abilities, helping them clear the dew drops from their board more efficiently. Examples include removing one dew drop from a square of their board that has exactly two dew drops on it or removing one dew drop and moving one from a space that has up to four dew drops. There is a range of possible actions giving players the ability to choose a strategy that works best for them. When a certain number of gems have been cleared and added to the Shrine of Life, the shrine is spun and more dew drops are added to every player’s board, the number and location determined by the roll of a die. Players continue to remove dew drops from their board until the first to completely clear their board is declared the winner.
Solo Mode: Battle Gwydion the Ghost Mushroom
In solo mode the objective of Mycelia remains the same, clear all of the dew drops from your game board. The only difference is that you play against a “virtual opponent”, in this case the opponent is Gwydion, a ghost mushroom who haunts the forest. Gwydion comes equipped with his own mini pile of leaves game board, his own character chip, and six action tokens. As with your own board Gwydion’s contains 20 dew drops that he must remove.
In the solo game your turn proceeds as normal, you draw three cards and try to eliminate as many dew drops as you can. Once your turn is over it is Gwydion’s turn, during which you draw one of his six tokens at random and follow the action on the token. Since Gwydion doesn’t have the ability to move any dew drops, his are in a single pile on his board, the majority of his action tokens allow him instead to remove one or multiple dew drops from his board. Alternatively, some cards allow the player to move a single dew drop, earn an additional leave, or flip Gwydion’s character token over, which lets him remove a bonus dew drop. Once Gwydion has removed any dew drops from his board, you begin your turn as normal. Play then proceeds until either you or Gwydion are left with an empty board, whoever achieves that goal first is the winner.
A Challenging Trip Into the Forest
To start with, the artwork for the solo mode, which includes the Gwydion board and tokens, matches the aesthetic of the rest of the game. Gwydion is an ethereal mushroom who is right at home in the magical but adorable world of Mycelia. Likewise, the player's gameplay is relatively unchanged, since a player's turn proceeds as it would in the base game. However, this is not the case when it comes to Gwydion.
Mycelia's instructions warn that Gwydion is not an easy opponent, and they are not lying when they issue this warning. Since your opponent's turn is determined by only six tokens, the majority of which allow him to remove at least one dew drop, there is only a small number of turns that you can take before Gwydion inevitably clears his own game board. There is also no way to slow this down, since it is determined by drawing a random token.
The instructions also advise that you can make the solo game easier by adding additional dew drops to Gwydion board. During my first playthrough I added five, for a total of 25 dew drops, and still managed to lose. That doesn’t mean the game is wildly unbalanced, I was only one or two turns away from clearing my own board. However, this does highlight that the solo game comfortably falls into the category of “challenging”.
This level of difficulty can be frustrating, all it takes is one mistake and Gwydion wins. On the plus side the game is made slightly easier by the fact you are not competing against other players to buy cards, since Gwydion doesn’t collect leaves and can’t purchase cards. At the very least this means that you mostly have free reign when choosing a strategy.
Final Verdict
I am a big fan of the Mycelia base game, and the solo game benefits from some of that praise; it relies on the same beautiful artwork and fun deck building mechanic. The solo game also benefits from the fact it can be used with the extension cards which unlock more abilities, creating a high degree of replay value. Despite all of that, do not go into the solo game expecting anything but a challenge. After a few losses it can feel like failure is inevitable. While fun, the solo mode is best used as practice for the base game, so that when you do play it with other people you are ready to show off your dew drop clearing skills. Although, not everyone will feel the need for that level of dedication, so it’s understandable if you choose to skip the solo game.
