Last week we peeked at Mysthea, now it has launched on Kickstarter and has currently tripled it's funding goals. This adds, among other things, a fifth player and app support. Mysthea is a new gaming world with it's own lore, revolving around a huge crystal that smashed into the planet Icaion and has caused havoc ever since.
Players take the role of a Champion hired by the Kingdom's guilds to venture on to a series of unexplored floating islands that circle the massive crystal. Of course it's not that simple as you will have to battle and join forces with other players as you soon find out that you are not the only ones on the islands.
Captain Planet
A casual glance at Mysthea and you'd be forgiven for thinking Blood Rage had descended from Valhalla reincarnated, that's how norse mythology works right? Look a little deeper, though, and there are some interesting things afoot on the floating Islands of Icaion. The most obvious of these being the five islands that will act as battlegrounds, but these battlegrounds move. Moving these islands and therefore altering the connections between them will be a key strategy in the game.
Monsters are handled a little differently too. Monsters are not to be trifled with, and will more often than not require teaming up with your rivals to best. Of course wily players will use these two mechanics to their advantage sending islands full of monsters towards lone rivals...
Rounding this out is a hand management/deck-building system that uses totally unique cards. Cards are multi-use so when they return to your hand you might use them differently next time round.
Tales of Mysthea
The lore of Mysthea has been given the same kind of love and attention to detail as the gorgeous miniatures. The Champions you take control of have unique powers thanks to shards of the crystal. This pushes the asymmetric nature of the game further.
It's fair to say I am a massive fan of area control games and deck builders too! Tyrants of the Underdark remains one of my favourite games of all time, and Kemet is my top game! Mysthea looks to provide similar thrills but with a much higher component quality and more condensed area control.
On top of this the campaign is being run in a great way. Stretch goals are common sense and not too far apart, communication seems top notch, and the pricing is reasonable. If you are at all a fan of area control then you can do much worse than checking this out. Mysthea is live on Kickstarter now.