Mythic Mischief from IV Studios is about manipulation of a spatial situation against an inevitable force in the form of the library tomekeeper. This book burdened monstrosity will continue on its journey through the horror school library and you and your band of halloween trope characters will do their best to put their rival classmates in the path of the paperback guardian and claim points and the knowledge that they are the best of the best. Or words to that effect.
This is a game about variables and asymmetry, but not the kind of asymmetry that might have you running for the hills. Its a much gentler asymmetry, you could say you're looking at variable player powers as opposed to feeling like your learning a completely new game every time you pick up a different group to play, which is important because Mythic Mischief gives the impression of being played with younger players in the household, or at the very least, those who want some variety but don't want the headache that can sometimes come with learning new involved strategies.
The game is split into two halves, a before lunch and after lunch phase, where the path of the Tomekeeper changes according to designated cards that have been drawn for that round. It tells you where to place the pick up tomes and where the spawn points are in case your team is captured and needs to be placed at the beginning of the next round.
While every team is different. The main actions boil down to four main areas, how you move your team, how you move opponents, how you move book cases, and how you influence the movement of the Tomekeeper. All the movement are tracked on a very clever player board, where each of your actions has its own track, where you have a numbered dice to represent the number of times you can take that action. Use an action and spin the dice down until you can't take the action anymore.
As you play through the game, you'll have the chance to pick up tomes, and place them in action spaces to lock them down, therefore preventing the dice from moving back down the track and offering you less actions for the next round. At the same time, you can also upgrade you action dice, so you move them further along the track, giving them more points for the next round. The idea here is to upgrade your movement, but then lock that upgrade down for future rounds. It was one of the few rules that we ended up reading slowly through the sentences as it took a couple of reads to grasp.
Every team has their own special move that they can take advantage of that will use up a tome in order to power it and there also a once a game big power move that you can deploy when the time is right. You have to be fast because time is certainly not on your side. Once the Tomekeeper reaches the three marked areas on the path it takes, then the game moves to lunch time, where three more squares are marked as destinations. Sometimes it will be worth advancing the Tomekeeper along its path, especially if it means a hapless opponent has a piece captured. In general though, you'll always feel that slight pressure as you try to maximise chances to score as many points as you can.
While it mentions, discuss and gives guidance on how to play with three and four players, two or four players seems to be the definite sweet spot for Mythic Mischief. Three players seems simply unfair, and to me, four players seems a bit too crowded even with the reduction in the number of Mythic characters that are allowed to be fielded per team. There's something fun about sitting across from your opponent in some kind of horror chess game where the knight moves and takes.. the vampire?
It's all so very organised, very well produced and has those little touches that once again make you feel like IV studios want you to care about every last aspect of playing their game. The sculpts on each of the player pieces are unique, fun, and full of character and would go as far potentially deserving a customised paint job of their own. Everything from the double layered played boards to the book cases displays that tough of quality where clearly some things simply just wont do. The selection of characters of Vampires, Wizards, Zombies and Frankenstein's Monsters mean that even if you are only playing this two player, there's going to be enough of a choice to keep you going as you learn how each of the factions play. Even if you tire of those factions, there's a literally plethora of additional factions that are available to purchase to expand on the roster available. The only thing my son didn't like was the tie conditions, and even at that he still enjoyed the rest of the game.
Mythic Mischief joins the ranks of the impressive portfolio that IV Studios has, and while it maybe falter slightly on three players, this makes you wonder when these cats are going to mess up, because at the moment they seem to be tapped into some kind of tabletop vein of gold. They don't seem to be stopping any time soon.
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This review is based on the retail version of the game provided to us by the designer and publisher. We were not paid monetary compensation for this review. We give a general overview of the gameplay and so not all of the mechanical aspects of the game may be mentioned.
The majority of the games that we are play are going to take a reasonable number of sessions and playthroughs to fully understand every possibility that they offer. We hope this write up gives you an idea of whether or not this game is something that you will consider playing or even add to your collection.
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