Mystic Vale

one of my most-played analog-game ports. It's a fun engine builder.

Mystic Vale on Steam is a PC port of a board game designed by Alderac Entertainment Group. Players take the role of druids competing to restore life to the vale. It is essentially a deck-builder but instead of adding cards to your deck, you add effects to your cards. It can be played solo against computer opponents or online with friends.

The graphics are good - the UI looks nice and the card art approaches par with Magic the Gathering. The sound effects are adequate and the UI is pretty good once you understand how the game works. It does have a number of unconventional rules, though, so be prepared to be puzzled for a while before it starts to make sense. Rather than explain it here, I'll simply link you to the official rulebook - it's not long and it's a good idea to read it before you get started.

The core conceit of the game is the idea of building your cards rather than (or in addition to) building your deck. Instead of choosing or buying a card, you choose a top, bottom or middle section to add to a card. Your deck of twenty cards will be mostly blank to start with but you'll add effects that generate resources or do other things and, ideally, add sections that coordinate with other sections to produce more powerful effects.

The problem is that there's no strategy around which section (top, middle or bottom) to pick and this makes choosing a feel-bad mechanic. If you have played Gloomhaven, you'll know that normally attack actions are found on the top half of a card and move actions are on the bottom. This means that when you choose a card that has a bottom attack or top move, you unlock new tactical possibilities in combat. In Mystic Vale, you can be trying to build a strong card but be blocked by a previous choice that you had to make at random because you had no idea what choices you'd have in the future. You can finally afford to buy the combo section you want? Too bad you already filled that section on the card where it would matter!

Part of the problem is that a Mystic Vale match is set up by taking a selection of the card sections from the available pool. Unlike Dominion where you have a known selection from the possible card pool, Mystic Vale's selection is random. In Dominion you can strategise from your knowledge of the cards that are available but in Mystic Vale you won't know whether a given section is available until it shows up. This means that players will sometimes invest in potential combinations that turn out to be ineffective, wasteful or even impossible.

Unfortunately, since scoring points directly leads to the end of the match, players will often find the match is decided by the time they've found their footing in terms of what sections are available and how they should be playing. You can increase the number of points it takes to end the match but having good or bad luck in the early rounds still seems to have more impact than game plans requiring longevity.

As far as mechanics are concerned, the creators have done their best to explore the available design space. While there are a lot of different discard effects that boil down to the same thing, there are other kinds of effects that make different game plans possible. While the base game doesn't take a lot of decision-making power to play, the expansions greatly increase the number of potential options and interactions.

Unfortunately, even the breadth of new mechanics in the expansions don't help Mystic Vale overcome its basic limitations as a game and this brings me to the worst problem of all: Mystic Vale is not a game.

You see, while individual players can approach a match with a variety of game plans, there's essentially no interplay or counterplay between players. You all buy from the same selection of sections and you all take from the same pool of victory points but nothing in your deck will ever interact with anything in another deck. While you can see what sections other players choose and you can hope to snag something before an opponent does, you can't actually do anything to interrupt or alter another player's game plan or decision-making process. Instead of being a game, Mystic Vale is a race against ghosts and by the time you know you're losing, it will almost certainly be too late to catch up.

It turned out, after I looked into it, that Mystic Vale was developed as another use of the card-building technology originally developed for one of AEG's other games; Edge of Darkness which is, apparently, a lot more involved. Mystic Vale only exists because the manufacturer didn't want to be printing out these parts for only a single game.

All that being said, Mystic Vale is still an interesting experiment. It tries a lot of things that other deck-builders haven't tried and it explores a lot of options within those constraints. Mystic Vale is not itself a good game but I think there are lessons to be taken from it that could inform future games in the genre. Overall, I'm glad that it exists but most people just plain don't need to play it. Maybe go and try that other game or just wait for someone to build something good on this foundation.

Oh, this game is a keeper, alright. Very well done. Get all the DLCs to maximize it; you will be glad that you did.

It took me a while to get all the nuances but I am totally addicted now. I recommend getting the expansions, but maybe only use them once you have the base game sorted

great adaptation of the board game. AI is quite challenging

jlhgol u;

I like this game. It often feels like as if I'm working on something rather than mindless playing.
Every game feels like I'm trying to come up with the most efficient and potent recipe for an elixir or something.
My only complaint would be about the lack of variety in the terms of game play, and they could have easily solve that with the expansions but nope, it's the same loop every time.

This is my favorite deck builder, so I was quite excited to see it on sale and to try some of the expansions that I do not own in real life. This adaptation of Mystic Vale is absolutely amazing with animated cards and relaxing music.
For those who are not aware of how this game works it will definitely take some time to learn. The strategies involved in Mystic Vale are quite different from other deckbuilders. You will find that this game is all about maximizing your chances as it seamlessly combines luck and strategy together. The shop is somewhat random, so you will want to prioritize the advancements that work best with your deck, the card you are placing it on, and the state of the game while keeping in mind that someone might want to buy the advancements you want before you. In Mystic Vale you have to constantly adapt to the situation, setting the game apart from games like Dominion, where you often figure out your exact strategy on the first turn.

Horrible unintuitive UI/UX.

Great for playing with a friend. The rules of the game are complicated when playing in person with the actual game pieces, but the online game pretty much takes good care of you, making sure you don't miss something that's actually worthy of consideration. Still, there's a pretty good sense of arcane-ness to the game, and it takes a while to get to a point where you can actually follow along in your head.

I'm still getting the hang of the multiple paths to point gathering, It is an interesting take on deckbuilding-you're not building the deck, you are building individual cards!

Maybe my favorite Deckbuilding Game.

While I think the balance of cards could be a bit better, leading to many optimal choices regardless of situation, the push mechanic makes for an interesting extra layer. When playing other Deckbuilding Games, I will often miss things about this one that I think are inherently very good ideas.

As for the implementation: The limit on redoing purchases (only one step) can be a bit annoying and there can occasionally be a bit of wonkyness with updating the grey victory points with some leaders or advancements, but nothing really major. It DOES seem to have issues though with steam remote playtogether, which is definitely a bit of a problem.

Overall, great game with solid adaptation. Shame not all of the expansions made it in.

As an avid deckbuilder and card game fan, while the game itself is fun, the constant cheating by AI (playing illegal cards, taking cards they can't afford, or just outright cancelling your actions) ruins the actual gameplay experience. That this becomes utmost apparant the second a human player is in the lead by as little as one point, is ridiculous.

This occurs mostly because the AI, even on it's highest difficulty, is as useful as a box of hammers, making illogical, inconsistent actions that even left our child confused as to why it was playing so ineptly.

Overall, a very mediocre implementation of a great deckbuilder, mostly down to poor AI, clunky UI and complete abandonment of the project the second the developers got players money.

What a beautiful game! I love the lush artwork, cozy mood and overall presentation along with the great gameplay. It is a unique twist to the deckbuilding mechanic and it blends in some other unique twists as well.

I have a lot of fun playing this game against the AI and you should be happy with it as well because otherwise you might be dissappointed: sadly the online community is practically dead....

Worth 7$ for the whole game & dlcs. The UI is great, so it's a matter whether you'll like the game itself (check BGG to know that).