Myth

The first word to fill my brain and escape my mouth when the UPS guy delivered the monstrous, 21.5 lb. package containing MYTH: “Wow.” And that’s without the plethora of add-ons unlocked during their Kickstarter campaign.

You didn’t Kickstart this beast? That’s OK. It will be available at your local gaming store, or at online retailers, or at a convention near you soon enough!

But what is MYTH, and should you even bother hunting down a copy? I’m glad you asked, as I’ve bumped this long-awaited dungeon-crawling cooperative miniatures game to the front of my review list just for you.

The Dirt, The Skinny, The Whole Enchilada; How do I sum up this game?

If you’re looking for amazing components (don’t worry, I’ll get to those in detail later), unique combat mechanics, diverse characters that each play differently, and a wide variety of objectives and quests that play differently from game to game, then look no further! MYTH has it all, and then some.

Upon opening the box, it was difficult to wrap my head around just how much there was to it. Power cards, the Darkness Board, Quests, Traps, Mini-Bosses, Treasure Coins, Lairs — all of these elements, and more, combine into a hulking monster of a game that, quite frankly, many gamers are going to need a few hours to pick up on. Despite the family-friendly and absolutely incredible artistic style, I don’t get a “casual family game night” vibe from MYTH.

There is very little structure to gameplay when it comes to “dungeon” map layout, which monster types are encountered, and the resolution of a play session. Quests are randomly drawn during play, and can sometimes feel like a secondary goal that follows “Kill all of the monsters and grab the loot” in priority.

As a story-telling game, this falls into the vein of being a game where the story is, for the most part, what the players make of it. If your group is keen on deep plots and weaving exciting, coherent tales and are happy doing so on their own, they’ll love this. If they just want to kill monsters and build an ever-more-powerful hero to kill increasingly-difficult monsters, this will be right up their alley, too.

That’s the beauty of MYTH, I think: it can appeal to all sorts of dungeon crawl gamers, no matter the level of immersion they desire. Just don’t expect the game to provide detailed scenario setup guidance (at least not yet!)

Does This Thing Take an Hour to Set Up?

The figurines are pre-assembled and the decks of player cards are shuffled in play. Tiles are laid down as you progress through the environment, rather than constructing a carefully-diagramed floor plan.

Other than reading the rules, planning your session, and choosing your characters, the setup time after punching out seven million cardboard tokens is pretty minimal!

Gameplay — the Brief Version?

Normally I’ll do a quick rundown on gameplay, but that’s just not going to happen here. The mechanics for MYTH are deeply involved. For the sake of a complete review, however, let’s talk about some of the unique gameplay concepts.

Player turns: Each character gets a small amount of movement per turn, and a deck of cards that contain their available actions and powers. These are unique to each hero type, and each has it’s own awesome flavor that doesn’t carry over to any other character! The results of your actions are affected by whether or not you’ve moved this turn, and other factors such as Rage for the Soldier or available Arrows for the Archer. Using TOO MANY powerful actions adds power to The Darkness, which brings us to the Monsters’ Turn!

Monster turns: The bad guys don’t NECESSARILY get a turn every single round — they are triggered when “The Darkness” builds up enough points based on player actions, and then SWARMS of them get to attack in unison. Monsters have pre-determined movement and actions based on their type, and these actions rely on criteria such as heroes’ Threat levels, proximity, or Power type.

Dungeons: You get many, many sturdy cardboard tiles that depict a number of different environments, each of which includes symbols that SUGGESTS how many Monster Lairs, Traps, or encounters such as quests the players might find in the area. Layout of the tiles is chosen in any fashion the players like — from randomly grabbing a tile out of the box to pre-planning the “story” you want to tell.

Will the heroes fight their way through the giant insect-infested forest only to discover that the graveyard is being plundered by savage orcs? Or will they march into the palace of the Orc King determined to liberate his magical sword, only to discover that their target has been eaten by an insectoid monster with one thousand legs?

Okay, But Really — What About the Components?

In the words of The Lady when I opened this box: “Holy. Moley.”

Everything in the box is HIGH quality, from the character and monster miniatures to the environment tiles to the tiny equipment cards. There’s no buyer’s remorse from me or feeling that I spent too much on the game, as it is packed full of awesome bits and pieces.

Maybe you’d like over forty plastic, fully-assembled miniatures; five heroes and an assortment of evil minions, plus two enormous “boss” figurines — a huge undead warrior and a giant insect.

Cards! Lots of cards! A deck of cards for each hero, plus decks for “The Darkness” and for the monsters. Treasures, quests, merchants. You have a big table to lay this all out on, right?

The obligatory cardboard tokens for environmental hazards such as debris and traps, which will have to tide you over until the sculpted plastic proxies for these arrive. Luckily, even the cardboard chits are beautifully illustrated and of amazing quality.

Dice. Bright, beautiful, orange dice with ten sides. Use the right abilities and get the right gear, and you’ll be rolling handfuls of these bad boys at a time! Also, a custom die with the various power source symbols — another facet of play in this intricate and detailed system of rules.

Should You Buy It?

This game is a dungeon crawler, through and through. I really believe it will appeal to role players and hack-n-slashers alike, and that fans of the medieval fantasy genre will find something to love if they’ve got a few hours to dedicate to this game.

Definitely not a game you grab off the shelf and decide to play a quick and casual game of after dinner on Wednesday night, but a solid option when a bunch of friends are coming over for Board Game Night, and all want to play an epic cooperative adventure.

Casual board gamers: Skip it.
Hardcore dungeon delvers: This is the game you’re looking for.

When it first appeared on Kickstarter I was very interested in the cool looking miniatures and the fact that it’s fully cooperative. I was looking for a dungeon crawler playable with two without someone having to play evil. I waited patiently for the first reviews, as I analyse everything before buying, but most reviews were mediocre at best. Especially the rule-book got many negative remarks. Seeing the box at my FLG I just couldn’t resist and now I just backed their second Kickstarter: Journeyman, because the game is great. I guess that for many boardgamers Myth left to much to choice. Being a hardcore boardgamer myself, I never saw it as a negative but that’s probably because I’m not good at remembering rules anyway and we play most of our games “in the spirit of the rules”. Many people argument “why would I set up 2 lairs if the rules let me put out 1, but that’s just the same as saying why should I add 6 epidemic cards if we can use 4 in Pandemic. I love the Darkness system, it’s logical and thematic: when you do cool stuff the Darkness will see you as a treat and react. You can slaughter many foes at once, do all sorts off interesting combos and you really must cooperate to win. I love this game and it even started my first painting experience.

This game is kinf of complicated, but once you get a way to play its easy to improve and customize some stories.
I bought this game 3 years ago, and after 2 years closed my friends and I began to play.
At the begining was complicated, but the firs rule in this game is “adapt the game to your rules”, so we decide to make this game like a dungeon. Sometimes we try to play as we were playing Diablo.

I start to paint the miniatures, and the plastic detail is awesome.

regards