Oh boy do I have a treat for you today. Every so often you see see a game, and it gets described in common terms: “Oh Doug, this is a deck building game, in a fantasy setting, where you are druids trying to repair the land” Cool. I like fantasy. I like deck building. Hell, half my collection has that mechanic (and about a third of the kickstarters I'm waiting on).

But, what really sets ‘Mystic Vale’ apart, is it’s

CARD.

CRAFTING.

SYSTEM.

Ohhhh yeah. Mystic Vale is a competitive 2-4 player experience in which you draw cards from a deck to generate mana. If too many red decay symbols show up as you reveal cards, you spoil and lose your turn. Imagine a TV show with druid competitors guessing how many nuts and twigs various woodland creatures are worth, without going over. And like, Velenor is like “I think that giant snek is worth pushing for 6 mana, and not a wisp more” and Sh’kalra is like “6 mana and a twig”.

Speaking of giant sneks, every deck-builder gives players new cards to improve their deck. Whether you are trying to gain more mana each turn, reduce the impact of decay symbols in your deck, or gobbling up victory point tokens, the buy lists have you covered. But Mystic Vale doesn’t sell you enterprising tree-huggers more cards for your deck. No no, your deck is and will remain 20 cards. What you get instead are transparent cards featuring BITS OF CARDS. Once you pay the mana cost for an ‘improvement’ (based on the mana you’ve generated drawing cards and stopping at a reasonable time), You take it and slide it into the card sleeve, covering a blank space on a card you’ve played this turn. This, is how Mystic Vale’s

CERD

CRERFTENG

SERSTERM

works.

Some of your starting cards will be blank slates that you can improve upon up to 3 times, whereas the others come printed with either a decaying or fertile land.  The aim of the game is to gather up victory points to be the guy with the most when the game stops. You can acquire landscape cards for static bonuses or invest the vacuum boy gang to hoover up the tokens available over time. But not all of them come cheap. The available upgrades are split into 3 buy lists. Cheap and dirty, pretentiously costed, and exorbitant. The landscapes can be bought by employing animals that make druidic doodles. Spirals can be used as any doodle, so keep a sharp eye out.

The question then moves from what you’re buying to ‘where do I put it?’. Some improvements can cancel out decay symbols with green symbols. Should you make a blank card counteract an entire other card with a single red? Or do you put the green on the red so it becomes a nothing? I know I’m losing most of you now. So I’ll rephrase: Remember the “4 decays and you lose your turn” rule? Since you will draw a random number of cards per turn SAFELY, you need to make a decision. Do you make your decay cards better, making even your worst turns more consistent but crippling your ability to make big turns? Maybe. Oooor, do you craft super awesome cards from blanks, allowing your big turns to flourish while letting your slow turns suffer? Perhaps.

As far as interaction goes, Mystic Vystic is more of a race. Players do have to ‘prep’ their next turn, flipping cards to 3 decays for their next turn. As such, you can see how much mana others have, and you -can- counterplay them. But to what end? If you weaken say, one opponent by buying ‘their’ card, all you end up doing is crippling them AND you, leaving anyone else to flourish. Mystic lipstick is special among deck builders because of that ability to draw more cards as you wish. To take that risk. If an opponent is pulling ahead with good fortune, you have the choice to push hard, and grab a higher payout card. The key is not counterplay, but counterpace.

Mystic Ballistic is a lot of fun. The excitement of grabbing a new card is a staple of deckbuilders, but it is tripled here. Seeing your fully crafted beast show up is such a rush, as you know you’re in for a lot of fun that turn. The visual style is a bit lacking, however. The square boxes that fit together are neat, but are just... bland. Enough so that the game seemed older to me upon first glance than its actual 2016 release. It’s not enough to detract from the experience, however. Especially when you start including the expansions available. The most enjoyed in particular adds leader cards. These magical magistrates merge merrily into your deck, managing your major strategy.

Also this game features Moon Moon. If you don’t know who that is I’m not surprised but very disappointed.

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