‘Euro’ games are a weird sort to me. Many like Caverna, Dominion, and Agricola hit you with a feeling of ‘meh’ at first glance. Their artwork is so... bland. So desolate. Like the colour grey. Or plain toast. Or unsweetened greek yoghurt.  But often with games under this category, there is far more richness beneath the gloopy surface. Games filled with impactful choices and clever mechanics. And little wooden meeple. And little wooden houses, to put all your little wooden meeple in. One such game is Terra Mystica.

There are a few games I hear about time and time again on the board game subreddit. And this game deserves the recognition. Terra Mystica is an intensive nation-building game for 2-5 players set in a fantasy world. Unlike most other games of the genre, Terror Blister is not a game about swords and sorcery. It’s about Spades and shovelry. In a way that would bring a tear to ol’ Shovel Knight’s eye, players build up their townships by terraforming the landscape around them. The core mechanic of the game is the terrain wheel (featured prominently on the box), which shows players how difficult one terrain is to change into another. This seemingly small detail actually drives the entire game.

Play begins with starting dwellings deployed onto the map. Each player represents a different race of creatures. In all there are 14 of these to choose from. From the slow but sure giants to the tiny and clever gnomish engineers. And there’s like, chaos wizards and witches too, but come on guys. Wizards and witches are classes, not races. I only just trained my wife to differentiate them for dungeons and dragons and you’re gunna ruin all my hard work. ANYWAY… for each terrain type there are two … tribes that adhere to that terrain. Being the softies they are, they will only settle and build on a tile that has been terraformed into their home terrain.

To perform this, players need to spend workers to produce ‘spades’. Each spade allows you to change a tile on the map by one position on the terrain track. For example, changing the grey mountains into badlands takes only a single spade, but digging them up into swamps will take 3. And in the Game of Spades, you either live, or you don’t get to put houses down. Once these houses are down however, you can spend resources to upgrade them. First into trading houses, and then into strongholds, temples and sanctuaries! What’s really cool about Terra Firma is the player mats you keep all your tokens on (the mats known by the euro gaming elite as ‘tableaus’).

Each round, players gain income based on what symbols are unveiled on their ‘tableau’. Each house placed reveals more workers. Trading houses give power and gold. Strongholds give off cool abilities while temples and sanctuaries give you priests. Now you can’t just go upgrading willy nilly. First off, if you have no houses, since you upgraded them all you big silly, you get no workers. No workers means no more upgrades. No trading houses means stunted gold and power growth. Terry Merry is a game about meticulous planning. And any mistake can cost you. And the other players are not to be ignored, either.

Trading houses are cheaper when built near other players. Cool. great. Surely there’s no downsi-PROBLEM IS your opponents can gain power as a result. Now if you get into a popular area early or just want to ward off opponents, you should build your bigger things in other people’s faces. Power is a dangerous thing to give away, because it gets converted into a bunch of powerful actions. And don’t get me started on how euro the power mechanic is. It’s not as simple as get it, spend it. No, see you have 12 power pellets, in 3 bowls on your table-bow-wow. When you ‘gain’ power, you just move a pellet from the lowest bowl with pellets in it… to the next bowl. And you can only spend power when it’s in bowl 3, which just puts in bowl 1 again.

So you might think this is convoluted, but it’s probably just too smart for its own good. See, you can spend a little power on say, building a bridge. But your production of spendable power is nerfed until you do more bowl movements (heh). You can gain power pretty easy through the cults, though. Oh yeah, um, there’s these four elemental cults you can pledge loyalty to so you can do the pellet shuffle. Building temples and sanctuaries also grant you the blessings of these cults. Fire cult 1 buff is so overpowered btw, just rush it and get 3 gold every round my goodness (disclaimer, I don’t actually recommend this for all situations).

So how do we win? The end of the game (6 rounds) has players tally up how many structures they have that are connected, either directly or through other connection means (shipping, tunneling etc.) Players get victory points depending on how they placed at that race. Then you see how each player fared enticing the four cults, with each one dishing out points to the leaders. You also add those to the other various points you’ve earned throughout the game. And that’s Terra Mystica!

As usual, I’ve skipped over important details, but that’s because I’d be here forever otherwise. Terra Mystica is such a dense experience that relies on zero luck. Everything comes down to planning, and outplaying your opponents.There is a term in board gaming called ‘analysis paralysis’. And trust me, you might get this a lot playing this game. While the aesthetic is certainly not for me, the varied and interesting playable -tribes- are a huge draw for me to pull it out and play it again. I recommend this game to anyone who is looking for a mental challenge in their next purchase.

I also recommend in investing in a good shovel. Right now, they are worth like a hundred bucks but if the world turns into hexagons they are worth 3 slaves. EACH.