Mistborn: House War

We tried it with five players, a number that feels almost ideal to me for a negotiation game. The first thing that stayed with me was the flavour: Mistborn: House War knows how to sell its theme, and its production is genuinely lovely too. It is one of those games that you enjoy having spread across the table, even if the gameplay itself ultimately lands at merely “okay.”

Its core is, as one would expect, negotiation. With five people there were enough players for the discussions, deals, and competing aims to stay interesting, without making the game feel as though it were being played solely between two people. Interaction is the main course here: you need to read the table and decide when it benefits you to cooperate and when it does not.

Where it lost me somewhat was in its flow. As with quite a few negotiation games, when each thing is played does not have the clarity I would like, and the overall experience can become a bit of a mess. It is not that the negotiation fails to work; I simply wanted better timing, so that interventions and decisions arrived in a clearer, more controlled way.

Personally, I prefer it to New Angeles, although that is entirely subjective. What is certain is that negotiation games are not for everyone. If you do not already enjoy this kind of interaction — and especially if you are not a Mistborn fan either — you are probably better off looking at something else.