Mystic Vale

Deckbuilding had started to look like a genre chewing its own sleeve when Mystic Vale arrived with an idea that earns its place: card crafting, rather than another deckbuilder in a different hat. The druid-and-trees theme is dry enough to leave splinters, but the mechanism does catch the eye.

You begin with a basic deck and buy transparent cards to lay over the cards already in it. A card is not merely replaced; it changes, gains improvements, and carries your decisions around in visible layers. It is a clever, tactile variation on the familiar business of building a deck.

Most player interaction comes through racing for the available purchases and seeing who can assemble the more effective cards. The base set, though, is bland and far too dry, as if the good idea arrived at the table with nothing much planned for the evening. The expansion brings smarter mechanisms, but unsettles the balance as well: it can produce a satisfying comeback, or leave one player being thoroughly buried. Progress, with an asterisk.

For all that, Mystic Vale is fresh air in a corner of the hobby that had been standing dead for a while. It worked perfectly well with children and found favour at a more family-minded table too, so I will not pretend to be above it just because the base box is bored with itself. If the deckbuilding bug still has you, it is worth trying — preferably with the expansion within reach.