Mystic Vale

2015 was probably the year deck builders shone; then fatigue set in, and new attempts often felt like flogging a dead horse. AEG keeps looking for variations on the formula, and Mystic Vale is among its most ambitious efforts: it does not merely promise another deck builder, but card crafting.

Instead of building my deck solely by adding new cards, I buy transparent cards and place them over cards from the base deck. One layer changes another, gradually improving and modifying what I already have in hand. It is a mechanism that immediately makes you look at cards differently, because you are literally transforming them in front of you.

At the table, though, the theme does not help at all: I am some random druid planting trees, and the whole thing is unbearably dry. I also found the base set unbearably dull. The expansion adds smarter mechanisms and makes the choices more interesting, but it also meddles with the balance: it can enable a nice catch-up, or leave you eating dirt while the other player runs away with it until the whole thing is over.

Despite my objections, Mystic Vale remains a breath of fresh air in a fairly dead space. We had a great time with the kids, I played it again on Sunday with my wife and some friends, and she liked it too—so who am I to argue? If the deck-building bug still has hold of you, it is worth trying, especially if you have the expansion at hand.