Robgoblin Reviews - Mycelia

The Kickstarter Fairies have been kind this month. Off the back of Kavango the other week, the latest arrival at the Goblinhole is Mycelia, the self-described Strategic Mushroom Game from Split Stone Games. We got the Deluxe edition, because we're suckers for upgraded stuff, and it's nice to support independent artists and designers.

In technically unrelated news, the Common Descent podcast has also just begun a three-part series on the palaeontology and evolution of fungi. What can I say, goblins like mushrooms. Even if they are freaky and weird.

Anyway, the Goblinette (Goblette?) and I have only played through once, but here's some initial impressions.

First off the bat, the name has caused some confusion. Evidently, a large publisher created a game with the same name at virtually the same time. This is the moody, earthy independent game, not the light and whimsical family game. Apparently a good game, just not the one I'm talking about. Anyway.

This one hits you with the earthiness as soon as you open... well, the box it shipped in. Because the outer box itself is dark green. It really suits the theme of the game, and stands out pretty well on our game shelves alongside generally lighter boxes. The box is sleeved, as boxes apparently are these days. Don't entirely get the desire, but then I'm a function-over-form guy a lot of the time. I guess it keeps stuff together and makes it look a bit tidier on a shelf.

Inside the box, the components are nice and tactile. Painted wooden game components are always nice, the card is a good thickness, and the double-thickness card player boards with cutouts for cards and conmponents are an excellent touch. The artwork is excellent, all produced by the game designer - apparently a person of many talents, as they've also handmade the premium all-wooden 'Opulent Edition' of the game, which I'm sure those with deeper pockets than me are enjoying.

The triangular game board tiles tesselate very nicely, and make sense with the game mechanics, but do suffer from the minor problem that triangles are really difficult to shuffle. Squares or hexagons wouldn't work as well mechanically, though, and you only really have to shuffle them once, so that's fine overall.

Gameplay seems intimidating at first, but is actually pretty simple. The core gameplay loop is to grow a mycelial network and fruit mushrooms. Or in gamist terms, get resource cubes onto the game board, then spend those resources to play cards. At the end of the game, each mushroom card played scores points.

Each turn, a player gets to take two actions, which must generally be different

• Draw a new tile to expand the player board
• Move their mother mushroom (player piece) to contest control of the board
• Play spores (resource cubes) onto the board, one cube per tile, from a player's piece or 
• Spend spores from the board to play a card and place a mushroom piece onto the board
• Draw a new card to their hand
• Decay (expend) a card to gain a bonus, sacrificing a mushroom piece from the board to do so.

In our playthough, despite the board being quite congested, there wasn't too much directly confrontational play. I'm sure you could play this way, but it's not our preferred style, so it was good that the game didn't force us into it. There's also a good level of randomness: the initial board comprises twelve tiles, and grows as more tiles are drawn, while a die roll dictates the direction in which spores can be played.

There isn't much asymmetry - limited really to differing hands meaning players seek different resources. As cards are expended, a bit more asymmetry creeps in, but not so much that it feels like there are different games taking place on the same board.

Game end is determined quite simply: when a player has decayed a card from each of five spots, the game ends instantly - not only does no other player get to take actions, but the player who triggered the end of the game cannot take any further actions. Because individual player mats are visible to all players, this shouldn't come as a surprise. In fact, during the endgame, both of us were actively using our actions to try to prevent the other from achieving this condition.

Scoring is straightforward: each card played scores points. There are some bonus points awarded for other achievements, but they didn't prove significant for us. They might in a game with more players, where competition for resources becomes more extreme.

Overall, Mycelia is simple to learn, but with a good level of emergent complexity that makes for an engaging game. A thumbs up from us!