Terra Mystica

Sitting down to the Terra Mystica rule book felt like preparing for an exam, but after a first play through, the mechanics work smoothly and I’m itching to play again. Moderately long set up time means this is likely to be the main event rather than a palate cleanser at a gaming session.

This game is a lot of fun and has really good replay value. Initially there are a lot of different aspects to learn, and it took a couple games to get comfortable. Also if a new player comes along, it takes a good 15 minutes to go over everything with them and they won't quite get it until you play. My copy came missing a piece, even though it was 30 days past purchase when I finally noticed. I emailed Z-man games and they sent out a replacement piece for free, the next day. ++ Pros: No two games are the same, depending on what race you choose, it can drastically change your play style. However so far they all seem to be very balanced against each other. There are many different paths to earning points for victory. Games never run long, each one only takes about 60-90minutes if everyone has played before, we often find ourselves wishing there were more rounds with how quick it goes. The game is a lot more skill based, than other games like Catan, with very little luck involved. No dice to roll, no random event cards. Cons: Only supports up to 5 players, I'm hoping that they come up with an expansion to allow more players.

So this has been one of those board games I bought awhile ago and let it set on my shelf without playing for months. We finally had a game night with some of my adventurous players, and we pulled it out. It took us about 1.5 hours to read the instructions and get the components ready. That seems really daunting I am sure, but here's the thing. Even though we scratched out heads a lot, once we started playing... it was pretty awesome. The rules, and there are a lot of them, just start to make sense as you play although I don't see how you can skip doing the first read through. I won't go into super details about how to play the game since there are hundreds of videos and sights for that. I want to talk about what makes this a rich experience for some gaming groups. Components: These are really well done. The wooden pieces are vibrantly colored and vary enough where it's easy to see which vacation is which. The faction boards themselves are beautifully colored with clear information on it. The board is beautiful. This really is a stunning game to look at and play. Your Game Group: This is great for people who love a variety. The factions play differently. If you are the Cultist faction, you're probably going to spend a lot of time trying get points from the cults, for example. The mermaids can use the river system in ways others can't. This means you can have a different experience with each faction playing against other factions. It keeps the game fresh and interesting. Of course we only played with the recommended original three, but it quickly became obvious that we were really interested in seeing how the others play. There are a lot of words in that manual, but if your group is like mine, and you have 2-3 others like yourself who will dive into a new game and then guide others through playing it the next time around, your impatient members will be fine learning as they go. It's not as complicated as it seems. And like a lot of great strategy games, once you get the concepts down, it's all about the experience of playing with others... what they're doing, and what that should mean for what i am doing. This game is also about balance. You can wind up with too much money and not enough workers and vice versa, but generally, you're not going to have someone sitting around unable to do something just because they made a few mistakes early on. There's a chance to overcome that. Our first run through proved that the early leader lost their advantage once someone else started taking advantage of their faction's special actions. I'd love to give you an example of another game this compares to, but I've never played game like this before, nothing like it. If you have a group that loves being different, as in the colors mean more than just a different color, and they like planning ahead, but don't agonize over every decision, this will work for them. It can play pretty quickly too once you get going. Great fun. The components make it worth the price, and the experience will keep you going back for more. This will be a great addition to any collection.

Descripción: Si estás interesado en este juego asumiré que eres alguien que ya conoce de juegos de mesa, ha jugado más de uno de estrategia y complejidad elevadas y está buscando algo más. Les presento uno de mis juegos favoritos. Terra Mystica. La mecánica del juego es de control de territorios, manejo de recursos y asignación de trabajadores. Cada jugador juega una raza de las 14 disponibles que únicamente puede habitar en un terreno específico. Por ejemplo, las sirenas sólo pueden habitar en lagos. Cada raza tiene varias características únicas que van de la mano con el tema. Por ejemplo las sirenas pueden cruzar los ríos fácilmente. El juego es demasiado complejo para describirlo completo en este texto que debo mantener breve para que le puedan poner atención sin aburrirse y los ayude a decidir si este juego es para ustedes o no. Así que mencionaré lo más importante. Para expandir a tu civilización deberás hacer "Terraforming" o Terraformación. Esto es, modificar el tipo de terreno a tu alrededor al que necesita tu raza para sobrevivir. Para ganar será necesario bloquear a tus oponentes, manejar eficientemente los limitados recursos que tendrás cada turno y maximizar los puntos que obtienes con cada decisión que tomas. A pesar de que no existe forma de atacar a los demás, la competencia es muy fuerte. Hay varias acciones que sólo pueden tomarse una vez por turno, y en ocasiones al bloquearla, limitarás fuertemente el progreso de tus rivales. También, únicamente puede haber una raza en cada espacio, por lo que será vital elegir dónde inicias y planear desde el principio hacia dónde quieres expandir tu civilización. Los jugadores expandirán su territorio, mejoraran su economía, acumularán poder y avanzarán en los cuatro cultos religiosos para sumar puntos. El jugador que más puntos tenga al final del juego es el ganador. Conclusión: Terra Mystica es un juego es sumamente bueno. Tengo frecuentemente un debate con un amigo mío sobre cuál es el mejor que conozcamos y éste es un fuerte candidato. Los componentes son excelentes, se incluyen muchísimas piezas. El arte es atractivo sin ser espectacular. Y principalmente, el juego ofrece una diversidad y profundidad estratégica incomparable. Lo único que me evita ponerle una calificación de 5/5, es que el tema no lo siento tan bien integrado a la dinámica del juego. Es un juego caro, pero créanme que vale cada peso que cuesta. OJO: NO es un juego para principiantes. ¿Cómo califico los juegos y por qué? Únicamente califico un juego cuando lo he jugado varias veces y considero que entiendo bien la mecánica y el propósito de cada parte del juego. Muchas veces no es posible profundizar al nivel adecuado en un juego para calificarlo con sólo las primeras veces que lo juegas. Los pesos que asigno priorizan los factores que creo que un juego debe de tener para que: 1. Sea divertido jugarlo – Mecánica del juego y "Replayability" 2. Valga la pena comprarlo – "Replayability", componentes y arte 3. Te haga sentir parte del juego – Tema y Arte "Replayability": le llamo así porque no encuentro una palabra similar en español que sea práctica de usar, pero básicamente se refiere a el valor que da un juego para que al jugarlo más y más, cada experiencia sea distinta y no se vuelva monótono Resumen Jugadores – 2 a 5 Duración – 30 min por jugador Complejidad – Muy alta Mecánica del juego (50%) – 5/5 "Replayability" (20%) – 5/5 Componentes (10%) – 5/5 Tema (10%) – 4/5 Arte (10%) – 5/5 Total – 4.90/5

My wife and I finally had a chance to try out Terra Mystica this past weekend. The game seemed a bit daunting, just due to the sheer number of pieces in the box. But the reviews were good, and the videos of gameplay we had watched looked like the game would be fun, so we set everything up and gave it a try. We had played other games with lots of components before and enjoyed them. (Lords of Waterdeep and Pandemic come to mind, but this one has even more parts than those do.) So we weren't too intimidated by the mass of pieces in the box. The instruction manual is good at helping everyone get things set up and ready for play. There were a couple of very small details that would have been helpful to mention in the "First Play" instructions, but we figured them out anyway. (Each player chooses to place two dwellings at the start of the game. This is mentioned later, but they tell you to just use the pictured setup without much explanation.) Overall, we found the instructions to cover nearly all of the situations that we came across. The part quality is good. Items are typically made from thick cardboard and punch out of their holes easily the first time you open the box up. The player components are all painted wood, just like the meeples in other games, like Carcassonne. All of the components should be pretty durable. We've only played with the two of us, so far. Our first game took a while, since we were learning and reading directions. But now that we're familiar with it, the game usually doesn't last more than an hour. Once we got the mechanics of the game down it flowed pretty smoothly. The game looks overly complicated because they offer a lot of different actions or choices within the game, but it's really quite easy once you start playing. These actions are usually quite easy to remember just by looking at the action "cheat card" provided for each player, or by looking at your player card. Just make sure to read the rules, as there are certain things that trigger that are only in the instruction booklet. (Towns are founded automatically when your interconnected structures are worth enough power, or you get favor tiles when you upgrade to certain buildings.) We had so much fun playing Terra Mystica that we ended up playing it 3 or 4 times in just two days, and plan to keep on playing it regularly. The several factions allow for a large variety of gameplay and strategy. Each faction has its own special ability or action. Other items, such as round tiles and bonus tiles can be randomly chosen to add extra variety, as well. I think that my only gripe with this game (and it's a very minor one) is that they didn't use different sized bags for the pieces. Certain pieces are very small or there might only be a few of one component, yet they provided a large bag for them. We ended up using our own smaller bags to make things a bit more compact inside of the box. Otherwise, there's just a lot of empty plastic in there. Just a couple suggestions: We ended up sorting out the parts into their own bags for each of the player colors. Each player simply grabs their color and has all of the pieces they need. We also use small dishes to put pieces in when we set up the game, just to make sure things stay on the table and are organized. We're extremely happy we purchased this game. It's a bit pricey, but it's well worth the investment, and it's a lot of fun to play! We highly recommend this game. If you're already looking at it, chances are you're not intimidated by games that have lots of parts or might be complex. Just get it! You won't regret it.