Mystic Wood

...in. You can actually play Mystic Wood with five people, you'll just need to improvise about the fifth playing piece.

~~~ What's in the Box ~~~
~ The Instructions ~
Absolutely vital! I've been playing this game since I was little and I still need to glance at this occasionally. It contains the basic information on how to play and then gets into more detail about certain areas. There are several options in playing this ...
.../> Because of the way Mystic Wood is designed, no one knows at the start of the game how the cards will be laid out. The special cards could be anywhere and there could be some awkward arrangements of dead ends. This means you get a different game each time which adds enormously to the fun. Unfortunately, this can lead to areas being unreachable because of dead ends. Only once, we've had a game where we've been unable to move away from the start ... more

In my opinion, this is the best family game of all the board games I've tried. This doesn't really count as a board game (see setting up) but it's that sort of style in that you roll dice, move around and have fun. It's quite complicated, so it can take a little while to get used to all the subtleties but it's well worth it.

It can be played by 2-4 people, but it's never as fun with just two. With more players, you can gang up on someone who looks like they're winning. I find with most games, they're better when more people are joining in. You can actually play Mystic Wood with five people, you'll just need to improvise about the fifth playing piece.

~~~ What's in the Box ~~~
~ The Instructions ~
Absolutely vital! I've been playing this game since I was little and I still need to glance at this occasionally. It contains the basic information on how to play and then gets into more detail about certain areas. There are several options in playing this game, such as jousting (fighting another player) which don't happen often and so you might need to refresh your memory on the rules.

~ The Player Pieces ~
These are little plastic 'people'. A couple of centimetres high, with round plastic bases tapering into a stalk with a little round blob on the end. There are a lot of games out there that use identical playing pieces. They're in different colours so you know who's who, but there's nothing special about them. You get four of them in the box. There are also two dice.

~ Character Cards ~
There are five of these. They each have a different character, or knight, on them: George, Roland, Brittomart, Guyon and Percival. The cards have the character's name at the top and on one side the amount of strength and the other their prowess. Strength is in a triangle and prowess is in a circle; I'll explain the purpose of this later.

Underneath this is a picture of the character and then their quest. Each character has a specific quest which he (or she) must fulfil before leaving the wood. Whichever player manages to fulfil their quest and then leave the wood first is the winner.

George: has to slay the dragon.
Roland: has to leave with the princess.
Brittomart: has to leave with the prince.
Guyon: has to spend three turns in the Cave.
Percival: has to leave with the Holy Grail.

~ Large Cards ~
The wood is made up of large cards, arranged in a rectangle with five cards along one side and nine along the other. At the centre of the wood is the tower. If you lose a fight you'll generally go to the tower and won't be able to get out until you throw a five or six. In the middle of the two shorter sides are the gates. One is the Earthly Gate and the other the Enchanted/Heavenly Gate. The rest of the cards are coloured either pink or cream, which correspond to the two halves of the wood. You place the cream cards face down on the half of the wood with the Earthly Gate and the pink ones face down on the half with the Heavenly Gate. They should be shuffled first so you don't know which cards are where.

All the players start off at the Earthly Gate, from where you can either go north, east or west. You make a move by going one card in any direction that isn't blocked by a dead end. You can turn over new cards or go onto cards that have already been turned over. There are three types of large cards:

Glades. These are clearings. There shown on the cards by having an oval of either cream or pink depending on which half of the the wood you're in, surrounded by leaves and folliage. These have paths leading to neighbouring cards, but occasionally there are dead ends as well. The first player to go into a glade gets given a small card, but more on those later.

Paths. These are quite dull. They are just a way of moving around the wood. You don't get any small cards given out these, but use them for moving about the wood.

Special Cards. These vary from ones where you get given more small cards (the Palace) or have more prowess when you fight on that card (the Chapel). There are ones that have great importance to the game. The Cave is a special card. To go inside the Cave, the player must have the golden bough, which is one of the small cards. There is also the Castle. It is possible for knights to become king, in which case occupying the Castle is a way to win the game.

Because of the way Mystic Wood is designed, no one knows at the start of the game how the cards will be laid out. The special cards could be anywhere and there could be some awkward arrangements of dead ends. This means you get a different game each time which adds enormously to the fun. Unfortunately, this can lead to areas being unreachable because of dead ends. Only once, we've had a game where we've been unable to move away from the start because of how the cards were placed.

It also means that the game can take a little while to set up. Also, it does take up rather a lot of space. A big table works well, or a patch of floor if you don't mind sitting on the carpet.

~ Small Cards ~
These cards are the people and things that the knights will encounter in the wood. Some are friendly, some you have to fight. The look like the character cards in that there is a name at the top, then a picture, some of them also have strength and/or prowess. Frequently, there is some text under this to say how to deal with this card. There are different ways of dealing with these cards:

Some you have to 'encounter' which is done by rolling the dice. Usually, if you roll a one or a two it will do something you don't like, if you roll a three or a four nothing much happens and if you roll a five or a six you get something nice. This can be an object with a use, such as a wand that lets you turn the large cards round, or it might add to you strength (number in the triangle) or prowess (number in the circle). There are some cards that you encounter with a roll of the dice, but you add your prowess to the number you roll. For example, on approaching the prince, you need to get a score of eight or higher. So, the amount of prowess you have plus the number you roll must add up to eight or more.

Some you fight. These cards look very like the character cards. They have strength, prowess or both at the top. You roll a dice for your character and someone else rolls a dice for whoever you're fighting. If what you're fighting has only strength, you add your roll to the strength you have and the other player adds their roll to the strength of the opponant. Whoever has the highest score wins that fight. If you win, you usually get to add some prowess to your total. If you lose, you usually end up in the tower.

Some cards just happen. The Mystic cards Mystic Wind, Mystic Fog and Mystic Horn affect the game by moving players, objects or the game cards. The queen just sits there and does nothing. There are also some really annoying ones: the child needs to be taken to the Earthly Gate and the damsel needs to be taken to the queen and you're not allow to run away from them!

There is also the king, who is a very important character. If, for whatever reason, it's impossible for you to win (for example, the golden bough Guyon needs to get in the Cave happens to be in the Cave) you can fight the king. It doesn't work for Brittomart, who the king ignores. But the other characters can kill the king. If this happens, you get rid of your original character card along with any prowess you've won and take the king's card instead. All you have to do to win now is sit in the Castle for two turns.

Most of the cards, you can retreat from. If you look at a small card and decide it's too nasty to fight or if it's something someone else is looking for, you can put it face-down on the card you're in, and move back to where you just came from. There are a few cards you can't do this for: the Mystic cards, the child and the damsel. Other cards you can put face-down while staying in the same area: the queen, the dwarf and, if you're Brittomart, the king.

It happens during the game that you get several little cards in the same area. When this happens, you need to check the order in which you deal with them. There's a list in the instructions of the order of some of the nastier ones, then you get to 'others in any order' which is self-explanitory.

~~~ Playing the Game ~~~
I've probably given the impressive of an unbelievably complex game. It is somewhat confusing when you're getting started, but you get the hang of it much quicker than you'd expect. You move about the wood by going from one large card to another, dealing with the small cards as and when it becomes appropriate.

The game gets a great deal of fun as people start getting close to completing their quests. There are spells you can get hold of from the small cards that let you stop players moving (a storm traps someone for three goes) or you could joust them. Jousts work like fighting small cards, only they're fights between two players. If one person is a long way in the lead, you can have two or three people attacking one player (though you might want to check the rules about how those work before trying them.)

It's a lot of fun because it requires a little planning and strategy as well as a large dollop of luck. Games can take a while, the length of play depends a lot on how the wood is arranged and whether quest objects are at the top of the pile of small cards. Long games can take a couple of hours or more, but I'd say a good game is about an hour long.

~~~ Finding the Game ~~~
This is the tricky part. If you manage to find somewhere that sells this game new, please let me know. We have an old (and extremely well-used) copy at home that our family have played with for years. My sister managed to find one it in a set of games that was being sold on ebay when she went to uni and decided she couldn't be parted with it. I was given a second hand one for last Christmas so I could have my own copy. I haven't seen it new anywhere for years.

There are extention packs for Mystic Wood, with more large and small cards so you get a bigger wood and more things to encounter. This is even harder to get hold of than the original game, so I've never actually played an extended game.

This isn't the best game for really young children, but once they've got the hang of reading and understand the basics of which cards to fight, which cards to run away from, they might enjoy it. I suppose it depends how much thinking they like to do when they play. Parents would definitely like it and older kids should really enjoy it. As a family game, I would recommend it.  

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