Stats:
No. of players: 2-4
Amount of time to play: 45-60 min
Age requirements: 14+
Set-up time: 10 min

Mythic Battles simulates the epic clashes between Athens and Hades. You must recruit your army and use smart tactics to defeat you opponents.

Mythic Battles Rules Description:

Mythic Battles comes with a book with nine scenarios. Each scenario adds more rules and parts of the system and helps you learn the game. You may also build your own armies and fight without a scenario. When you build your own army you start with five to ten units worth a total of 100 points.

Different units cost a certain number of points and have their own stats. Their number of stat cards equals their health. And as you are wounded you put the top card face-down on the bottom of that unit’s pile. As you reveal new cards your unit’s stats change to reflect their declining abilities. If a unit’s pile is ever totally face-down they are eliminated.

You have a deck that is made up of Maneuver cards for your units. This deck is shuffled and used for unit activation. In order to activate a unit you must discard one of its cards. A unit may not act more than once per turn even if you have two of its cards. You also have ten Art of War cards in your deck. This are used to search your deck for a specific card. In order to activate more than one unit you must discard an Art of War card for each unit you have already activated. So if you activate one unit, you must discard one Art of War card to activate second unit. And to activate a third unit you discard two Art of War cards. This deck is reshuffled once all players have used their entire deck.

When you attack another unit you must meet or beat its defense value. You roll a number of six-sided dice equal to your unit’s attack value. The dice are numbered one to five and have one blank side. When you roll you must discard any blank results. You may also discard one die to increase the result on another die by one. Any die showing a five is rerolled and the result is added to the original five you rolled. For each die that meets or beats the defender’s defense value they take one wound.

Units can counter-attack if specific conditions are met. First you must discard a Maneuver card that matches the counter-attacking unit. Units may only counter close combat attacks and each unit may only counter-attack once per turn.

You also may gain Power Points. They are obtained by discarding an activation card of a unit or an Art of War card. Art of War cards get you two Power Points. Each unit card you discard gets you Power Points equal to its Leadership value. You spend Power Points to boost a unit’s stats, use their talents or to fuel other tactics.

The board is made up of four or more tiles that contain terrain. The terrain might be impassable, give you a defensive bonus against ranged attacks or other bonuses or penalties. You and your opponent choose the tiles, unless they are specified in the scenario.

If you can reduce your opponent’s army to just three units you win. The scenarios also have other win conditions.

Quick Review of Mythic Battles:

Mythic Battles combines mechanics from miniatures games, board games and card games to create a unique experience. If you can manage your units, use smart tactics and get lucky you can win this game.

The components for the game are high quality. The cards are a good weight and the art is great. The units are represented by tokens that look good. Miniatures would be nice but would increase the game’s price. The rules are pretty easy enough to understand but might take a couple reads to digest. There is just a lot in this system so it may take extra reading and a couple plays to soak in. I highly suggest downloading this player aid as most info you’ll need during a game is on it.

I really like the dice rolling for combat in this game. It feels balanced and as though no one is totally untouchable. The exploding dice make anything possible. And discarding dice to get potential hits is a cool, unique mechanic.

The different units and how their stats change once they take some wounds are cool. The unit cards hold a lot of information and the way a unit gets worse the more they are hit makes sense.

The scenario play is a good way to learn the game as each new one adds new rules. Once you are finished with the nine scenarios you should be ready to try your own constructed armies.

I do wish there were more units, but I believe an expansion will be out soon to remedy this. Athens in particular does not have quite the variety that Hades does.

If you are looking for a fun board game with some aspects of miniatures games and card games you should check Mythic Battles out. If you like 300 or Greek mythology with a dash of fantasy this game might be up your ally too. The entire system is fun to play and learn. It has some depth and some cool talents and tactics.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 5 out of 6
Player Interaction 5 out of 6
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 4 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6