Hi there,
This week, I had the opportunity to playtest Mythic Battles - Pantheon with my almost ten years old and my six years old boys on a print and play version, and I thought it would be a good idea to share my feelings about this game with you.
Mythic Battles - Pantheon is a miniatures boardgame for 2 to 4 players, in which players incarnate a Greek Mythological God (Zeus, <PERSON>, <PERSON> or <PERSON>) and their followers, among which the most famous Heroes and Monsters in history. The story takes place in the ancient times, in a world ravaged by war and fraternal strife. The Titans rose up and after a titanic battle were laid low. But at what cost ? Olympus has fallen as have the Gods that once ruled over it. Either dead or reduced to a shadow of their former selves, the world descends into chaos as the powers that they kept in check run rampant.
About the rules
When I asked my older boy if he wanted to play a game were <PERSON> and the hydra could fight against <PERSON> and the minotaur, he could not resist : he really loves mythology ! His younger brother, on his part, could not bare the simple idea of his brother testing some game without him doing the same !!!
So, I had to explain the rules to my kids... While the older really got most of it quite immediately, the younger one apparently had better things to concentrate on ! But I guess it's just a matter of age : I just let it go, he was not really meant to play with us from the beginning ! The main subtleties to understand are :
- the different actions you can do when you play a card to activate a unit : basically a combination of two different simple actions among move/attack (even if you do so using a special power)/take a gem of power (called Omphalos) or one complex action among running/absorb a gem with your God/deploying a unit on the board ;
- what you can do by playing an "Art of War" card : pick a specific card from you deck/draw two random cards from your deck/activate a second unit (different from the first one you've just played) on your turn (and not forgetting to play the specific activation card for this second unit too)/respawn the whole unit of basic troop at the end of your turn/use the different powers of your god or your heroes and monsters ;
- the use of the dice during the combat phase. This was the most difficult part for my son - from this moment, I'll only mention one son, since the younger switched for another activity right after the draft of the two teams !!! - because it involves two different notions : first, on a roll, you're allowed to take some dice away to give an additional "+1" to the result of another die for each die you remove ; second, you are allowed to re-roll every "5" you got from the first roll (wether it's a "natural" 5 or a 5 obtained by removing some dice from the original roll to add +1s to another result). 118
By doing so, you add the new result to the previous 5 you got - dice faces are : blank, 1,2,3,4 and 5. This is the only way to get to the "9" result you have to get to hurt <PERSON>, for example. If you get a blank face after re-rolling a "5", the result is lost. Quite simple to play, but I'm not sure I explained it well !
This last rule of re-rolling the "5s" and keeping dice to remove them and enhancing the result of another die was the thing I kept re-explaining to my son during the game... Guess that would become natural if he played the game multiple times, but, since it was his first look at it, I assume it is just the normal "learning curve"...
The draft/team building part was really easy to understand for my son : after each player has chosen his God, everyone has a certain amount of points to spend - in a specific order depending on the number of players... - among the units, each one costing 1, 2, 3 or 4 points, depending on their abilities, talents, powers and characteristics... The hardest part really is to decide which hero or monster you want on your side during the battle. No need to say there are multiple possibilities, and that this really is an important phase since it will dictate your strategy during the battle ! We did not take a great amount of time to optimize our teams simply because the goal was to get to the proper battle, to hear the chuckling of the dice and to see if we could actually feel like we were standing on the battlefield with Heracles on our side and Cerberus running at us !!! 755