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[werothegreat]

I posted about this a couple years ago, and I've done quite a bit of playtesting on it since then, and I think it's in a pretty good place now.  Good enough that I'd like to try showing it off to the Dominion community and seeing what they think.

Rules document (for reference)

First, to get it out of the way, how is this exactly like Dominion?

• It is a deckbuilder.
• 5 card hands, you play "Actions", play "Treasures" and buy stuff, then discard and draw.
• Some of the cards are pretty similar to Dominion cards, but honestly there's only so many ways you can do "draw 2 cards".
• There is a fixed Supply each game, rather than a randomized center row like Ascension or Clank.

So, how is it different?

• Instead of getting Victory cards, you compete for the favor of Gods, who give the player who has them a powerful effect, as well as some points.  Gods can be stolen from other players!  This requires you to spend more resources, though, and a couple Gods are Steadfast, and remain with the first player who takes them.
• There are four different resources - two for buying cards (Drachmas and Might), two for gaining the favor of Gods (Faith and Blood).
• Faith and Blood are accumulated, like Coin tokens, and can be saved up for getting the expensive Gods.
• You can play any number of cards per turn, and buy any number of cards per turn.  There are thus no "Village" or "+Buy" cards, but does mean I can focus interesting decisions elsewhere.
• You can exchange resources for each other, at an unfavorable rate.  Exchanging Money/Might into Faith/Blood becomes more favorable if other players have more Gods than you do, as a catch-up mechanic.
• There is an optional Adversary, which makes a rule change for the game, making it more challenging, and can also capture Gods, meaning it's possible for all players to lose, adding a slight bit of cooperative play.
• Having no terminal Actions means there's no terminal draw, thus no unrestricted cheap draw (like Smithy), which has forced me to get creative with draw cards if I don't want them all to cost or something ridiculous.
• Instead of Curses, there are Fate cards, which are more like Confusions/Ruins - they don't make you lose points, they just take up space, but you can also get rid of them if you take a penalty (losing 2 Faith, for instance).  So you might get "you are Fated to lose 2 Blood" and you lose your two Blood and you get to trash the card.
• There are player mats!  Including little spots to put your Faith and Blood tokens.

I've played this with people who are familiar with Dominion, and with deckbuilder novices, and for the most part they've liked it.  I've made lots of changes in response to feedback, and I think the core game right now is pretty solid.

Let's see some of this:

Starting cards - each player starts with 3 Militia and 7 Silver.  These cannot be bought, but can be gained from the Sacrifical Pit (trash) if you're desperate.



These basic cards are in every game.  There are 3 different Fate cards, and the stack is shuffled.



The Agora is the resource exchange I mentioned.  It's also got a spot for the Sacrificial Pit (trash).



Here are some of the cards I've come up with:




And some of the Gods:




And Adversaries:



And here's my mock-up for a player mat:



Please let me know what you think!

[trivialknot]

Looks pretty neat, although very hard to evaluate just by looking at it.  For a standard 2P game you'd have to play with 6 mortals, 6 monsters, and 5 gods, in addition to the 6 base cards, the 3 fate cards, and 4 basic abilities in the Agora.  That's almost double the amount you'd need to keep track of in a base Dominion game.

I just glanced at your old post, and it seems that one thing you changed is that you used to have limited Action and Buy supplies.  I think it makes sense to get rid of them, since you already have 4 resource types.  Although, my experience with Ascension tells me that if you have two resources used for spending, the problem is that you often want to commit to one or the other; having a mixed deck often means that you can't hit any of the price points.  Contrast with the limited action supply, which encourages mixing of terminals, non-terminals, and splitters, or with the limited buy supply, which encourages mixing money and +buy.  Anyways, I'm sure this aspect of the game is already solidified, but those are my initial thoughts.  I like that you can save faith and blood tokens.

I'm wondering what the BM-equivalent strategy would be, it seems nontrivial.  Maybe you just buy all the Gold & Phalanxes you can, and then at a certain moment switch to Offerings & Priests?  Or maybe you buy a few Priests, and then build up your Phalanxes while collecting faith? 

[werothegreat]

Looks pretty neat, although very hard to evaluate just by looking at it.

Thanks!

For a standard 2P game you'd have to play with 6 mortals, 6 monsters, and 5 gods, in addition to the 6 base cards, the 3 fate cards, and 4 basic abilities in the Agora.  That's almost double the amount you'd need to keep track of in a base Dominion game.

It is a fair amount to throw out up front, but most of my playtesters have taken that in stride, for what it's worth.

I just glanced at your old post, and it seems that one thing you changed is that you used to have limited Action and Buy supplies.  I think it makes sense to get rid of them, since you already have 4 resource types.  Although, my experience with Ascension tells me that if you have two resources used for spending, the problem is that you often want to commit to one or the other; having a mixed deck often means that you can't hit any of the price points.  Contrast with the limited action supply, which encourages mixing of terminals, non-terminals, and splitters, or with the limited buy supply, which encourages mixing money and +buy.  Anyways, I'm sure this aspect of the game is already solidified, but those are my initial thoughts.  I like that you can save faith and blood tokens.

So Ascension is a lot more skinflint about card draw - it's still possible in Mythos to draw your entire deck, though not quite as easy as with Dominion, I've found.  It's not too difficult to get a deck that can get both Mortals and Monsters, though a few players have found that going for Phalanxes (and thus Monsters) first seems to work pretty well, particularly in games with an Adversary where you want to get through the Minion pile quickly.

I'm wondering what the BM-equivalent strategy would be, it seems nontrivial.  Maybe you just buy all the Gold & Phalanxes you can, and then at a certain moment switch to Offerings & Priests?  Or maybe you buy a few Priests, and then build up your Phalanxes while collecting faith?

No one's really tried a BM strategy yet, so I can't really say anything as to its effectiveness, but my assumption would be more or less what you describe.  Usually conquering Monsters will get you Blood faster than Offering, though - Offering doesn't seem that strong, and isn't really meant to be - it's just there in case there's no other way to get Blood.

[trivialknot]

So Ascension is a lot more skinflint about card draw - it's still possible in Mythos to draw your entire deck, though not quite as easy as with Dominion, I've found.  It's not too difficult to get a deck that can get both Mortals and Monsters, though a few players have found that going for Phalanxes (and thus Monsters) first seems to work pretty well, particularly in games with an Adversary where you want to get through the Minion pile quickly.

It's hard to believe you can draw your deck with the cards shown.  The only net draw card here seems to be Sphinx.  Are there more?  Or are you just drawing your deck by trashing stop cards and adding cantrips?

[werothegreat]

So Ascension is a lot more skinflint about card draw - it's still possible in Mythos to draw your entire deck, though not quite as easy as with Dominion, I've found.  It's not too difficult to get a deck that can get both Mortals and Monsters, though a few players have found that going for Phalanxes (and thus Monsters) first seems to work pretty well, particularly in games with an Adversary where you want to get through the Minion pile quickly.

It's hard to believe you can draw your deck with the cards shown.  The only net draw card here seems to be Sphinx.  Are there more?  Or are you just drawing your deck by trashing stop cards and adding cantrips?

Oh there are quite a few.  Those were just examples.  Like there's Philosopher, $4 Mortal, Draw until you have 6 cards in hand.  There's Chimera, 4X Monster, Reward: Draw 2 extra cards for your next hand.  And others.  Not at home right now so can't post pics.

[werothegreat]

These are all the current draw cards I have in my base set.  Pandora's Box has not been playtested yet.