Mystic Lands Review: Card Crafting, Push Your Luck & Beautiful Art | The Game Bard

Mystic Lands Review: Card Crafting Magic That Respects Your Time

Review by Lincoln Hoppe: The Game Bard

INTRO

What if I told you there was a game where you can craft cards into strategic works of art, push your luck without losing everything, and pack a two-hour experience into half the time?

Last week I played Mystic Lands with designer John D. Clair. And he showed me no mercy.

Mystic Lands is a deeply satisfying card crafting game by AEG with fantastic art, and it’s on Kickstarter now. If you’ve played Mystic Vale, this is the spiritual successor—new art, improvements, and a whole new journey board called the Vale Map. If you’ve never played Mystic Vale, this is the place to start.

This text is taken from my video review.

“There are real brain-burning moments as you figure out the best chain of actions to trigger on your turn – the card interactions create this mind-boggling web of possiblites that feels amazing when it all comes together.”

Mystic Lands board game with stained glass card art and Vale Map journey board

How Mystic Lands Works

Most of the gameplay is simultaneous. Each turn, you’re flipping cards and pushing your luck, balancing risk versus resources and buying new card inserts to craft into your deck.

As you flip cards, you don’t want to wither by getting too many suns. Then it’s time to buy new card inserts to craft, mitigate risk, gain powerful abilities, and score victory points.

Those crafting choices can get beautifully crunchy, but somehow I was playing with confidence. Even after just a short teach. Too much confidence.

Crafting those cards with gorgeous stained glass artwork feels like interlocking pieces of a beautiful puzzle. You’re always hunting for that next great piece. But the market keeps changing because John D. Clair keeps taking the best cards.

Three Things I Love Most About Mystic Lands

1. Card Crafting

What can I say? Card crafting is incredible. I haven’t seen a game that does it more strategically crunchy or more beautifully than this.

From Mystic Vale to Dead Reckoning to Mystic Lands, there may be no other designer that does card crafting more beautifully than John D. Clair. He crushed me.

Some of the card crafting cards are backgrounds. Some are foregrounds and have effects and ways to upgrade your deck, including victory points and the possibility to seek out your own personal strategy with card interactions and aspects.

2. Pushing Your Luck

You’re flipping cards to gather resources—mana, spirit, and victory points. But there comes a point, as there always does, where you might bust.

I find it thrilling to push my luck and to do it strategically in this game, instead of blindly.

Here’s the thing: when you bust, you don’t lose all your resources. You still get to keep one.

So the system encourages you to push your luck strategically. If you’ve only pulled one resource type across your cards, it makes sense to push further until you bust because you get to keep those. And there’s less to lose at the beginning because few cards have been crafted, encouraging bold exploration of your lands right off the bat.

There are also certain cards you can craft into your deck that cover up those suns, allowing you to push your luck more safely and strategically and amass more resources. And that’s a choice. One of many choices you can make every time you craft a card.

Plus, there’s the new journey board called the Vale Map, where you can go on little quests, explore the map, and place cubes for bonuses. It feels a lot like worker placement to me, which I love.

3. Minimal Downtime

The thing that makes me want to play this again right now? The fact that most phases of the game can be played while others are taking their turns. There’s so little downtime.

And if you need extra time to strategize like I do, even though it doesn’t help—did I mention that I lost?—when it’s time to buy cards during your day phase, that’s the one phase that is taken in turns. It’s staggered, so there’s not a simultaneous card grab because it can’t be all at the same time. But that’s really the only place where you have to wait for your turn.

Why is this so important to me, though?

My most limited resource in real life is time. When do I film content? When do I get to act? When do I create music? When do I spend time with my family? When do I even get to play games?

As I’ve gotten older, these are very important questions to answer and balance. And though it may sound silly, the fact that you can pack so much game into a shorter amount of time that hits all the right buttons is incredible.

It’s like you’re playing a two-hour game in a fraction of the time, giving me time to play with my family and friends, and still have time to sit down and eat dinner together in silence. Kidding. We only eat in silence sometimes.

What About Mystic Vale Fans?

As someone who had never played Mystic Vale, I was blown away by the gameplay, card crafting, and the art of this game. But what about those who have played Mystic Vale?

Now, I can’t speak to that from my own experience, but I did watch a group play. I went to a game day over the weekend, and a group of Mystic Vale fans walked up to the table. They had just traveled to try out Mystic Lands, and I was sitting down taking pictures and they said, “Can we play? We came all the way just to play.”

They even let me film awkwardly over their shoulders. Thanks guys.

They really seemed to enjoy the added mechanics. On his way out, I asked one of them how he liked it and he said it was great and well worth the trip.