More thoughts about Mycelia

We wrote about the gameplay of Mycelia last week - so make sure to read that if you haven’t yet. 🙃 Now I wanted to go more into detail about why I think it is such an amazing, interactive and dynamic game! 🔎

It’s all about the mushrooms and how you pay for them with spores! 🍄 I really like this idea of spores being variable resources. Depending on what colored triangle a spore cube is on, it is of a different type. So if you need 2 reds and 1 green to pay for a mushroom card, you have to have 3 such cubes in your network (in a contiguous group ☝️) and spend them. The interesting part is that a cube doesn’t even have to be yours. 😈 If you already have a mushroom on a tile with an opponent’s spore cube, you can spend it as if it was yours. This leads to tactical placement of mushrooms and movement with your Mother mushroom piece to break up the network of opponents and use their cubes - this way you can more easily place out new mushrooms, which are the source of your victory points.

You also decay your mushrooms that cannot spore anymore, to make place for new mushrooms (and more points). It is another important decision when to remove your mushroom - maybe it connects your spore network or disrupts the opponent? 🤔 The decay abilities are interesting too, as they could change some rules for you, amplify a mushroom slot or provide a one-off ability. These one-offs can be detrimental to your opponents - you could call it a bit of take-that, but due to the abstractness of Mycelia it doesn’t feel wrong to me. It’s like how removing a pawn in chess isn’t considered mean. 😄

An idea that was at first strange to me for such a strategic game, is how spreading spores involves rolling a die. 🎲 However it works due to the thematic integration of not knowing where the wind blows, and it adds another layer to decision making: if you only have a 33% chance of the wind working for you, maybe you should do the action somewhere else, or explore additional tiles to raise your odds.