{"id":8483,"date":"2020-06-18T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=8483"},"modified":"2020-06-18T10:55:53","modified_gmt":"2020-06-18T14:55:53","slug":"mystic-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/18\/mystic-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Mystic Market."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mystic Market<\/a> ($20) is\na marvelous light family game that you can quite easily play with your kids,\nrequiring nothing more than color-matching and a little arithmetic to play. There\nare just a few simple elements to it, with some direct and indirect player\ninteraction, perhaps a little too much take-that for younger players, but also\nenough to satisfy gamers who insist on a bit of meat even in their lighter\ngames. I’m surprised it hasn’t found more of an audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Players in Mystic Market are trying to gather ingredients, in\nthe form of cards in six different colors, that can be combined in sets and sold\nfor prices that vary depending on the color of the ingredients \u2013 and the timing\nof the sale. You can collect these ingredients by buying one or two of them them\nfrom the market for one, two, or three coins apiece, based on their current\nsale price on the ingredient track, or by swapping cards from your hand, one or\ntwo at a time, without regard to color or current value. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a>\n\n\n\n

The game has a track with little ingredient bottles (filled\nwith glitter), and at the start of the game they’re arranged in rainbow order,\nwith purple at the bottom and the most valuable at 15 coins for a set, while red\nis at the top and returns only 5 coins for a set. The catch is that when you\nsell a set, its color drops in value to the top of the track (5 coins), with every\nother color falling down the track to the next highest price. Thus there’s a\nhuge timing element to the game, both in terms of when to sell your own sets,\nand whether to try to take cards your opponents might need to sell high-value\nsets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The number of cards you need for a set also varies by color,\nfrom four red cards or four orange cards for a set of those colors to just two\nof blue or purple, and their frequency in the deck declines as their starting\nvalue increases. Thus at some point during the game the purple set, which is\nhard to collect given its scarcity, will sell for just five coins because\nsomeone else just sold a set, and collecting it becomes less profitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It rarely makes sense to sell sets at 5 or 6 coins, and you’ll\nusually sell at 10-12-15 and turn a profit. The heart of the game is that\nprocess of buying and selling, working the timing of your sales, and keeping an\neye on what your opponents are collecting, whether it’s to grab a card they\nmight need or to time your sale in a way to get the high price for yourself and\nmake whatever your opponents were collecting far less valuable. There are also\nthree “supply shift” cards randomly shuffled into the deck each game;\neach one moves one bottle to the highest value on the track and moves everything\nthat was higher than that bottle back to the lowest point, disrupting all of\nthe values and thus your strategy if you were mid-set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If that were all there was to Mystic Market, it would be good\nenough but probably wouldn’t have much replay value. The Potion deck contains\ncards with special, single-use powers, and you can buy those for specific\ncombinations of two ingredient cards. Buying (“crafting”) a potion is\na free action, as is using any potion. Several of them do something nasty to an\nopponent \u2013 stealing a card, forcing them to discard a card of your choosing,\nswapping a card with you \u2013 while others boost you, such as letting you sell a half\nset for full price, letting you substitute a potion card for one ingredient to\ncomplete a set, or letting you take a single ingredient card for free. There’s\neven a card that has no power at all, but can be redeemed for 15 coins, very\nuseful if you’re left with a blue card and a purple card but can’t complete\neither set later in the game. You could choose to remove the take-that cards\nfrom this deck if you don’t want to play with them when you have younger kids\nin the game, but I do think they add quite a bit to the game both in strategy\nand in making it harder for one player to run away with things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mystic Market plays two to four players and is suitable for\nkids as young as 8, maybe a little younger if they’ve played a few games before;\nthere’s a little text in the game, on the Potion cards, that requires\nsufficient reading and thinking skills that would stymie much younger players. You\nplay until the ingredient deck is exhausted, which I’ve found takes about 45\nminutes for a full game regardless of player count. If you’re looking for a\ngood family game while we’re all still mostly staying home, I think this would\nfit the bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mystic Market ($20) is a marvelous light family game that you can quite easily play with your kids, requiring nothing more than color-matching and a little arithmetic to play. There are just a few simple elements to it, with some direct and indirect player interaction, perhaps a little too much take-that for younger players, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[582,60,544,161],"class_list":["post-8483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-board-games","tag-boardgames","tag-family-strategy-games","tag-highly-recommended","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8483"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8487,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8483\/revisions\/8487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}