Mythwind: Friends and Family Expansions Provides More Choices

I recently got my pledge for the Mythwind: Friends and Family expansion which adds a host of new features to the game of Mythwind. There are new buildings to build that bring new folks to the valley, and these folks, if wined and dined, can provide various benefits for the players. Getting to that point, however, will take a bit of work.

In my previous campaign of Mythwind – I reset the game when this expansion arrived – my father-in-law and I had played a decent amount, maybe 3 or 4 complete years. But we were at the point where the buildings we had built were the ones we wanted, and we had unlocked all of the dice, and we had done almost everything we really wanted to do. This expansion and balancing – I also got the updated rule books – has made Mythwind a bit harder to play, but also extended the experience I think.

Certain buildings bring certain people to the valley, and if you use a building with a person who is currently visiting the town – which means they are not away – you can use dice in your dice-wells to roll and attempt to befriend them. The risk you take is that if you roll one of your hired dice and it ends up being a 0, you lose those workers and they head back to the tower at the end of the game. If you roll enough pips – others in town can help you! – you can add heart tokens to the visitor cards.

As you add heart tokens, you can “upgrade” these visitors. There is a cost to that as well. Getting one heart to turn an acquaintance into a pal isn’t really that difficult, but coming up with the cost associated with the upgrade is. For the merchant, that requires 4 or 5 wine tokens. For the farmer, it’s giving up two tended crops. For the ranger, it’s handing over some meat. These costs just get higher and higher as you level the individuals up further and further, and this is why the way you play your various characters will be drastically different.

I like that this game gives you more uses for your hired dice. It is possible to ignore leveling up people completely, but if you are a “completionist” like I am, you want to level up everyone and make sure you have the best group of folks available. And there are marriage options too, and although I haven’t got even close to that point yet, I’m still excited for it!

The updated rules are also making the game more enjoyable, and yes, even a bit harder. Reforesting the valley is a great way to stall building progress. We are not building close to as many buildings as we did in our last game because it’s hard to keep up with our characters AND keep the valley clear of forest tiles. You do ultimately get more benefits from those forest tiles over the course of the game – when you clear them a second, third, etc. time you will get what they provide.

I still have so much more to explore in this expansion, so stay tuned for more soon!