I was watching the Joy of Wargaming YouTube channel as I am wont to do. It is a great channel, and Mr. Wargaming is a really swell guy. For some reason he was in New Jersey, and found Mythicos Studios. Which is a wargaming store and studio. They produce the game Mythic Earth (formerly known as Mythic Americas, based on the Warlords of Erewhon ruleset from Warlord Games). I just realized how crazy this whole thing sounds. There were/are a lot of moving parts going on here.
I saw the game probably during the pandemic, and wanted to get into it, but life got in the way. I am coming to the realization that I need to actually start playing games with my toys, and stop printing and painting so much. Anyways, as always I digress from the point of this article.
The rules for Mythic Earth are on the always free model, which I like. You can find various resources for the game here. I spent the weekend reading through the ruleset. I think I really like it.
The good:
The activation system. It is a modified alternating activations. It brings a novel idea (that I haven’t seen before, if you have, please let me know). You build a pool of dice based on activations. Most units get one activation dice. You then roll all your activation dice. And start with the person who got the most sixes. You then go in descending order, which I think is an interesting mechanic. If you roll really well, you might get 4 or 5 activations, before you opponent gets to go.
The bad:
The rules are still in what i would consider a beta state. There are several places where I’m still confused, and things need to be lined out a little better. For instance, a lot of the activation are called double activations. So I’m not sure if
I have to activate a unit twice, which would leave some of my units not able to activate this turn? I’m going to play it that way, which I think is also an interesting idea. I could be wrong of course.
The ugly:
Some of the terms are just repurposed for in-game flavor, which is fine. Instead of morale tests as in 99% of the games I’ve looked at, they have Brave tests. Which makes sense from the Native American tribe perspectives, but as they plan on adding units from other early cultures, like Mythic Japan, etc. I think the idea of a Brave test will lose it’s flavor as the game evolves.
Right now might be a great time to get into it. Warlord Games is running a fire sale on the stock they have. And there are some decent deals on Amazon, too.
My current plan is to print some units from Wargames Atlantic’s MyMiniFactory, and give the game a go this weekend. If I think it has legs, I will probably order a starter set.
Mythicos usually attends the HMGS cons and I was impressed by their models up close. They also run demo games, so if you are at Historicon or Fall In! later in the year, check them out.
As I recall, they are primarily a game club which expanded into a store and miniature/game design firm, which is something I imagine most of us aspire to!
Please share your forces when you print them! I’m a relatively new subscriber to the Wargames Atlantic MMF Tribe and those recent Eagle Warriors they did are tempting.