Mystic Lands Promises An Exciting Twist In Gaming

The gaming world has seen a lot of people crank out numerous great games like Reiner Knizia or Donald X. Vaccarino. Another is John D. Clair, who has such hits as "Mystic Vale," "Space Base," "Dead Reckoning," "Ready Set Bet," and "Cubitos." His latest game, "Ruins," hit shelves recently, and he is bringing a new card-crafting game, "Mystic Lands," to Kickstarter soon.  Gaming expert William Pankratz, and I talked about "Ruins' and "Mystic Lands" along with other new games and crowdfunding projects on this week's Table Talk, WJON's bi-weekly show on board gaming.

"Ruins" is the latest in Allplay's line of Small Box Big Game series, and another card-crafting game by Clair. Card-crafting is where players add layers to existing cards to change or enhance a card's abilities by adding new cards or tokens within a clear sleeve. Pankratz says "Ruins" is an updated version of "Custom Heroes" and even better than the original:

"At the beginning of the game, the cards are just like a six or a five, but then you slide other clear cards on top of them, and then it's a seven, it's a twenty-two, it has a special ability, things like that, so it's really interesting to be constantly shuffling and playing with a unique deck."

He says making "Custom Heroes" better really sang to him, and he is excited to get "Ruins" to the table.

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Pankratz also told us about other new games rolling into stores like the latest from Plymouth-based Chip Theory Games, "20 Strong: Tanglewoods," "The Mind: Soulmates," and "Ink!." We then moved into a couple of new upcoming crowdfunding games, one of which is John D. Clair's "Mystic Lands." "Mystic Lands" will feature some innovations to the "Mystic Vale" system and says it is the most ambitious vision of the Card Crafting System.  Pankratz says he is intrigued by "Mystic Lands."

"I really like 'Mystic Vale', it is a really fun twist on deck-building, and I love deck-building games so I'm always excited to see more from that system and more from John D. Clair, so I'm excited about this."

People can sign up to follow "Mystic Lands" on Kickstarter to keep updated on the game and when it launches.

We also covered updates on a few projects and board game news. Join William Pankratz and me every other week for Table Talk to hear more about the board game world.

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