Next up in my slow walk through favorite games that start with different letters of the alphabet is “M.”
Mists over Carcassonne
Mists Over Carcassonne is a stand-alone cooperative version of Carcassonne where players work together to build up the countryside while ridding the land of ghosts. The game comes with several levels that you can work your way through, with the game getting harder as you add cemeteries and ever-higher point goals. It’s a fun twist on the classic game.
My game group had moved away from Carcassonne several years ago, but this cooperative version has reinvigorated it for us. I really enjoy the hard choices like deciding whether to keep the ghosts under control or add a new tile in hopes of completing a high-scoring city. I also like the variety of levels that let you ease into the cooperative version and then ramp it up as you get better. I’ve played over 50 times at this point, and only won level 5 once. I’m not sure we’ve even tried level 6 (the highest level)!
Mystic Vale
In Mystic Vale, players are crafting cards to reinvigorate a cursed land. Each turn, players “plant” a field of cards with the goal of purchase powerful upgrades to add to cards in their field and to acquire Vale cards with a variety of abilities. The goal is to … well, amass the most points, of course!
I really like the card crafting mechanism in Mystic Vale. Each advancement takes up a third of the card, giving you space for three on each card, and there are a lot of great decisions about which advancements sleeve together on a single card. There’s also a push-your-luck aspect to the game, where you can add additional cards to your field at the beginning of your turn, but if you turn up too many “decay” symbols, you’ll bust and lose your turn. You do get a consolation of flipping a token that will give you a little boon on a later turn, so busting doesn’t sting as much as it could — but later in the game, that boon may not make up for losing a turn.
Meadow
In Meadow, players chronicle a peaceful walk though nature in their personal tableau. Players take turns placing a marker either on the “campfire” board for a special action or on the main board to both pick up a card into their hand and a play a card into their tableau. As the play out cards, players need to keep an eye on the various symbols visible in their play area. Each card has requirements of what must be showing in the player’s area in order to play it, but then the new card will be placed on top of one of the existing cards that shows at least one of the required symbols. This means that symbols can disappear, hampering a future card, if the player isn’t careful.
For me, Meadow is all about the puzzle of how to play out the cards available to me in my hand and on the board. How can I chain together my plays so that I always have the right symbols showing for the next card I want to play? While the player’s tableau looks like a peaceful walk through nature, the card play is a tense puzzle! But it’s exactly the type of puzzle I love.
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What are your favorite games that start with the letter “M”? Or is there one from my list that you love or are hoping to try? Let me know in the comments!