Become a Seeker hunting for treasures, Qoam, and artifacts from ancient times.
Hot the heels of my summary for Mysthea comes one for Icaion – one might call its ‘sister’ game. While Mysthea sees you exploring and fighting on a group of floating islands, the action in Icaion focusses on the planet below, where five giant craters mark where the islands once rested, and a bizarre, gargantuan colossus strides the land, parasites dropping off its body and getting in the way of your efforts to discover artifacts and deploying machines to extract the precious crystal known as qoam. Yep, this ain’t your generic Tolkein fantasy world!
And that’s just one of the the things I love about it. Apart from the artwork and universe, Icaion shares the clever event deck system of Mysthea, but beyond that they are quite different games. In this one the emphasis is on building an efficient system of machine construction, resource extracting and spending, along with investigating the strange colossus and installing strange artifacts, all in the race to gather reputation points. Again, there’s a fascinating amount of choice here and lots of interesting variables interacting with each other, and it’s wrapped up in a gorgeous package full of bizarre and beautiful art and miniature design. The iconography is a bit more complex than that in Mysthea, but my reference sheets should make it all a lot easier to access.
Another amazing thing about both these games is that, using a set of rules and another deck of cards supplied in this box, they can be brought together to create one huge co-op game called Mysthea: The Fall. I have yet to explore this game but I’m really looking forward to it, and really applaud Tabula’s originality in making two games that can be combined to make a third – and at no extra expense!
I’m very excited about these two games, their original fantasy world, and the richness and complexity of their game systems and they way they seemlessly blend original themes and clever mechanics. Tabula have a new game Kickstarting soon called Sons of Faeriell, and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on everything they produce from now on.
