Mysterium

According to Libellud, Mysterium is a co-operative mystery solving game in which everyone wins or loses together. I would say that Mysterium is Cluedo done well, plus Dixit cards.

Let me explain; throughout this game you’ll have to guess who was the killer, where he did it and what weapon was used. Sound familiar? To do so you’ll be interpreting the visions of the victim’s restless ghost, and the way you do it is through gorgeous looking abstract cards. Sounds interesting? Let’s see how to play it.

Mysterium Components

You’ll get a few small progress boards that you’ll use to move stages and to separate different types of cards on table. To advance through boards you’ll be using coloured intuition tokens that are more like pawns and represent the psychic investigators. Ghost will be in one of the ends of the table protected by a beautiful game screen where he will store his cards.

You’ll have two decks each for characters, locations and objects. Blue coloured back decks are used by the ghost and brown coloured decks are laid out in front of psychic investigators. There is also a bigger blue back coloured deck with different art. Those are the vision cards that the ghost will use to communicate with the psychics.

As an investigator you’ll be given clairvoyance tokens to bet in favour or against other investigators guesses. To keep track of bets there is a clairvoyance track board. You’ll also find a clock board to mark turns and each investigator will have a personalised pouch. Last but not least you have three crow markers, a blue sand timer and a few other tokens that we’ll explain better as we go through game play.

Set-Up Phase One

You’ll be setting up the game differently depending on chosen level of difficulty and amount of players. I’ll be explaining how to set it up when you have four players at medium difficulty. When playing with two or three players, please make reference to the rules.

Start by drawing six character, location and object cards from both ghost and psychic decks. Whatever cards you’ve drawn from one deck, be sure to get its matches on the other. Should you need help, the cards do come numbered. The ghost will then choose four out of six character cards and attribute it to every single psychic behind his game screen. Ghost will repeat this process for location and object cards, stacking them up on corresponding shields. The four combinations of characters, places and objects are what the psychics well be trying to guess during first phase.

The table will be filled with six cards of each three types (brown deck). Progress boards should be placed in between the different types of cards and clairvoyance track at the top end. Close to the game screen place hour glass, clock board and culprit tokens. Every player gets a pouch and six clairvoyance tokens. The pawns are then placed on top of the first progress board.

The three crow markers should be pinned on the game screen. Finally, the ghost keeps ghost tokens, unused ghost cards and vision cards all behind the screen. He will now draw seven cards and you are ready to start the game.

Phase One – Reconstruction of Events

The ghost will now send vision cards to psychic investigators. He may give out anything from one to seven cards to each psychic. How to choose the cards? Similar objects, colours, themes. You’re trying to establish a pattern that may be recognised by the psychics. Psychics should discuss in conjunction what they think the vision card means and what’s the best match to it.

Once the player has made his decision he will place his intuition token on top of the card matching his guess. As soon as the ghost sends all of his visions, the hour glass comes into play and all psychics have just under two minutes to wrap up their guesses.

Psychics will also be betting on other players guesses. To do so they will be using clairvoyance tokens. If one bet’s right, one advances one space on the clairvoyance track. Tokens can only be used once and to the limit of one per psychic guess. You will however receive back all spent tokens when clock reaches four o’clock.

Once that is all done the ghost tells who got it right. The ghost can’t talk so he will let you know through knocking on the table. One knock for yes and two for no. If the psychic got it right he advances to next progress board and will be guessing location next round. That psychic gets to the corresponding character card, stores it on its pouch and discards vision card. If he got it wrong however he will keep the vision card as an aid to his second guess and will remain on first progress board.

You’ll be doing this till every player reaches the final progress board. Provided everyone managed to do so before seven hours (turns), players will advance for the second and final phase. If that does not happen you all lose.

Ghost: Remember, ghosts will draw a new vision card every time they hand one to psychics and they may make use of a crow token to go for a mulligan when their hand seems unhelpful to his ends.

Clairvoyance Track: Mysterium has elements of a race game. The faster you manage to guess right all three stages you’ll move furthest on the clairvoyance track. When you reach the last progress board, for every unspent hour on the clock board you’ll advance one extra space on the track. Your position on the clairvoyance track is of great importance to the second phase of the game as we will see bellow.

Set-Up Phase Two – Revealing the Culprit

To set-up for phase two you’ll get the three cards in every player’s pouch and lay them in the middle of table with the corresponding ghost token that represents your psychic. You will however use the rear side that shows a number.

Now the ghost will take a good look at his hand and choose a culprit. Make sure you choose the one that best suits the cards you’ve get. Having chosen, the ghost will place matching culprit token on the last progression board.

Now the ghost picks three vision cards – One card for the character, location and object. He will shuffle all three of them and place them face down on table at psychics’ sight. All psychics will turn their clairvoyance tokens to the numbered sides and grab a hold of their pouches. The ghost reveals the first card and those on the clairvoyance track up to step number four will vote by placing their corresponding token number on the pouch and handing it over to the ghost.

A second card will be revealed and those up to step number seven will now vote. When the third card is finally revealed whoever is beyond that step shall place their vote. During this phase players can’t talk amongst themselves differently from first round. Now the ghost will count votes and if most psychics got their guesses right everybody wins!

Top Tips for a Great Game of Mysterium

• Choosing the ghost – A good ghost can be the difference between a good and bad game. Usually more experienced players will do better but it is not all about that. A ghost is someone that not only is familiar with gameplay, but is also good in interpreting abstract cards as fast as possible. A slow ghost will enhance down time and might just kill the game altogether.
• Picking the same card – Players can place guesses on same cards during same round. Don’t do that unless you really can’t reach an agreement. Remember, this is a co-op game and by doing so one of you will necessarily lag behind.
• Use all your clairvoyance tokens – Do it by round four and then use them all again before game end. Remember, you can still bet from last progress board. The amount of vision cards you’ll see on phase two is connected to how far you’ve gone on the clairvoyance track and to get far you’ll need to get some bets right. The best way to do so? Making as many bets as you can!
• Setting the mood – This game is heavy on theme and setting the mood certainly helps. Libellud even made a free 50-minute soundtrack to play alongside the game. Some people will dim the lights, use candles or be creative in anyway to make you feel in a haunted house actually speaking to ghosts. The spookier the better!
• Role-play – If spooky music and candle lights won’t do why not a bit of role-playing? Every character has a bio telling a bit about him. You could try play your psychic doing a politically incorrect accent (characters have different nationalities) or working on their personality traits. When I receive a vision I’ll do a bit of describing the card to my peers, incorporating some of that won’t work with everybody and it might even kill it for some groups, so know your crowd and see what works with them.

• Cherry picking on rules – I am a bit subversive with games when rules don’t match my experience playing. I like the idea of a completely mute ghost only communicating through knocks on the table but it can be quite fun as well having the ghost explaining his line of thought whenever someone guesses it write. I just don’t like playing with the hourglass! Try it, but if you think that this is cutting short the best part of this game (player interaction), just don’t use it and be happy. And although the game will tell you to give one to seven cards each round to each player I’ve decided to limit this to one card. Why? Otherwise ghosts will use this to dump a bad hand instead of making use of crows. The cool thing about Mysterium is trying to make a guess on top of a single crazy drawing. That’s the challenge!
• Dixit – 86 vision cards will start being a bit repetitive after some five times playing the game. Experience will be somewhat less entertaining to some like me who think uncovering new beautiful cards is a big part of the game. You can solve that “problem” by grabbing a hold of an expansion but why not just get another awesome game in Dixit and use their cards? Win-win hun? Two totally different games for you to play with shared cards.
• Talk, talk, talk (unless you’re the ghost) – A somewhat loose structure that will see you interpreting abstract paintings for most the time? This game is all about the interaction with your mates. The most fun you’ll have with Mysterium is coming up with the most crazy theories on what the ghost is actually trying to tell you. All of the while seeing him containing himself from laughing about all nonsense you’re saying. It doesn’t get better than this!
• Level of difficulty – I would label it as level of balance instead. Most times a ghost will be stuck with rubbish cards and will be tempted to just use a crow per turn and do a mulligan. But that’s just too easy! On the other hand, if you’re playing hard there is only one crow for the whole game. If you keep sending bad cards to your psychics one after another they won’t find it hard but rather boring, believe me. Also, when playing medium difficulty level you’ll always have two extra cards to choose from when guessing the character, location or object. That really seems to be the perfect number. Why? With just one extra card you will have players wanting to choose the same cards which is just not beneficial in a co-op game and might make it harder rather than easier. So, for a better experience I strongly recommend playing the game at medium difficulty level.

We’ve played Mysterium a dozen times, and each time the question of who should play as the ghost comes up. It doesn’t really matter which family members I’m playing with, they very hastily suggest that I play as the ghost – with the objective of, and I quote, “stopping you from talking!” It seems cruel, but it’s actually a win-win situation. You see, I enjoy playing the ghost in a game of Mysterium, whilst my family get a reprieve from my incessant talking.

There are two ways to play Mysterium. The first way is to play Mysterium just like any other boardgame: set up around the dining room table, in good light, with drinks and nibbles. Alternatively, you can embrace the ‘spirit’ of the story. As the ghost, try going full séance; throw a white sheet over your head, light some candles, put on some atmospheric music and then communicate with your companions using sinister knocks on the table and haunting “oohs” and “aahs”. The added bonus of getting totally immersed in the story is that, playing as the ghost in Mysterium, you can make the game as challenging as you want to, by minimising the communication between ghost and investigators.

Overview

One of the best things about Mysterium is the artwork. It’s exceptionally creative and intricate. Mysterium contains eighteen murder suspects, eighteen locations and eighteen weapons, all of which are excellently Tim Burton-esque. Then there are 70 vision cards, which at first you would assume were actual works of art, with elements of Salvador Dali, spliced with HR Giger and Neil Gaiman.

Mysterium very obviously represents a modern, updated and more complex version of Cluedo, with the added element of the supernatural. A ghost and a group of paranormal investigators attempt to solve the murder of said ghost, through the use of visions. Just like Cluedo, Mysterium has an array of murder suspects, murder locations and weapons, all of which need to be identified before the time runs out.

Set Up & Pack Down

As sad is this might sound, setting up and packing down Mysterium is a joy. Set up is fairly easy, since Mysterium is predominantly a card game; there’s no board and there are no dice. It’s a tiny bit faffy trying to randomly select, organise and hide the active cards, but otherwise it’s remarkably easy to set up. Packing down Mysterium is on a whole other level or pleasure. Mysterium not only has elaborate component sections and partitions inside the box, but it has a visual flow diagram of instructions for packing away every element. I shouldn’t say, so I won’t, that packing down Mysterium is almost as enjoyable as actually playing it.

Gameplay

In previous blogs, I’ve discussed my dad’s reluctance to join in with board games. However, once again, in Mysterium, we’ve found a game that succeeds in engaging him, to a level hitherto unanticipated. Mysterium sees players take on the role of paranormal investigators, attempting to solve a murder, with the help of the murder victim themselves. The murder victim issues Vision cards to the investigators, with clues as to the murderer, the murder location and their choice of weapon.

With that in mind, my dad became so wrapped up in this game that he fished out of his office, a magnifying glass and proceeded to assess the Vision cards at a microscopic level. The ironic thing is, I wasn’t using a magnifying glass to choose the Vision cards. You’ve got to respect and appreciate, firstly the commitment of my dad, but also the ability of Mysterium to invoke that level of commitment from a reluctant gamer.

Like many modern board games, Mysterium is a cooperative game, with the added difference that it attempts to put the team on the back foot from the offset. The player with all the information, with all the answers, has been silenced. It’s this aspect of Mysterium that gives it a unique appeal. I’m not saying that no other game does a similar thing, but a lot of games tend to start on a level playing field. One great thing about playing cooperatively, is that the likelihood of you falling out with your entire family on Boxing Day is greatly reduced.

The biggest issue with Mysterium is it’s lack of replayability. Despite the array of suspects, locations and weapons, as well as the seventy Vision cards, it’s surprising how quickly you get through those Vision cards. Vision cards become quite easily associated with particular characters, locations and weapons. Fortunately, there are at least two expansion packs, which can help to keep Mysterium fresh. But also, if you can find different friends or family members to play Mysterium with, then the paranormal encounter gains a whole new lease of life. You can, once again, don that white sheet and limber up those vocal chords, for another bout of ghoulish warbling.

Summary

Irrespective of the limited replayability of Mysterium, it’s still a highly enjoyable game, especially if you like immersing yourself in the story. Having said that, the easy setup, guided pack down and minimal components, make Mysterium very easy to launch in to without too much forward planning. More than once, we’ve started a spontaneous game of Mysterium with friends, instead of watching a movie. But I think the most impressive and appealing feature of Mysterium is the artwork. It is simply stunning and a huge amount of credit should be given to the designers involved in the artistic elements.