I love it when passions of mind mix together into something awesome. So as someone who loves board games and books from epic fantasy author, Brandon Sanderson (specifically the Cosmere series), Mistborn: The Deckbuilding Game really hits that sweet spot. With Era 1 characters Marsh, Shan, Vin, and Kelsier, each depicted with beautiful art alongside more than 100 cards showcasing people, places, and events from the books, Mistborn is a treat for fans like myself. And thankfully, it has some solid gameplay backing it up.
Mistborn: The Deckbuilding Game
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What’s in the box:
- 1 Rulebook
- 4 character cards
- 4 sets of 8 metal tokens
- 4 health dials with 4 matching colored cubes
- 8 mission cards
- 4 starter decks
- 82 market cards
- 36 Lord Ruler challenge cards
- 1 Lord Ruler card
- 1 dominance track card
- 16 Atium tokens
- 14 boxing tokens
- 1 target standee
- Lord Ruler dial with 8 tracking cubes
Designed by John D. Clair and published by Brotherwise Games, Mistborn: The Deckbuilding Game, as its name suggests, is a deckbuilding board game and features many of the staple mechanics of the genre. Players begin the game with a weaker small deck of cards, which they will slowly add to throughout the course of the game by purchasing new cards from a shared shop that strengthens their deck with new abilities and better resources. Just because it adopts many of the traditional systems of a deck builder doesn’t mean Mistborn doesn’t offer up anything new, though!
Pulling from the source material, the big additional element here is the idea of burning and flaring metal—the signature trait of the Allomancers from the world of Scadriel. On your turn, the cards you can play require you to burn one of eight possible metals in order to use the card. As the game progresses you become a better-trained Allomancer. You are able to burn more metals per turn, but at the start, you can only do this once, which is where flaring a metal and playing cards as a resource comes into play.
Flaring lets you use one of your metals, not counting towards your turn burn limit; however, you will not regain this metal until you take a special “refresh” action on a future turn, discarding a card from your hand that matches that metal. Additionally, you can spend a card from your hand as another required metal cost that matches the type as shown in a small vial at the bottom of the cards, making every card you put into your deck not only a potential action but also a resource. I am a big fan of board games that incorporate risk-versus-reward into the gameplay and the fact that played cards have multiple use cases adds that extra little dash of a strategic element to the economy that I just devoured.
Before each game starts, three missions are selected that players will be able to progress on, earning them bonuses and, once completed, permanent buffs. These can allow you to draw extra cards during your turn, provide a static attack bonus each turn, or even a one-time-use heal among other possibilities. With eight possible mission cards to pick from, this helps keep games feeling a bit fresh after multiple playthroughs, and I’ve never been one to shy away from games with more replayability options.
In my experience, games that try to allow their game to be played both competitively and cooperatively tend to end up being more skewed towards one or the other, with the one option coming off feeling like an afterthought add-on and doesn’t provide the same level of depth or enjoyment in its gameplay. Thankfully Mistborn manages to avoid this by offering strong options for both audiences that want to wail on one another and those that want to team-up, in this case against the immortal Lord Ruler himself.
Competitive play is pretty straightforward with everyone trying to be the last person standing as they beat up on each other with one small change—only one person, the target, can be attacked at any given time. Once that person is attacked, they are able to pass on the target token to anyone of their choice or keep holding onto it if they so choose, allowing them to attack anyone they wish. I thought this was a really interesting idea, and at first thought would be incredibly unfair to the person that is targeted. But the fact that once they get attacked, are able to make someone else the target has led to some really interesting negotiations during my games where people try to wheel-and-deal so that they won’t become the target. I sort of dig it.
As fun as the competitive ruleset was, I found myself enjoying the cooperative one even more. Teaming up against the Lord Ruler felt more on-brand with the books than everyone fighting one another, and it actually was pretty challenging too! The Lord Ruler comes with his own deck of cards full of minions and edicts, special cards that have nasty effects like dishing out tons of damage, killing your allies (persistent cards that are out in front of players that trigger various effects when certain metals are burned) or fully healing the Lord Ruler. While this is my preferred way to play Mistborn, I do find that it is more engaging of an experience at lower player counts. With four players, I felt the Lord Ruler couldn’t quite provide the same challenge, so I would advise maybe opting for cooperative at lower player counts. Playing solo, the Lord Ruler is SCARY, and as someone who historically isn’t much for solo board games, I think Mistborn is a great solo game.
My issues with Mistborn have less to do with the mechanics of the game and more with the fact that I wish that the game went a bit further with what it includes. The four characters are nice, but I would have loved a couple more options so when playing four players, the roster wasn’t always the same. While Allomancy is represented well, the more I played, the more I kept wishing that there was some sort of representation of Feruchemy and Hemalurgy, and why aren’t there rules to allow someone to actually play as the Lord Ruler? The more I have played Mistborn the more my mind wandered and brainstormed how all of those things would work in the system that Brotherwise has built. I can only hope that Mistborn did well enough that we will get an expansion at some point, maybe roping in crew from Wax and Wayne’s Era 2, that will introduce some of those features, or better yet, the idea of Twinborns that can do both Allomancy AND Feruchemy. Oh man, my brain is already thinking up ideas.
