Mythic Battles: Ragnarok Review
Value and some interesting tweaks on classic Ameritrash conflict.
Draft a Nordic god, craft your army, then duke it out against another player! With some simple hand and deck management, combined with a huge variety of units, Mythic Battles: Ragnarok is a lot of value in one box. Can be played in a mini-campaign or skirmish mode. We played 1v1, but team play in 2v2 is available.
Video published June 11th, 2024
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Dice rolling system includes a re-roll and sacrificing dice to boost other dice!
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Manage cards from your hand to activate minis!
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Utilize troops to protect your nordic gods!
This is a sponsored post. Base pledge from Kickstarter received.
Story
This is the base pledge of Mythic Battles: Ragnarok, which is only $119, but all stretch goals were unlocked, meaning 37+ units were tossed in for free!
Mythic Battles: Ragnarok is the same system as Mythic Battles: Pantheon, which is same thing but Greek Mythology.
Currently being delivered, currently Egyptian Mythology kickstarter is available.
THE STORY
Played 8-10 hours
2 Skirmish matches (have draft), finished the first mini-campaign (2 in the box)
Need to learn how to play? Or want more reasoning for our points? Our review video’s got you!
Component Pros
Awesome and varied minis of different sizes
Divinities, creatures, heroes, then troops (multiple of)
Quality and look is fantastic
Only 1 long spear broke off during shipping to us
Tree and Monolith terrain to put on the board
Removable plastic tracker with rubber complement is clean way to track health/stats
Player boards are good quality
Art is cool on so many units
MCU movie Thor: Ragnarok Concept artist
4 game boards all have great art and feel different
Ship, temple, then hiking trail
Literal “Storage Box” included that has felt coated plastic insert and card dividers
Really easy to store game away
Gameplay Pros — Unit Design
Playing for 8-10 hours, have yet to find units that feel too similar to each other
Have 2-3 abilities AND 2-3 talents (game-altering attributes)
e.g. Lagertha’s “Leader” which lets her activate troops next to her for FREE after turn
e.g. “Block” which means that units can’t move away from you
Stat-tracker means that as go down in health, your stats go down… or sometimes up!
Often weaker you get means you get less access to abilities
Most expensive unit: Titan Fenrir is fascinating
Moves 3 every turn (about half map), rolls 10 dice (all in game)
“Bitter Jaws” ability lets him attack everything in 2 areas next to him (8 dice)
Troop destroyed by him is permanently removed form game (normally way to respawn them)
Thor can just lightning strike a unit on the board at infinite range
Troll can change his “stance” to move more and pick up divine stones easier, or increase attack range and have chance to throw enemies
Sigurd who can revive himself if dies, at a card cost
Gameplay Pros — Troop Implementation
Cheap to draft at 1 cost, with low health, but can respawn at your divinity if destroyed!
Just pay art of war card from hand
Some have “Guard” ability to protect your divinity (if that dies you lose the game)
Troop diversity:
e.g. Seers that have 1 range and want to get hurt, because they draw you a card
e.g. Berserkers who can attack twice in one turn
e.g. Jomsvikings who do an attack when they are destroyed
Gameplay Pros — Interesting hand/deck management
Removes need for rounds, instead you are conscious of cards in deck as play cards to activate units
Incentivized to track both you and your opponent’s discards constantly
Some tension whether or not they have unit cards in hand that can hurt you
Hand management flows with “Art of War” card
Discard it to draw 2 cards, or search ANY card from deck
Usually want to save it for special situation (e.g. unit ability)
Can get divine stone cards into hand for some deck progression and motivation to take stones
Hand not as clunky because if non-troop unit dies, you discard pair of dead unit cards to draw 2 from deck
Not as many bad cards in hand, EXCEPT if unit provided 3 cards (adds bigger blow to odd-numbered card units)
Dynamic deck pacing mechanic
1st to deck out allows opponent to draw ALL cards from deck, their discard becomes deck
Often tracking opponent’s remaining cards in deck, tension behind drawing 2 cards
Gameplay Pros — Compelling Draft for min-maxers
Drafting more units sounds good to fill board, but that dilutes deck from god activation cards
Need to remember that god needs to move out of danger, or absorb stones
Too few units means you don’t have enough to protect god
Usually want at least 1 set of troops (can pay to revive them)
Full list of stuff (56 units in total to draft from):
1 Titan (Fenrir)
13 Gods
18 Monsters
13 Heroes
11 Troops
8 of troop upgrades (Jarl Cards, not units)
Replayability is insane with creating different types of armies
e.g. Few monsters to just rush down enemy divinity?
e.g. Play around terrain carefully and hold ground well?
Gameplay Pros — Theme meeting gameplay well
Mortal troops are meat shields for gods
Gods tend to have aura to buff/debuff things next to them
Terrain can slow you down or hurt you
Climb a rock will help ranged attacks and ignore obstacles
“Burning” hurts you to go through
Component Cons
Unboxing experience isn’t that smooth
Tiles and cards need to be sorted by category (hurts more because game doesn’t instruct you to, so many units)
A bit confusing because no component list in rulebook, only on storage box
Mini storage is a bit janky
Probably didn’t anticipate ALL stretch goals to be unlocked, lots of mini cramming into a box
Should’ve given reference of what miniatures go where
Rulebook doesn’t show game setup, only map setup
Rules tell you start with normal skirmish mode, which means drafting
How can you draft if you haven’t played game yet!?
FIX: give preset simple teams for 1st game (1 god, 1 monster, 1 troop per team)
Board lines dividing areas are thin and hard to see
No way to distinguish what team miniatures are on
Lagertha looks REALLY similar to Shield maidens
Painting will solve this issue
Minis don’t always fit on a space because they’re big
What can you do without making game board bigger?
Reference card for units feels useless for you, but not enough info to help guide your opponent
Troops also don’t have a player board, so reference card can’t be given to opponent
Reference card is stretch goal, so likely that’s why feels janky
Player aid needs some upgrades
Very wordy, no symbols used at all to refer to cards/units
Doesn’t mention “class” of units, which can provide game altering abilities
e.g. “Flying” which lets units evade attacks by discarding art of war card
Card holder feels mandatory to play the game
7 cards in hand after first draw
Getting remaining deck to hand after someone decking out is easily 12+ cards (2 card holders isn’t bad idea)
Gameplay Cons — Some scenario design is weird
One win condition removes the fuller strategy of either killing divinity, or get divine stones
e.g. 1st Saga scenario 2: One player kills center god that is inert, other player just kills pillars
Some design just feels half-baked
e.g. 1st saga scenario 3: One player needs to flip over 1/5 tokens to unlock the thing to kill
If flip over green token early, super ahead
If flip over green token late, super behind
Other player can randomly swap token position (without looking at them!!?)
Scenarios also on average 30 min longer due to no threat of double win cons
2nd saga is interesting with getting to draft own army, use it throughout (didn’t play it)
Curious to see how badly your army can get shafted by certain scenario rules
Campaign gives “Futhark” cards, which is one time use to do something a bit beneficial, feels very random in getting a good one
Gameplay Cons — Combat system feels a bit lacking in 2024
Want to avoid game states where best move beyond a doubt is to do a simple attack
Can make some character’s turns shallow despite all rules, talents, and drafting work
At worst, can be stuck in a mosh pit where 1 player “Blocks” others from moving, so other player needs to keep rolling dice
POTENTIAL FIX: Add more depth, like bonus modifiers from setting up combo attacks
e.g. Gloomhaven where attacks are modified by countless things (element board)
POTENTIAL FIX: Allow for better attacks to happen off of “complex” action
Currently just spam simple attack
Recommender Score: 7/10
The one mantra that kept hitting me is: VALUE. This game is INSANE value! Like, all of these awesome minis and varied abilities for only $119 dollars!
Like for a comparison, that’s about $10 cheaper as Gloomhaven Miniatures to get that game all miniature-fied- and that box don’t give you a game! I mean the only way to get Mythic Battles right now is via the kickstarter, but I’ve seen it for recommended for retail price under $300 and that is still plenty of value.
Mythic Battles: Ragnarok might not have been this value- because 37 amount of units just got STRAIGHT unlocked via stretch goals- and some of those are troops so that’s definitely more than 37 minis! And it’s not like other kickstarters where these stretch-goals are alternate art, or extra campaigns, or expansions! Nope, these minis are all usable because a significant portion of the experience IS drafting them!
And from what I can tell it’s a VERY similar system to the original Mythic Battles, so they keep the same combat, add in new minis to draft, and that’s value for y’all.
Honestly, this experience could’ve been a lot more of a disjointed mess with so many extra goodies just thrown in- I suspect that’s why some of the component production feels so rushed… but with drafting and NOT just a campaign… you’re self-balancing and WANT so much content, so the sheer quantity of units is a boon!
Eventually you can learn- oh if my opponent is drafting a bunch of retaliate, I can use Freya’s Cats to ignore that! Or, if I feel really reliant on god activations at a certain time, get Mimir who when you use him you can just search for 1 card on his turn for free! Or, making sure your army has at least 1 range and 1 mighty throw unit to make sure you don’t get trapped by your opponent! There’s much more I’m sure of that we barely even scratched the surface of!
There’s quite a bit of character and countless hours of mixing and matching your favorite nordic dudes to bash against each other. Even though hands look really simple there are SO many possibilities in utilizing your army, even if the game can devolve into mosh-pit dice rolling at some point.
Oh, we gotta talk about the dice rolling system! As a reminder, it’s where you’re trying to end with high values by sacrificing low rolls into higher rolls, and then you can RE-ROLL 5’s to add on a new value to a 5! If you roll enough dice, you can almost always expect 1-2 hits. Your enjoyment of Mythic Battles: Ragnarok really ride or dies off this combat system. It’s definitely different than just purely chucking dice mindlessly, and there’s a push your luck element in gambling with re-rolling 5’s that YOU can create through discarding dice to boost others. It’s just that rolling 0’s off of your re-roll can be brutal, and the dice rolling process takes longer than other games, since there’s more dice manipulation after each roll.
If this type of dice-rolling is TOTALLY your thing, and you LOVE nordic mythology and skirmish games where you can theory craft cool armies and counter draft, then pit them all into each other relatively quickly, this is a good buy. None of the component cons we bring up are actually that bad. Playing is actually mostly just minis and cards, there’s no barely any cardboard pieces after drafting to bloat the setup or fiddle up turns, leading to only 1-1.5 hours for 2 player in the main mode, where enjoyment can increase after you get familiar with the oodles and oodles of nordic quirks. Or play it up to 4 players if you have that many people willing to get understand the army pool, but again we haven’t tried that mode!
However, if you’re someone that can’t stand the thought of dice-rolling on 3 turns in a row to do a couple of damage, definitely beware. Or if you want an intricate competitive campaign, or want some revolutionary take on this genre, this isn’t quite it. Lots of turns are still attacking by the same dice rolling system, or moving then attacking- it’s an expanded take on the simple ameritrash with an interesting card system thrown in. But hey, look at all he characters, and they’re MEANT to be drafted… so value right? Yeah it IS value!
Think about how’d you enjoy the gameplay after drafting, and if it’s still legit to you, then you will have a blast- I can see why people either love and get let down by this mini filled bash.
Also if you like this sort of idea but like Greek lore, get Pantheon… and if you like Egypt mythology, get Isfet which is live on kickstarter right now!
