Learn to Play Mythion: The Card Game

Gameplay

Mythion: The Card Game is an ever-expanding Competitive/Cooperative Card Game much like the Fantasy Flight line of games Arkham Horror, Legend of the Five Rings, and Netrunner. It is meant to be played between 2-4 players, though, mostly between 2 players. In order to play, each player will need 1 Deck (Introductory Decks are available for download as a Print-to-Play PDF on this page). As well as a World Tree Deck (also included in the download section). Each deck contains a number of cards which they will need to compete, as well as a few extra cards to add to the World Tree Deck (more on that later.)

Each player will also need a way to track certain numbers on cards (Dice, Pennies, Toothpicks).

The goal of the game is deceptively complex. Each character has a multitude of victory conditions worth different amounts of points. The goal of the game, then, is for both players to reach a combined Victory Point threshold. As of now, this prescribed number is SEVEN victory points. There may be modifiers to this in the future. In Mythion, there are 2 current conditions for Victory: the Ego win condition (worth 1 Victory point) and the Ego-Death Win condition (worth 3 Victory points). The conditions for each victory are written on the players’ chosen Identity card, of which there are 4 Identities in the Base version of the game: Gavin, AI-Nima, Mascheck, and York, with more to come!

A NOTE on Opponents: while Mythion is technically a game where you have an opponent, there will often be ties, and players must often help their opponent achieve their victory conditions or deprogram their Negative Ideation Cards. There are many ways for both players to lose, a few ways for each player to win, and many ways for players to tie, but more on that later.

Basic rules:

Mythion is played by playing cards from your hand and paying for the cards you play with other cards in your hand. Here are a few examples. In short, almost every card in Mythion serves two functions to be chosen from at any given point: you can use a card for its effect, or, if you do not need the effect, you can instead use that card to produce resources.

Card: Hang It Up
Deck: Detective Maschek Carton

This card is called “Hang it Up". It belongs to the deck “Detective Maschek Carton.” The cost of the card is found next to the star Symbol in the top right corner. This is how many resources you will need in order to pay for this card. In this case, “Hang it Up,” costs 2 resources. When it is played, you resolve its effects. After each cards’ effects are resolved, unless otherwise stated, the card should be placed in your discard pile, what is known as the Discarnate Zone in Mythion.

It should be noted here that this card is from a slightly earlier version of the final game. Some of the symbols have changed, as well as the graphic design. We use this card only to showcase how the general look of a card informs what it does.

The Triangle, in this case, is how many resources this card will produce if it is chosen as a card to produce resources. If a card is used as resources, it cannot be played for effects, but more on that later.

Card: Discover Conspiracy
Deck: Detective Maschek Carton

This card is called “Discover Conspiracy”. It belongs to the same deck as the card above. It has a different effect, though! This card costs 0 resources to play, because its Star Value is 0. It produces 3 resources when pitched, though. That means a normal turn will look like this:

You will announce which card you will pitch. In this case “Discover Conspiracy” for 3 resources.

At this point, you will have 3 resources available to play other cards in your hand. In this case, of course, you will use them to pay for the cost of “Hang it Up”.

After paying 2 resources to play “Hang it Up,” you will have 1 remaining resource to do with whatever you like. Bear in mind, though, that at the end of your turn, unused resources are lost.

What then, happens to the cards I use for pitching?

This is extremely important: when you use a card for pitching, you must put it, face down, on the bottom of your deck.

This is the big trick of Mythion. For anyone who has played the TCG Flesh and Blood, you will recognize the resource system well. This means the cards you pitch for resources can and will come back later in the game to be played again! So choose wisely what and when you play vs what and when you pitch.

Let’s now take a look at a full turn for one player.

At the beginning of every turn, you should have 4 cards in hand.
Here is an example:

These 4 cards, like any given hand in Mythion, have an amazing number of possibilities for play. For example, you could pitch “Hang it Up” to play “Case the Scene” creating 2 Clues. You could then destroy these 2 clues to draw 2 cards, afterwhich you could use those cards for resources or effects. A turn will go until you decide you have nothing else beneficial to do, or can no longer do anything as a result of running out of cards, or not having enough resources to pay for cards.

Let’s say, for example, you played every card in your hand except “Stay Late” and have nothing else to do with it. If that is the case, at the end of your turn, you may place “Stay Late” in a specific zone called “Present Thoughts.” Cards in present thoughts may be used as resources on your next turn. If they are not used, they are placed in the Discarnate Zone. Now, we need to talk about Negative Ideation Cards.

NEGATIVE IDEATION CARDS

Negative Ideation cards are very important cards in a game of Mythion. They serve multiple functions. To illustrate their function, let’s take a look at one now:

You’ll notice, here, that Negative Ideation cards look very similar to their effect counterparts with one key difference. This card, as you might have noticed, does not have the same symbols. This is because Negative Ideation Cards are not played or pitched from hand.

In fact, Negative Ideation cards are not played or pitched at all. When a Negative Ideation card is drawn from your deck, it is immediately placed in the shared play area between the two players (called the Theater). The Clock represents the number of turns the players have to pay for the DEPROGRAM cost. In this case, the DEPROGRAM cost, represented by the Eye (in this example card, the triangle takes the place of the Eye) symbol is 7. If the cost is not paid after 3 turns, both players will lose the game on the spot.

Both players? My opponent can pay for my cards?
Yes! But only for Negative Ideation card Deprogram costs. You can, of course, pay for your opponent’s Negative Ideation cards, as well. You will both constantly have to fend off these negative ideations while attempting to achieve victory conditions, so always bear in mind how many resources you each have at any given time, in case one of these nasty effects crops up, as you do not draw cards to replace the Negative Ideation when it is drawn.

WORLD TREE DECK

There is yet another wrinkle to the game plan of every Mythion: the Card Game match. In addition to your and your opponent’s deck, there is a third deck which has unique interactions called The World Tree deck. This deck contains a set number of auto-included cards, some of which are very positive, and some of which are negative...and some of which are required to achieve your Ego-Death win condition.

There are three key things about preparing the World Tree Deck for a match of Mythion:

1. Each deck may contain a number of cards which are meant to be shuffled into the World Tree deck before the match begins. These cards are best kept with your Identity deck for organizational purposes, but will state on the card itself: “At the beginning of the game, shuffle this card into the World Tree deck.”

2. The World Tree deck should be placed off to the side, within reach of both players in case you or your opponent ever play card which states the keyword Intuit. Intuit is an important keyword which will be associated with a number (ex. Intuit 1). When you Intuit, you draw a number of cards equal to the number following the keyword, so in the previous example, Intuit 1 means to draw one card from the World Tree deck and add it to your hand (unless otherwise stated).

3. New World Tree decks are in production. While the Base 4 Identity decks all use the same World Tree deck, the next 4 may not!

OBJECTS OF POWER

Each Mythion Identity will have included cards called “Objects of Power.” These cards are marked as Objects of Power, so they won’t be confused with Effects or Negative Ideations. Objects of Power are, at the beginning of the game, placed next to your Identity card and act as an extra effect, most often to be used one time in the game, for a powerful effect. Let’s take a look at one now.

As you can see here, this card is for an Identity we have not yet seen in this article. This is for AI-Nima, a key character in both the Novel Mythion, as well as the game.

This card represents key aspect of her and what her game plan is. There will be alternative versions of Objects of Power in the future, but for now, each hero comes with one.

KEY WORDS IN
MYTHION: THE CARD GAME

  • This term refers to your deck of cards. Decks, as of now, are minimum 30 cards.

  • This verb refers to the act of playing cards. In Magic: the Gathering, for example, the act of playing cards is to “cast” spells. In Mythion, the term is to “Manifest” something.

  • Channeling is the act of utilizing a card in your hand for resources. When a card is Channeled, it is placed on the bottom of your deck. You then gain resource points equal to the Channel value of a card (the number which comes after the Triangle).

  • Present Thoughts refers to a zone in the game where you may, at the end of your turn, place an unused card (if you have an unused card) to be used for resources on your next turn. If it is not used for Resources by the end of your next turn, it goes to the Discarnate zone.

  • The Discarnate Zone is, effectively, the Discard Pile (sometimes referred to as the Graveyard). This zone is where cards go when they are used for their effects.

  • Similar to the zone itself, Discarnate is Mythion’s version of “discard.” To Discarnate a card to the Discarnate Zone means to discard a card to the Discard pile.

  • Effects are the standard card in Mythion. They represent the things your character are doing. Effects are the primary cards which are Manifested.

  • Negative Ideations represent the cards which must be Deprogrammed. Both players may spend resources for each other in order to Deprogram Negative Ideation cards.

  • Deprogram is a term which means to “pay for the cost of a Negative Ideation card.” The cost of a Negative Ideation card is found in the top right corner of the card along with how many turns each player has to remove, or “Deprogram” it from the game. Once a card is Deprogrammed, it is removed from the game.

  • Encumbrance represents the number of points a character must Deprogram before they can Ascend. The Encumbrance of any given character is equal to the number of Negative Ideation cards in their deck. For example, the Negative Ideation card “Overwhelming Guilt” has a Deprogram cost of 7. When the card is Deprogrammed, the “owner” of Overwhelming Guilt will subtract 7 points from their total Encumbrance.

  • Ascension is a key mechanic in Mythion. Ascension is the only way to achieve the Ego-Death win condition. How it works, is, once your Identity has deprogrammed all Negative Ideation cards equal to their Encumbrance, you will flip your Identity card over to reveal the the Ascended version of the identity. With this ascended version, you have a new goal, and that is to achieve the Ego-Death win condition, which is printed on your ascended identity.

  • An Ego win is achieving the goal printed on the front side of your identity card. An Ego win is worth 1 point. The game is NOT OVER after achieving an Ego win condition.

  • The Ego Death win comes from first Ascending (emptying your Encumbrance pool via Deprogramming) and achieving the goal printed on the back side of your Identity. An Ego-Death win condition is worth 3 points. The game IS OVER when one player has achieved their Ego-Death Win condition.

  • Threshold is the minimum number of points both players need to achieve through their various Ego and Ego Death win conditions. If the total number of points is less than the Threshold, both players lose, regardless of who has the most points at the time of an Ego-Death win condition.

HOW TO PRINT-AND-PLAY

The best experience for Print-and-Play is easy.
We recommend the following:

A color printer (or a local print shop like Staples, Office Depot, or what have you)

A flash drive (if you are going to your local print shop)

Scissors or an X-Acto knife (please be careful with the X-Acto Knife!)

A set of at least 80 playing cards (Magic Bulk, 2 decks of 52, Pokemon cards, what have you). We recommend something like this on Amazon.

At least 80 playing card sleeves. We recommend something like this on Amazon.

The process, while time consuming, is a relatively simple way to try the game out completely free. All you have to do is print the PDFs in however you choose (at home, or at a printer), cut the individual cards out of the sheets, and sleeve them over top the other cards inside the sleeves.

For a more concrete tutorial on how to easily place cards in sleeves, here is a quick, step-by-step plan:
1. Print Sheets provided in the download.

2. Cut each card out so that it is an individual piece.

3. Place a stiff-card in a sleeve.

4. Place the paper cut-out of a Mythion card over top that card inside the sleeve.

For an extremely in-depth guide to make Print-and-Play cards look professionally done, follow this link.

The playing cards are technically optional, as they mostly serve to add a stiffness to the sleeved cards when shuffling.

Of course, if that work doesn’t sound worth the time and effort, you are welcome to go to our shop at Make Playing Cards and buy the set, which comes with 4 Identity decks (including the 2 free identity decks found in the PDF below, as well as 2 more).

And finally, we just want to say thank you for your time reading this page, and thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, if you try the game and give us feedback! We have more decks and supplemental cards in development on the way!

Try it free!

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