Terra Mystica: Big Box - Contains: Terra Mystica: Base Game, Fire & Ice Expansion, Merchants of The Seas Expansion by Automa Factory. Ages 14+, 1-5 Players, 30 Min Per Player

My wife and I finally had a chance to try out Terra Mystica this past weekend. The game seemed a bit daunting, just due to the sheer number of pieces in the box. But the reviews were good, and the videos of gameplay we had watched looked like the game would be fun, so we set everything up and gave it a try. We had played other games with lots of components before and enjoyed them. (Lords of Waterdeep and Pandemic come to mind, but this one has even more parts than those do.) So we weren't too intimidated by the mass of pieces in the box.The instruction manual is good at helping everyone get things set up and ready for play. There were a couple of very small details that would have been helpful to mention in the "First Play" instructions, but we figured them out anyway. (Each player chooses to place two dwellings at the start of the game. This is mentioned later, but they tell you to just use the pictured setup without much explanation.) Overall, we found the instructions to cover nearly all of the situations that we came across.The part quality is good. Items are typically made from thick cardboard and punch out of their holes easily the first time you open the box up. The player components are all painted wood, just like the meeples in other games, like Carcassonne. All of the components should be pretty durable.We've only played with the two of us, so far. Our first game took a while, since we were learning and reading directions. But now that we're familiar with it, the game usually doesn't last more than an hour. Once we got the mechanics of the game down it flowed pretty smoothly. The game looks overly complicated because they offer a lot of different actions or choices within the game, but it's really quite easy once you start playing. These actions are usually quite easy to remember just by looking at the action "cheat card" provided for each player, or by looking at your player card. Just make sure to read the rules, as there are certain things that trigger that are only in the instruction booklet. (Towns are founded automatically when your interconnected structures are worth enough power, or you get favor tiles when you upgrade to certain buildings.)We had so much fun playing Terra Mystica that we ended up playing it 3 or 4 times in just two days, and plan to keep on playing it regularly. The several factions allow for a large variety of gameplay and strategy. Each faction has its own special ability or action. Other items, such as round tiles and bonus tiles can be randomly chosen to add extra variety, as well.I think that my only gripe with this game (and it's a very minor one) is that they didn't use different sized bags for the pieces. Certain pieces are very small or there might only be a few of one component, yet they provided a large bag for them. We ended up using our own smaller bags to make things a bit more compact inside of the box. Otherwise, there's just a lot of empty plastic in there.Just a couple suggestions:We ended up sorting out the parts into their own bags for each of the player colors. Each player simply grabs their color and has all of the pieces they need. We also use small dishes to put pieces in when we set up the game, just to make sure things stay on the table and are organized.We're extremely happy we purchased this game. It's a bit pricey, but it's well worth the investment, and it's a lot of fun to play! We highly recommend this game. If you're already looking at it, chances are you're not intimidated by games that have lots of parts or might be complex. Just get it! You won't regret it.

So this has been one of those board games I bought awhile ago and let it set on my shelf without playing for months. We finally had a game night with some of my adventurous players, and we pulled it out. It took us about 1.5 hours to read the instructions and get the components ready. That seems really daunting I am sure, but here's the thing. Even though we scratched out heads a lot, once we started playing... it was pretty awesome. The rules, and there are a lot of them, just start to make sense as you play although I don't see how you can skip doing the first read through.I won't go into super details about how to play the game since there are hundreds of videos and sights for that. I want to talk about what makes this a rich experience for some gaming groups.Components: These are really well done. The wooden pieces are vibrantly colored and vary enough where it's easy to see which vacation is which. The faction boards themselves are beautifully colored with clear information on it. The board is beautiful. This really is a stunning game to look at and play.Your Game Group: This is great for people who love a variety. The factions play differently. If you are the Cultist faction, you're probably going to spend a lot of time trying get points from the cults, for example. The mermaids can use the river system in ways others can't. This means you can have a different experience with each faction playing against other factions. It keeps the game fresh and interesting. Of course we only played with the recommended original three, but it quickly became obvious that we were really interested in seeing how the others play.There are a lot of words in that manual, but if your group is like mine, and you have 2-3 others like yourself who will dive into a new game and then guide others through playing it the next time around, your impatient members will be fine learning as they go. It's not as complicated as it seems. And like a lot of great strategy games, once you get the concepts down, it's all about the experience of playing with others... what they're doing, and what that should mean for what i am doing. This game is also about balance. You can wind up with too much money and not enough workers and vice versa, but generally, you're not going to have someone sitting around unable to do something just because they made a few mistakes early on. There's a chance to overcome that. Our first run through proved that the early leader lost their advantage once someone else started taking advantage of their faction's special actions.I'd love to give you an example of another game this compares to, but I've never played game like this before, nothing like it. If you have a group that loves being different, as in the colors mean more than just a different color, and they like planning ahead, but don't agonize over every decision, this will work for them. It can play pretty quickly too once you get going.Great fun. The components make it worth the price, and the experience will keep you going back for more. This will be a great addition to any collection.

Love this game! It’s pretty fun once you understand the rules after the first turn.Took about 1hr per player on the first game and 45min/p the second time.

This is a review of this specific set of Terra Mystica, not the base game. The base game is fantastic and speaks for itself.This box includes most of the content available for Terra Mystica, minus some promos, and provides a nearly infinite amount of replay ability for all player counts including solo play. Unboxing and organizing is aided by a guide and stickers for bags clearly identifying which components are needed for various modules and expansions for the game, and while a specific storage solution besides throwing everything in bags would have been nice, the system works well and is fairly quick to set up. Overall, if you do not have the game, this is a great way to get in to it and have everything necessary to grow as you wish with all expansions.Great product, would highly recommend!

Perfectas condiciones e increíble jugabilidad. Aunque ésta es la versión en inglés, es sumamente fácil de adaptar las nuevas civilizaciones al juego base.

El juego incluye todo el contenido base mas las dos expansiones y el modo solitario. Es una caja muy honda, mas que por ejemplo Feast For Odin. Una cosa que me agrado bastante fue que te incluye la guía de como guardar el contenido para facilitar el identificar que es que, a través de bolsitas que les pones stickers para identificar que contenido es. Lo único que estaría mejor es imágenes para esa guía. Pero ayudo bastante para tener todo bien organizado. No trae inserto ni nada, así que todo el contenido será a través de bolsitas.

Pour nous, surement un des meilleurs jeux de notre ludothèque (une cinquantaine de jeux de société !). Dans notre classement il vient en n° 2 juste après Terraforming Mars (toujours 1ere place !).Attention, ce jeu n'est clairement pas pour les belins qui n'ont plus rien dans le crâne (une grosse partie de la population à notre époque !!!), c'est un jeu "expert" avec un pourcentage chance à zéro.A tous les autres, je le conseille fortement.

Sitting down to the Terra Mystica rule book felt like preparing for an exam, but after a first play through, the mechanics work smoothly and I’m itching to play again. Moderately long set up time means this is likely to be the main event rather than a palate cleanser at a gaming session.

Absolutely love this game!! It has so much depth for strategy and replayability. Each game is different thanks to the random set up, different player factions and the choosing of start positions. I cannot recommend it enough if you like strategy board games.It takes a resonable amount of time to get the hang of the rules so expect the first play through to take a while. Once done it will all start making sense!The game plays best wth four people. I have played it two player and it works ok but the end scoring needs some tweaks to make it more fun. Check out boardgamegeek for some options for the two player setup.