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When the original pre-orders for Mythic Americas went up, I decided to pick up the small starter set and some additional units to try out the game.

Unfortunately, the overall clusterfeth of the pandemic mixed with the holiday season meant that Warlord has had some trouble getting their shipments out.

I thought I would just wait, but the opportunity presented itself for me to pick up the limited edition collector's set and, well...



Yeah. So I thought I'd do a little overview of the system. (I'm still waiting on part of that order from Warlord. I want my Jaguar Warriors!)

To start, at it's very core, Mythic Americas is Warlords of Erehwon, and you can find a very good review of the system by auticus here. The bones of the system are the same: D10's, low rolls are better, randomly drawn order dice, etc.

Mythic Americas thoughtfully put together a single page that summarizes the differences between itself and Erehwon:

The Way

After creating a warband, you are randomly assigned one of two Alignments: The Everchanging or the Everliving. Since this is done right before the game, you never know exactly what resources your warband will have. Your Alighnment will determine which Blessings (a set of six, single use abilities) your warband receives, which Devotions (secondary objectives) you can get, and potentially which Magic your wizards can take.

That's another difference - unlike Erehwon, magic in Mythic Americas is faction specific. An Inca High Priest and a Tribal Nations Medicine Man will have radically different spells.

There's a very nice set of cards that have all these rules on them, which makes selecting Devotions and keeping track of spells and Blessings simple.

So, to play a game, you make your warband, find out which Alignment you are, choose the Balance of the Way (the primary scenario) and randomly select a hidden Devotion of the Way (secondary objective), and your off! Games last for six turns or until one side breaks, with a 50% chance of continuing on for an additional turn.

The primary scenarios are pretty interesting. No straight up brawls here. "Build Altars for the Gods" has players building objective points and destroying the opponents. "Rainy Season" sees both players struggling over a series of bridges to push onto the enemy side of the table. In "The Great Hunt", warbands compete to run down randomly spawned spirit animals. During "Pillage the Village" both warbands need to raid five buildings while preventing the opposing player from doing the same. With "Liberators and Captors", the warbands will need to transport captured enemies across the field while trying to free those under the opposing warbands control. And in "Fog of War", only half the warband is deployed, as reinforcements pour into the fight from all sides.

The secondary objectives add some spice to the primary scenarios. For example, the Everliving have "Endocannibalism Ritual in Honor of Gaia" which will score a victory point if a ritual can be enacted at the site of a friendly unit's destruction. The Everchanging have the reverse, "Cannibalism for the Devourer King" where the ritual must take place using a destroyed enemy unit. More Devotions include, "Divide and Conquer!", "Through Enemy Lines", "A Worthy Sacrifice", and "Trophy Hunters".

I think my only complaint about the book is the imagery. There's some repeat usage of models and some black and grey renders of units that haven't been made yet. There's also a few images that are blown up to a degree that their quality takes a hit, or could have been replaced by better pictures. I think these could have been worked on a little more, or replaced with artwork.

To close this out, here's a quick look at the four factions included in the rules:

The Tribal Nations are described as "a hit-and-run, finesse army." You have a number of lightly armored, fast troops that can ignore terrain restrictions (and even have magic to move certain terrain features around). Wolves and giant eagles act as fast flankers, while hardier monsters like Sasquatches and the terrifying Wendigo can strike from the woods and cause havoc.

The Aztecs are "designed around a core of many, lower quality undead warriors that, when enhanced by magic, can stand toe-to-to with tougher enemies." Their living warriors are elite but fragile. The faction is supplemented by a number of decent spellcasters, including the formidable Quetzalcoatl, as well as the corpse-throwing, undead monstrosity of the Ayar.

The Incas "represent a balanced, elite force that excel in magic and other ranged attacks." Many of their units have the Shieldwall ability, giving them a slow, grinding playstyle. This is helped by ayllus (a bola-like weapon) throwing warriors, Condor Riders, and the snake-like Maras that works well as a harassing monster. The Incas also have access to the only spellcaster that can cast two spells per turn.

The Maya are an "elite, well trained force with warbands that usually muster fewer models. They rely on psychology rather than brute strength" to win fights, and many of their units have the "Cause Fear" and "Vicious" special rules. Apart from the regular units of infantry, the Maya can count on units of Werejaguars and swarms of Alux. They're backed up by the bat monster Camazotz, which can use its speed, flight, and Baleful Glare to strike fear into the heart of enemy warbands. Unlike other warbands, the Maya rely solely on their Alignment to determine their magic.

In the book, each of these army lists are accompanied by a well-researched (as evidenced by the reference section in the back) overview of the historical peoples that the factions are based on.

All in all, I'm very excited to start playing Mythic Americas, and I've begun work on my Aztec warband. And I'll be picking up a Maya warband when they're released later this year!



I'm also interested to see more units and factions added into this game.

Thanks for the review!
I like MA and follow closely what they do but with so many expansions on the horizon, I'm holding off until they release more things or in case they make a big rulebook compiling all the material.

Sounds like an interesting rule book. If I can make some of the factions from plastic someday soon, I’d love to give it a try.

Unfortunately there's a real lack of plastic available for pre-colonial Americas. I know Wargames Foundry Factory is working on a Jaguar Warrior box, but that's it.

Wargames Foundry is making plastics now?

Wargames Atlantic is making Aztecs. Shadows of Brimstone will be making some Aztec-ish mythological creatures in plastic.

Whoops! Yes, I meant Atlantic.

Paymaster Games is also good for resin/metal minis.

I have some of their resin monsters. They are very nice minis. I’m putting off making another order until I have a better idea what I actually want to do with them.

Do you have their Quetzalcoatl? Just wondering what its dimensions are.

Whats the balance of lore to rules in the book - I tend to read more than I play these days?

The Mayan models look good.

It's mostly rules. It's a smaller book than the original Erehwon ruleset, but that's because it has less than half the original's army lists.

Each faction gets about two pages of historical background and "how to play" sections. Scattered through the rules are small subsections on lore, both Mythical and real. There are also a few half-page to page long short stories. The guys behind the game have mentioned that a novel is in the works.

 infinite_array wrote:
It's mostly rules. It's a smaller book than the original Erehwon ruleset, but that's because it has less than half the original's army lists.

Each faction gets about two pages of historical background and "how to play" sections. Scattered through the rules are small subsections on lore, both Mythical and real. There are also a few half-page to page long short stories. The guys behind the game have mentioned that a novel is in the works.

Hmm sounds good - might pick it up for a read

 infinite_array wrote:
Do you have their Quetzalcoatl? Just wondering what its dimensions are.

No, I have the stone snake, cloud snake and one other that I can’t remember.

I really love the idea of a fantastical take on pre-contact New World indigenous peoples. And I also really love the randomized activation mechanic of BA/Anatres/WoE. But I’m pretty shocked at the price of this product line. Frankly, it should be a lot closer to SPQR considering the rather basic quality and number of repeated sculpts. That said, I purchased the basic starter set to give it a chance.

Yeah, the price is something that also made me pause when it first came out. The minis are nice, but when you get two of the same sculpts in each set, you don't think they'd be charging GW levels of cash for ten metal infantry models.

The only thing I can think of it that because it's a collaboration between Warlord and Mythicos (instead of being entirely within Warlord's ownership), that made the price go up. Also the fact that SPQR boxes are just Hail Caesar models repackaged.

 infinite_array wrote:
Do you have their Quetzalcoatl? Just wondering what its dimensions are.

+1 to this - I'd love to find some information about the size of the Paymaster Quetzalcoatl. I've been thinking of diving into Mythic Americas, and likely will go all-in when the Maya are released, but kind of like the idea of starting with the Aztecs for now. The Quetzalcoatl model that is part of the Mythic Americas line is just awful IMO, the Paymaster one is leaps and bounds better, just not sure how the size works out.

As an aside, another thing that has been giving me hesitation about jumping in is that the factions seem really quite limited. There's a leader, a big monster/elite troop, a monstrosity or two, a spellcaster and maybe a support spell casting unit or swarm unit, your basic troops, and then elite melee and elite ranged troops, and that's about it, just one option for each of those categories. I like diverse factions, and the Indigenous Americas are just full of untapped potential in the world of miniature gaming. Are there rules in the rulebook for statting up new units for the factions? Do you know if there are plans to expand the unit options for the factions beyond what has been announced for them?

These Pre-columbian idols are lovely.

https://store.warlordgames.com/products/mythic-americas-mythic-americas-pre-columbian-idols?__s=79sl7tthjojzuz89kysn

They do look good!

To help foster discussion, I'll talk about a game I recently played.



It was my Everliving Aztecs vs my friend Josh's Everchanging Tribal Nations, at 1,000 points.





The Balance of the Way was "Build Altars to the Gods," in which players score a point per turn for either building an altar on the opponent's side of the table, or destroying an enemy altar on your side. For our secretly chosen Devotions of the Way, Josh picked "Trophy Hunters" while I chose "Consecrated Ground."



With the big temple splitting the table, the game devolved into two skirmishes on either side of the table.

Unfortunately for Josh, he was too aggressive with the Nations warband, who work better skirmishing at range before engaging in close combat. It also didn't help that his Sachem on a War Eagle got a pin for sprinting and then failed a critical order test to grab the extra point for his Devotion (which he scored after taking down my Ayar).

The Aztecs won 4-2.

Keeping the Balance - Mythic Americas AAR (from my blog)

This past weekend I packed up the car and traveled up the length of the state to Mythicos Studios in North Jersey for a Mythic Americas event.

While billed as a "beginner tournament," it was really more of a casual meet-and-greet. I got a chance to meet the designers and playtesters of the game, and got the chance to dive into some really juicy background lore of the Mythic universe. I was also shown some previews of upcoming models, and was even given a bunch of Inca models that were the first to be produced domestically, instead of by Warlord!

While up at the store, I did get a chance to play a couple game. Noticeably, everyone who had shown up brought Aztecs! Unfortunately the one player who had an Inca warband for the event wasn't able to make it.



My first game was against Eric and was a mirror match with his Aztecs in the "Liberators and Captors" scenario.

While it was a fun game, my dice were not on my side throughout the day. My first attempt at Magic with my High Priest (both the Warlord and the Magic User for the Aztecs) resulted in a miscast, which prevented him from casting spells for the next turn. My Ayar also blew up when it tried attacking a pinned down unit of Jaguar Warriors. And my own Jaguar Warriors were turned aside by a small, un-buffed unit of Bound Dead.

I did manage to steal the one Captives objective that was in the center of the table!

With my offensive capabilities gone, I could only play defense and try to hold on to the Captives until the game ran out. Unfortunately I lost one, and didn't manage to score my Devotion. Eric did, so the game ended with a 2-3 loss.



My second game was against Chris, the designer behind the Aztec faction. We played the "Build Altars" scenario, and for variety's sake Chris used a Tribal Nations warbands.
Unfortunately, my bad luck continued. My Warlord once again had a miscast on the first turn, and disappeared from the table for a turn (fortunately, Chris' Medicine Man had the same problem!). My unit of Marauders were wiped out in a single turn of shooting, and the rest of Chris' warband chewed through my Aztecs in a hail of stone-tipped arrows and tomahawks.

While I managed hold on to a slight victory points advantage by throwing down as many altars as I could, in turn 5 Chris pulled out a solid reversal that I wasn't going to pull back from using his Devotion. I believe the game ended in a 4-6 loss.

So while I look for new dice, I still had a great time. The store and the people in it were fantastic, and I'm excited to see where Mythicos takes the game and Mythic universe.

Nice report. Thank you.

The rulebook says 2000 points is standard. Is that playing out in stores? Seems large given the points costs and units available now.

Mayans join the wars!

https://warlord-community.warlordgames.com/mythic-americas-maya-revealed/

I do like the Mythic America line, but I'm deliberately avoiding it as I have so many different mini games already. If it had come out a few years earlier ...

Also, this one would be a hard sell locally, so getting an opponent would be challenging.

Is anyone still going at this?

I'm interested in collecting, but also interested in building out something playable as I do.

Dead on arrival in my locale. I was excited for the minis but with so much metal the prices are simply unrealistic, going higher than even GW in places. That just isn't a viable business model.

Too bad... and hear they're in some troubles now too.